CHURCH & STATE | Values Void: How the Religious Right Learned to Love Sex Offenders
After the infamous Access Hollywood audiotape emerged in October 2016 on which Donald Trump boasts about how easy it is to sexually assault women when you’re rich and famous, the leaders and followers of America’s... Read More
CHURCH & STATE | The Kavanaugh Nomination: How Screwed Are We?
The late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was no fan of the separation of church and state. In 1985, when the Supreme Court handed down a decision in a school prayer case called Wallace v.... Read More
Betsy DeVos Wants You to Pay for Someone Else’s Religion
President Donald Trump’s cabinet is full of men and women who simply aren’t qualified to do the jobs they’ve been assigned. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the case of US Secretary of Education... Read More
Are We Headed for One Christian Nation under Trump?
Much has been written about the religious right’s support for President Donald Trump, a serial philanderer, habitual liar, and admitted sexual assaulter of women. I’ve written about this topic myself and, like a lot of... Read More
Not-So-Civil Religion: The Long-Running Fraud of “Ceremonial Deism”
I occasionally meet with delegations of visitors from overseas as part of a program run by the US State Department. The visitors, usually government officials, academics, or religious leaders, are curious to learn about the... Read More
Can American Democracy Survive Trump’s Reign of Lies?
My mother was a fan of Simon and Garfunkel, and I grew up hearing a lot of their music. I came to appreciate the folky duo as well. One of my favorite songs by the... Read More
When Religious Freedom Is a Recipe for Discrimination
Jack Phillips owns a bakery in Lakewood, Colorado. Phillips is a conservative evangelical Christian who opposes marriage equality. He insists that his beliefs give him the right to refuse to serve same-sex couples. Thus, when... Read More