Should Faith-Based Orgs Be Allowed to Discriminate in Hiring? Introducing: A New Collaboration with Bloggingheads
In this first installment, RD Contributing Editor Peter Laarman debates evangelical professor David Gushee over the Obama administration’s decision to effectively continue to allow recipients of federal faith-based funding to discriminate in hiring. In other clips, the two tangle on gay marriage, whether the Christian Right is dead, and more.
Obama administration under fire from civil liberties advocates for failing to reverse Bush-era policies.
Of Values and Viruses: The Challenges for Obama’s New Global AIDS Coordinator
Dr. Eric Goosby, Obama’s pick to run the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS relief, will face the challenge of faith-based opposition to condom distribution, among other difficulties, when he assumes this important position.
Arguing Liberally: Rift in Religious Coalitions Goes Public
A public row threatens to break out between the DC-based “Religious Industrial Complex,” which seeks new Democratic voters, and a small group of rabble-rousers who claim that they’ve compromised their progressive souls in reaching out to religious conservatives. How did it come to this?
The 10 remaining picks did little to rectify the anti-reform, anti-woman, anti-gay tilt of Obama’s Faith-Based Advisory Council. Not to mention the conspicuous absence of a single academic theologian.
White House Conference Call Seeks Common Ground on Abortion
On Friday White House officials launched a campaign to appease those on all sides of the abortion issue. Do they realize it's nearly as thorny as Israel/Palestine?
Not only is the balance on Obama’s Faith-Based Council tipped toward conservatives, it seems that for every gay rights advocate there must be a homophobe.
Only a minority of Obama's faith-based leaders have any expertise on the topic and most are far more philosophically attuned to abstinence-only sexuality education
While it’s great that Obama’s faith-based program addresses nonbelief, without the proper vigilance we’ll simply get superficial “tolerance” of secularists with an assumed theistic backstory.
The truth about the secret anti-faith clause in the stimulus package.
You Gotta Have Faith-Based Politics
Even as it talks about inclusion and admits nonbelievers into the ranks of upstanding citizenry, the new administration, like the last one, has a plan to use religion to further its political goals.
A New Theopolitical Order: But What About The Women?
Even as they invite progressive religious groups to the table the leaders of the Democratic party shun religious feminism.
By the Way: A Radically Conservative “Faith-Based Initiative”
Obama’s Bush-era strategy of using taxpayer money for faith-based social services not only risks infusing politics into religion, but also denies religious groups their traditional responsibility for caring for those in need—with their own funds.
Obama seems to be backpedaling on the issue of “allowable discrimination.” Appropriating tax dollars to bigoted faith groups is not the change we were looking for.
Obama Offers Little Hope for Faith Based Change in the White House
Can Obama's new faith-based initiative do more than just act as a corrective to Bush's religious right-friendly program? What of sex education, reproductive rights and discriminatory hiring practices?
Pat Robertson “Pleased With Obama” (Video)
Obama’s early choices seem to have resonated with the religious right thus far.
RD News Round-Up—December 15, 2008: Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative after 8 years; ‘War on Christmas’ mash-up; Religious Right layoffs and cutbacks, ‘Prop. 8—The Musical,’ Prop. 8 Gear, and the first Vietnamese American elected to Congress.
Faith-Based Initiatives in the Obama Administration?
If the Obama Administration sticks with Bush’s faith-based initiatives they would do well to avoid the numerous mistakes and predilection for corruption that haunted the Bush version.
Top Ten Religious Right groups rake in more than half-a-billion dollars; Churches v. Christian Zionism; Bush turns to faith-based groups to bail US out of health care crisis; Saving the GOP from itself?
By the Way: Revolting Evangelicals
Conservative evangelicals plan to protest for the right to endorse candidates from the pulpit; they forget that their tax-free existence is a right, not a privilege...
Any faith-based plan to combat poverty, including Obama's, is threatening to the rights of poor LGBTQ Americans, who have always been discriminated against by religious organizations...
Organizing with Obama: Faith in Action
The "compassionate conservatism" of the Bush era was based on the idea that "sinful sloth" leads to poverty, and only religion can cure such a weakness. But the underpinning of Obama's faith-based plan is political, not theological...
Obama's Faith-Based Makeover
Obama pledges to remake Bush's faith-based initiative. No one is pleased...
Obama’s proposal is too timid: How about asking religious groups to really step up?