Three organizations in Northwest Arkansas are deeply interwoven into the most rabid Anti-Semitic teachings in the nation.  Gerald Smith, buried at the base of the statue of Jesus of the Ozarks, founded the Passion Play in Eureka Springs.  Smith ran for President under the platform of "We got to do something about the Jews."  Harrison, Arkansas is the headquarters for a Christian Identity group who teaches Jews are really descendants of Satan copulating with Eve in the garden.

Joseph J. Cella has had a change of heart since he joined with those conservative Catholic activists who signed a declaration during the Republican primary season, urging Catholic voters not to nominate Donald Trump.

The prestigious Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard College will host a panel on Monday, Oct 17, titled "Righting the Record: Conservatism and the Archives."

According to the press release:

Over the past half-century, grassroots activists and organizations both left and right have focused on women's roles, family values, homosexuality, and reproductive policy, transforming modern American life. Yet the collections of major public repositories, especially those housed at universities, tend to document only one side of this complicated history: the left side.

This claim is absent any evidence, and is part of a longstanding (and fraudulent) whine from the Right that campuses are hostile to right-wing ideas. No surprise to find out nemesis here at Talk to Action, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, moderating the event.

Banned Books Week is the venerable annual celebration of the right to read and the highlighting of efforts by cultural vigilantes of various sorts (but usually the Christian Right) to restrict or eliminate access to targeted works in public libraries and beyond.  Although challenged books have, over the years run from Catcher in the Rye to Fifty Shades of Grey to the Bible, more typically, challenged books are by or about racial, sexual or religious minorities.  And this year is no exception. Oh, except that the Bible made the list of the Ten Most Challenged Books of 2015.

Banned Books Week is sponsored by the
American Library Association and the American Booksellers Foundation, and many other publishing and free speech organizations, which host thousands of cool and inspiring events in person and online including a week's worth of events at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library.

This year Banned Books Week runs from September 25-October 1.

"It would be more accurate to say that Oswald was his own agent, that he was moved to act by dint of his own inclination.  That inclination was born of a fragmented and peripatetic youth, adolescence, and early adulthood, but ultimately Oswald was self-propelled.  The mysterious and fictional heart of darkness residing somewhere in America did not murder the mythical hero-president.  Oswald did." Peter Savodnik

The question posed in the title might seem merely rhetorical:  but its not.  All sides, not to mention the media, often frame contemporary controversies over calls for religious exemption from various laws in ways that cast these two foundational ideas of our society as starkly at odds.

While recognizing the current tensions, the United States Commission on Civil Rights does not think civil rights and religious liberty are mutually exclusive. But their new report on the subject seeks ways forward to allow for them to "peacefully coexist."  The majority report sensibly recommends limiting the exemptions sought by the Christian Right from contemporary laws and regulations. They also recognize that when exemptions are are sought, any that are granted should be both clearly necessary and narrowly tailored to the matter at hand. In order to limit the current expansionism, the Commission' recommends, for example, that Congress and state legislatures amend state and federal Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA) to ensure that they do not undermine civil liberties and civil rights protections.

The Commission's report Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties (PDF) is an important resource for anyone seeking to understand and to keep up with the state of these issues as they relate to everything from labor laws to marriage equality.  It is only 27 pages long, but it is supported by more than 300 pages of related documentation.  And its free.

Monday night around 9:40 I received an email with a curious subject line. "The Greatest American Woman, R.I.P.," it read.

"Who could that be?" I wondered as I opened the message. Came the answer: Phyllis Schlafly.

Before the end of GOP primaries, I wrote about how Catholic neo-conservatives couldn't bring themselves to support Donald Trump. Even now that he is the Republican nominee, he even seems to be a bridge too far for their tastes.

But Catholic neo-cons are not unanimous about Trump.  Former U. S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) is one of Trump's most prominent supporters.

Dominionism has been an evolving movement for a half century. Fed by two main streams, it has becoming a roaring current, tearing through American public life.  It has advanced far more rapidly and on a scale far greater than its early proponents imagined.  This has been facilitated by far too many of us who clung to an attitude that `it can't happen here' and the consequent denialism that dominionism is much of a threat or even exists.  Thus we have been handicapped in our efforts to cobble together much of an agreed upon common body of knowledge and terms to go with it, reducing our capacity to have much in the way of coherent strategic conversations. Plus the subject is so emotionally fraught.

That's why I spent the past few months crafting a revised, refreshed and updated retelling of the story of dominionism that seeks to incorporate what we have learned over the years, so that we can better understand what it is and is not about -- the denial and pooh poohery not withstanding.    The result is a just published story in The Public Eye magazine, which specializes in taking the long view of the Right in long form.  The magazine has been covering dominionism since 1992, followed by major stories in 1994, 2005, 2007, 2013, and 2015.  I'm glad to have been able to contribute Dominionism Rising: A Theocratic Movement Hiding in Plain Sight to this body of work.

Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump has vowed to repeal a federal law that bars houses of worship (and other tax-exempt non-profits) from endorsing or opposing candidates for public office.

In light of this, there has been a lot of talk lately about the proper role of religion in politics. Yesterday, evangelical scholar John Fea published an opinion column with Religion News Service that adds some overlooked - but important - history to the mix.

Part of my job involves monitoring the activities of Religious Right groups, which means every day my email box receives messages from groups like the Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom and American Family Association (AFA).

The AFA has lately been going around the bend about something called the "gender unicorn." This unicorn, which has apparently surfaced (metaphorically speaking) in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina, has Franklin Graham, son of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, in quite a tizzy.

Joseph Ellsworth McWilliams was born on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma.  He moved to New York City and became a Communist.  Later on he became a leader in the American Far Right. He was friends with many Jews but used anti-Semitic speeches to move audiences.  He quickly learned that the fear of Jews in his city touched a sensitive nerve.  He held little basis for such beliefs, but yielded to the temptation to use fear mongering about Jews to make political points during the thirties in America.  Fearmongering has long been a basic diet fed from the airwaves from Religious Right publications.