What’s new in the neighborhood? We’ve got issues edition
Progressive Islam (sheep are for Eid) writes about a new organization. From the press release:
The progressive Muslim movement in the United States took a significant step forward as a diverse collection of activists, organizers, and academics gathered at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, May 15-17, for the first conference of Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV, website: www.mpvusa.org). Coming together in fellowship, they joined in communal devotion, shared the various personal, intellectual, and spiritual journeys that brought them there, discussed how to formulate their positions on political, social, and cultural issues and how to interact with other progressives and other Muslims.
At Street Prophets, Uwdomke wonders it was “courage or calculation” that drove Bush’s recent stem cell veto.
This evidence does show the evangelical base of the GOP is in Bush’s camp, yet a further look shows a more complex picture. The 44% of evangelicals supporting embryonic stem cell research in 2006 was an increase of 18% over 2002. Note to Mitt Romney: If Bush’s veto is a pander to evangelicals, it is a strategically poor one. That group of voters is split on this issue and moving leftward.
Mainstream Baptist writes about the new right-wing “70 weeks to take back America” campaign:
Thirty years ago whenever a Baptist organized a campaign to preach in Baptist churches, he was preaching to save souls. That was before Fundamentalists organized political campaigns to “save” their denomination and “Southern” culture. Scarborough was a leader among the young pastors who set aside the revivalist tradition of preaching to revive and save souls and took up preaching to mobilize resentment against the imaginary “liberals” who were supposed to be teaching in Southern Baptist seminaries.
Read more about it here.
Talk to Action’s Carlos writes about Sen. “Obama and the Religious Right.”
None of the current presidential candidates have seriously challenged the Christian Right, but it is noteworthy that Obama mentioned the Christian Right in a recent speech at a United Church of Christ gathering in Iowa.
The Rev. Chuck Currie posts from the UCC’s General Synod. He explains how a decentralized church organization “still speaks” with a prophetic voice.
At God’s Politics, Jim Wallis writes: “Shane Claiborne and The Simple Way community are a good example of the old adage, “Be careful what you pray for.” Evangelicals like to pray that Christian young people will learn to love Jesus and follow in his steps. Well, that’s exactly what this community has done. They believe that by plunging deeper into what the earliest Christians called “The Way”–the way of Jesus, the way of the kingdom, and the way of the cross–they rediscover the biblical reversal of our social logic, accepting that the foolishness of God has always seemed a little nuts to the world.”
Bloggernista, over at Pam’s House Blend, notes the fluid definitions of what it means to be ex-gay.
JSpot’s Mik Moore asks: Which Jew is Most Like Ahmadinejad? And he points out what that has to do with the anti-union lobby.
Here’s the Commonweal blog full of Iraq and abortion advice by way of Melinda Hanneberger.
Philocrites updates on the world of Unitarian-Universalism including the latest in halal investing.
Faithfully Liberal blogs on the latest about the influence of Big Oil on American politics. Spoiler alert: according to the GOA they aren’t paying their fair share in taxes.
Johnny’s Cache has seen SiCKO and he’s mad. Or as he writes: angry, insulted and upset. He’s got a great graphic that helps explain why.
Jubilee USA blogs the debt, or more specifically sex and art. Learn more about the play: The Dictatorship of Debt.