Charleston, W.Va. (Syndicated to Informed Comment) – Religion is fading more quickly in the United States than in any other nation, according to a forthcoming research book. Religion’s Sudden Decline: What’s Causing It and What Comes Next, by University of Michigan scholar Ronald Inglehart, is to be released in January by Oxford University Press. Writing […]
How Can 43% of Americans Support a crude, vulgar, shallow, petty, self-worshiping, obnoxious racist ?
Sometimes it seems like we live in a huge loony bin where things make no sense. How could the world’s richest, strongest nation give its highest office to a crude, vulgar, shallow, petty, self-worshiping, obnoxious, racist schmuck? How can Donald Trump draw so much political support? Is it raw racism – widespread approval of his […]
White too Long? Why is Racism so much stronger among White Christians than among Unchurched Whites?
Racism is much stronger among America’s white Christians than among churchless whites – and it always has been. That’s the message of a new book by social analyst Robert Jones, head of the Public Religion Research Institute. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity contends that white churches didn’t merely adapt […]
Declining Religious Right could go down with Trump
Charleston, W.V. (Special to Informed Comment) – Barely three months from now, the 2020 election may reveal whether America’s white evangelical “religious right” finally is losing political power. So far, early polls imply that obnoxious President Trump, the darling of born-again whites, may suffer a historic defeat. (Although I’m unreligious, I pray ardently for that […]
When even Trump’s Supreme Court upholds Gay Rights, You know Christian Fundamentalism has Lost
Charleston, WV (Special to Informed Comment) – This month’s Supreme Court decree that gays cannot be fired from jobs simply because they’re gay is a solid blow to white evangelicals, the heart of the Republican Party. Such born-again conservatives claim they have “religious freedom” to treat gays cruelly. Now they’re exposed, once again, as more […]
From Stoning Gays to Endorsing Slavery: The Problem with Bible Classes in State Schools
(Syndicated to Informed Comment) – Here in Appalachia’s Bible Belt, conservatives in the Legislature want to force all West Virginia public high schools to teach Bible classes, as occurs in several other Republican-controlled states. I wonder how such classes handle Bible topics like these: First, the Bible decrees that gay males must be killed. Leviticus […]
The Other Theocracy Threatening the United States: Far Right Fundamentalists weigh down the GOP
By James A. Haught (Daylight Atheism) – Every schoolchild knows that the Ancient Mariner was forced to wear a dead albatross around his neck. I think America’s Republican Party wears a dying albatross. It’s white evangelicals who are both the GOP’s life-support system and also a curse upon Republicans. The conservative party couldn’t survive without […]