Revealed: US conservative thinktank’s links to extremist fraternal order

The president of the rightwing Claremont Institute and another senior Claremont official are both closely involved with the shadowy Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), an exclusive, men-only fraternal order which aims to replace the US government with an authoritarian “aligned regime”, and which experts say is rooted in extreme Christian nationalism and religious autocracy. …

Alabama is using the notion that embryos are people to surveil and harass women

Could a woman who is pregnant, or could be pregnant, have a right to do things that might endanger her embryo in a situation where an embryo is her legal equal, with a claim on state protection? Could she risk this embryo’s health and life by, say, eating sushi, or having some soft cheese? Forget …

Trump warns of enemies ‘within our country’ to Christian media gathering

Donald Trump told a warmly receptive gathering of religious broadcasters on Thursday that “it’s the people from within our country that are more dangerous than the people outside”, in his latest effort to mobilize Christian fundamentalists who have swung dramatically behind him in recent years. [...] The event spotlighted the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a …

Activists link US nonprofit to anti-LGBTQ laws in Africa. The group says it’s only promoting ‘family values’

Even in the daytime, the curtains in the safehouse are drawn. “With the hate that we are living in today, if you go out there and they notice that I am LGBTQ, sooner or later I will be dead,” he says. It’s unclear how many Ugandans have fled to Kenya, but rights groups in both …

Did Christian homophobia come from a mistranslation of the Bible?

The film hinges its premise on the fact that the word “homosexual” appeared for the first time in the Bible in 1946, in an apparent mistranslation of the ancient Greek words malakoi – defined as someone effeminate who gives themselves up to a soft, decadent, lazy and indolent way of living – and arsenokoitai – a compound word that …

‘You’re only as sick as your secrets’: New Orleans clergy abuse bankruptcy is uniquely acrimonious

The church is using legal tactics to prevent testimony from survivors and spur expensive inquiries into its critics https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/29/new-orleans-archdiocese-clergy-abuse-catholic-church -The Guardian; 11/29/2023

Mike Johnson [R], theocrat: the House speaker and a plot against America

Setting aside all of these wildly extreme, religiously motivated policy preferences, there is a more insidious threat to America in Johnson’s embrace of scriptural originalism: his belief that subjective interpretation of the Bible provides the master plan for governance. Religious truth is neither rational nor susceptible to reasoned debate. For Johnson, who sees a Manichean …

Anti-abortion misinformation mounting ahead of key Ohio vote, experts warn

On Tuesday, Ohioans will vote on whether to amend the state constitution to enshrine the right to abortion. But powerful anti-abortion forces are arguing that the amendment will go beyond guaranteeing access to the procedureto imperil parents’ rights when it comes to abortion and even gender-affirming care.Experts and abortion rights supporters say these claims are …

Opinion: Why Speaker Johnson [R] says America is not a democracy

There’s a lot to work with here – particularly the “biblical admonition” bit, given the Founders’ conscious decision to leave the word “God” out of the Constitution, as well as the Bill of Rights’ prohibition on the establishment of any state religion. In contrast, Mother Jones reported that Johnson has called for “biblically sanctioned government” and promoted the notion that the …

‘This war is prophetically significant’: why US evangelical Christians support Israel

One strand of evangelical theology holds that the return of Jews to the region starts the clock ticking on a seven-year armageddon, after which Jesus Christ will return [...] “God is getting ready to defend Israel in such a supernatural way it’s going to take the breath out of the lungs of the dictators on …