JENNIFER HABERKORN and KATHRYN SMITH, - Politico
Stephan: This is happening because of the power of women. I think this is very good news, and a big shift in the narrative of this trend. I take it as a measure of the Theocratic Right and the Social Progressives.
This spring, Republicans were on a mission: repeal the Obama administration’s rule to require employers to cover birth control.
House Speaker John Boehner even stood on the floor of the House in February and promised that Congress would act. ‘This attack by the federal government on religious freedom in our country must not stand and will not stand,
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NINA GOLGOWSKI, - Mail (U.K.)
Stephan: The Amish are what the Founder's had in mind, I think, when they talked about religious freedom. They are a people who really do try to live as Christians, as they understand that. They cherish their differences, do not see themselves as victims, make no demands on others. And they are supported by the majority in their differentness. The contrast between the Amish and the 'Christian' Right, I find quite striking.
The Amish population is spreading faster than most other religious communities in the U.S. with a new settlement founded nearly once a month according to a new report.
With a population doubling in size approximately every 21 years, the census report by researchers at Ohio State University shows that more than 60 per cent of the current communities were founded after 1990.
‘The Amish are one of the fastest-growing religious groups in North America,’ Ohio State rural sociology professor Joe Donnermeyer who completed the census said in a statement. Here we come! The Amish population in the U.S. is spreading faster than most other religious communities with a new settlement founded nearly once a month
Here we come! The Amish population in the U.S. is spreading faster than most other religious communities with a new settlement founded nearly once a month
‘They’re doubling their population about every 21 to 22 years, primarily because they produce large families and the vast majority of daughters and sons remain in the community as adults baptized into the faith, starting their own families and sustaining their religious beliefs and practices,’ Dr Donnermeyer said.
At the report’s completion, presented at the annual meeting of the Rural Sociological Society in Chicago […]
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JAMIE RENO, - The Daily Beast
Stephan: The issue of Jesus' race has always seemed to me both understandable -- everyone wants their God to look like them -- and yet very odd. Based on the description of his heritage one has to assume he would look like other people of the region although, if you are a Biblical literalist, he must have had very peculiar DNA, since it was a virgin birth.
Talk about playing the race card!
Edward Blum, a history professor and religious scholar at San Diego State University and co-author of the forthcoming book The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America, isn’t just playing that card, he’s playing with fire with his potentially incendiary thoughts on the current presidential campaign and race-specifically, the race of Jesus Christ.
Yes, you read that right. Who knew that Jesus’ skin color was a hot campaign issue this year?
Well, it is, if subconsciously, insists Blum, who says that while neither President Barack Obama nor former governor Mitt Romney has said anything about whether Jesus was white, black, or any other color, there’s a strong if unspoken intersecting narrative of race and religion that greatly defines this election.
In the 2008 presidential race, the words of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former preacher, about a black Jesus being killed by white Romans, caused a firestorm of controversy and almost destroyed Obama’s campaign.
Those hostilities still linger among many white conservative Christians, says Blum. But, he says, there has been little if any questioning in this campaign of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ approach to what Jesus looked like.
‘Why […]
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Saturday, July 28th, 2012
MICHELLE GOLDBERG, Senior Contributing Writer - The Daily Beast
Stephan: This is the latest and, in some ways the scariest develop in the Willful Ignorance Trend. One can actually see a new Dark Ages being created by people so enthrall to ideology or theology often both) that their ability to think rationally has been impaired. Now they are attempting to write their ignorance and disdain for facts into law.
The 8th Circuit basically ruled that legislatures are free to pick and choose which ‘science’ they’d prefer to believe. What abortion law’s backers are hiding about suicide risks.
Ordinarily, when a doctor warns you of the risks connected to a medical procedure, you can trust that you’re being told the truth, or at least what your doctor believes to be true. For any woman seeking an abortion in South Dakota, though, this is no longer the case. Thanks to an 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling this week with far-reaching implications, doctors performing abortions will now be legally mandated to mislead their patients. The result is not just an attack on abortion rights that’s likely to be copied in other states-it’s an attack on the broader idea that policymaking should privilege fact over fantasy.
At issue is a 2005 law that, among other things, requires doctors to warn women that abortion would subject them to increased risk of ‘[d]epression and related psychological distress
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Saturday, July 28th, 2012
KURT EICHENWALD, - Vanity Fair
Stephan:
To the saccharine rhythm of a Muzak clip, Steve Ballmer crouched into a tackling stance and dashed across a ballroom stage at the Venetian Las Vegas. A 20-foot wall of video screens flashed his name as the 55-year-old Microsoft chief executive bear-hugged Ryan Seacrest, the ubiquitous television and radio host, who had just introduced Ballmer’s keynote speech for the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show.
More than 150,000 techies and executives were swarming the city’s hotels last January in the annual bacchanalia of cutting-edge gizmos and gadgets. Attendees ran from one vendor to the next, snapping up fistfuls of freebies, inhaling flavored oxygen, and rubbing elbows with stars such as LL Cool J and Justin Bieber.
But this night, an air of discomfort filled the Palazzo Ballroom, where Ballmer was about to give the show’s opening presentation, one delivered by Microsoft’s C.E.O. for 14 of the previous 17 years-the first 11 by Bill Gates and the rest by Ballmer. Weeks earlier, the company had declared that this would be its final keynote-and, worse, that it wouldn’t even be back next year as an exhibitor to showcase new innovations. The timing for big news about its products, it said, didn’t match that of the […]
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