Bishop Robert W. Finn, the Opus Dei Bishop who was convicted by a Missouri court for failing to report suspected child abuse by a parish priest under his charge, has resigned his leadership of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri.
I think there are two underreported features of the fallout from Indiana that we should make sure do not get lost in the hoo ha.
One is that people are getting it that religious freedom does not and must not equal the right to discriminate. The other is that people are also broadening and deepening their understanding of what they basically already know: the Christian Right's view on these things is not shared by all of Christianity.
Barry Lynn, the longtime executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, recently posted an important essay at Huffington Post. In it, he cheered the Obama administration's recognition of the recent anti-LGBTQ legislative bigotry in Indiana. But Lynn's main purpose was to highlight the practice, which has existed since the Bush administration, of allowing federal contractors to discriminate on the basis of religion. The practice, he says, is justified by a flawed 2007 analysis from the Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department under president George W. Bush. Lynn's organization and some seven dozen organizations have asked the president to rescind the Bush era memo as a basis for policy.
The letter's other signatories include the American Association of University Women, the ACLU, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFL-CIO), the American Jewish Committee, Hindu American Foundation, Human Rights Campaign, Muslim Advocates, Interfaith Alliance, the Council for Secular Humanism, Southern Poverty Law Center and the NAACP in and many more civil liberties watchdogs, women's rights groups and progressive religious organizations.
Last week I taped an interview with Sister Maureen Fielder, host of "Interfaith Voices," a popular radio program exploring religious issues that is carried by many NPR stations.
The topic of the show was Indiana's new "religious freedom" law, and appearing with me was Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, senior editor at The Federalist, a libertarian journal. We had a spirited but thoughtful discussion.
The recent endorsement of marriage equality by the Presbyterian Church (USA) seemed like a good moment to discuss the campaign to divide and conquer the mainline Protestant churches, at LGBTQ Nation -- FC
The Presbyterian Church (USA) has recently been in the news for its historic approval of marriage equality. But in these news stories, you may have noticed that Christian Right organizations that are unhappy with the outcome are promoting the idea that people are leaving this and other churches because of their support for equal rights, and for rejecting the Right's corrupt and redefined version of religious freedom.
As is often the case, the Christian Right's claims don't hold much water.
I have had the honor of speaking at a number of these events over the years. This year, I will be speaking on a panel about knowing and resisting the Right. (Anyone who happens to come, please say hello!)
Events like this are rare. And a national conference that takes the time to feature a discussion of the role of the religious and political right in order to develop sound understandings of the right in order to better advance social justice, is unfortunately, even more rare.
As I reported in September 2014, Bishop Robert Finn, head of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri has been under Vatican investigation to determine if he should be forced to step down. The lead investigator has apparently concluded it is time for Finn to go.
While this is a step in the right direction, so many Catholics are wondering - even members of the Pope's own committee to weed out sexual abuse in the church -- what is taking so long?
This is a transcript, of pastor Larry Huch and Rafael Cruz, father of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, from an appearance Rafael Cruz made at the Irving, Texas New Beginnings megachurch on August 26, 2012.
First, Huch and Cruz discuss Ted Cruz as one of the "anointed" who will bring about a "great wealth transfer" from the "wicked" to the "righteous" (see transcript). Towards the end of the ceremony, Huch prophesies to Rafael Cruz that Ted Cruz, who had just won his senate seat, was destined for greater things. One day, Huch prophesied, Ted Cruz would be Vice President or a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
Ted Cruz threw his hat into the ring, announcing his bid for President in the worship center at Jerry Falwell's University last night. Mother Jones magazine just recently published a story claiming Cruz argued the case for defending the state of Texas' right to execute an obviously mentally retarded man. Scott Panetti, the convicted murderer, fit just about anybody's definition of insane. Scott had frequent verbal contact with John Kennedy and Jesus.
[welcome, Thom Hartmann Show fans, here is a short introduction to my past coverage on Ted Cruz and the dominionist Christian right]
Did you known that Ted Cruz and his father helped establish the presidencies, respectively, of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan ? Today, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz' announcement of his bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination renews the relevance of reporting I did on Cruz in mid-2013. Senator Cruz' announcement has triggered an eruption, from the America left, of mockery and attacks on Cruz, for a wide array of reasons.
But there are more important stories to be told - on Cruz' longstanding ties to the elite leadership of the religious right and Christian right that has included a friendship, tracing back to the 1990s, with one of the movement's top architects who helped launch America's culture wars, and concerning the role of Ted Cruz and his father Rafael Cruz, in giving America George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.
An international network of some of the world's most vitriolic Religious Right activists and self-proclaimed orthodox religious leaders is holding its ninth global conference in Salt Lake City, Utah in October 2015. The World Congress of Families' (WCF) conferences tend to attract thousands of participants and prominent religious and political leaders from all over the world.
If past conferences are any indication, many Americans may be shocked, but not entirely surprised, by the proceedings.
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