Hearts and (Versus?) Minds: Bachmann’s Ultrasound Bill
Why she has placed the heartbeat center stage.
Read Morereproductive rights
How Iowa Became a Stronghold of the Religious Right
“I prefer to think of Iowa as I saw it through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy,” Herbert Hoover, the only Iowan ever elected president of the United States, wrote at the beginning of his memoir. “Those were eyes filled with the wonders of Iowa’s streams and woods, of the mystery of growing crops.”
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Florida Primary Winner: ‘War on Religion’ Talking Point
Though Gingrich got clobbered in today’s Florida primary, his echoing of the US Bishops’ war on religion talking point is likely to make it all the way to the 2012 election.
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Sacrifice, Suffering, and Rick Santorum
Of course, in today’s pussy-footing, self-censoring public talk about religion, we never ask how Isabella feels about being the occasion for edifying “sacrifice” by the Santorums? It is fine for Rick Santorum to tell us how such sacrifice has deepened his faith, strengthened the bonds uniting their family, and so on. Good for him. Moreover, Santorum would want no pity from me. He identifies with the uplifting narrative of sacrificing for the sake of others, protecting the weak, championing “life,” building character by overcoming adversity, seeing blessing where others see only curses, and so on. But I find all this attention to the suffering and sacrifice of Rick Santorum more than a little self-centered—a kind of spiritual egoism.
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HBO’s Game Change Hits, But Sarah Palin Pic Misses Religion
Game Change reveals what no one else apparently has the chutzpah to say: that Sarah Palin was the opening salvo in the the dissolution and destruction of the Republican Party.
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“Religious Freedom” and the Conservative Quest for Absolute Truth
But the demand for hierarchy has a larger impact on politics. In Bill Clinton’s often-quoted words: “When times are uncertain, the American people would rather have a leader who is wrong but strong than one who is right but weak.” Just as the father must rule to keep the home in order, and the Father in Heaven must be obeyed to keep the universe in order, so the “great white father” in the White House must have firm control to keep order in the political realm.
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Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, and Pro-Home Birth
All the rage in today’s media, home birth advocates, who run the spectrum from conservative Christians to liberal hippies, are working together to ensure that women are able to make informed decisions about their childbirth.
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Today We Pray for Women for Whom Pregnancy is Not Good News …
For the past four years, the pro-choice “40 Days of Prayer” campaign has attempted to speak to the many religious women who seek and have abortions, because the movement will never be able to change the laws back to being pro-woman until women themselves are voting pro-choice.
Read MoreCatholic Sex Teaching is No Laughing Matter
Bishops are not only concerned with nuns and girl scouts.
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World Congress of Families Meets, Seeks a New Dark Ages
An international conservative network met recently to discuss the “natural family”—a married man and woman engaged in procreative sex—and how they might codify their religious beliefs across the world.
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