The reason why this person got elected in many ways can be traced to a misreading of scripture," Bell said. "The way of Jesus is the way of nonviolence, it's love of the other. The story of Exodus is remembering you were once wandering slaves, so whatever you do be kind to the widow, the orphan, the immigrant among you. So when a nation of immigrants starts putting up travel bans, you have officially lost the plot."

Unlike the earlier views, which seemed to lead toward either agnosticism or atheism, the theologians see this “new biology” or “holistic biology” as more compatible with religious belief.............

But he added: “It would be naive to imagine that the grander questions about biology, religion, the humanities and evolutionary theory generally have been put to death.”

Ever since the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that gay people have the right to marry, those upset by this ruling have shifted their strategy from denying the right to limiting its enforcement.
Even if gay people have a right to marry, they argue, people also have the liberty to practice their religion as they wish. Accordingly, they claim, they cannot be forced to “aid or abet” those seeking to marry partners of the same sex...................
So when people claim that aiding and abetting gay marriage would infringe on their religious liberty, in most cases what they must mean is that this would violate their particular conception of positive liberty – their particular conception of how we each should live, a conception that is based on their religious views.

Richard Dawkins, the famed evolutionary biologist and ardent critic of religion, found a new San Francisco-area venue to host his current book tour after his planned Berkeley appearance was abruptly canceled.

Religious leaders were quick to react to President Trump’s tweeted announcement that transgender people will not be allowed to serve in the U.S. military.

For the third week in a row, clergy showed up on Capitol Hill to protest Senate action on health care.
As in past weeks, some were arrested.
But on this Tuesday (July 25), the group ratcheted up the drama by marching to the Capitol, carrying a cardboard coffin and poster-sized death certificates for those who would lose health insurance.

I am constantly asked why in last year’s presidential election 81 percent of white conservative Christians voted for Donald Trump, a thrice-married, self-proclaimed womanizer whose personal behavior, religious practices and lifestyle are far different than the majority of evangelical churchgoers. The answer is not hard to find.
Trump’s winning mantra — “Make America Great Again” — was congruent with a wishful return to the Protestant hegemony that once existed in the United States back in the Eden-like “good old days.”
In the recollections of many evangelicals, America was then a tranquil, moral land deeply rooted in a specific set of traditional Christian values: the shining city on the hill, an idyllic small-town nation dominated by a white male leadership group.

But in those early days after the election--you probably remember--mainstream news outlets all sounded the same alarm. The headlines were so similar: "How Trump won: The revenge of working-class whites" from the Washington Post); "The revenge of the white man" from Time; "Revenge of the forgotten class" from (ProPublica; "Revenge of the Rural Voter" from Politico; and "Why Trump Won: Working-class Whites" from New York Times......

They settled on a slice of voters--who they labeled white working-class--in the key Midwestern swing states of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, who voted for Trump.