Christianity Today approves impeaching Trump

In an interesting development that has caused some consternation in Christian circles, the evangelical magazine Christianity Today founded in 1956by the late Billy Graham has come out with an editorial approving the impeachment of Donald Trump. It says that the fact that Democrats have been out to get him from the day he took office and that they support Trump’s pro-life and religious freedom positions is not enough to counterbalance the fact that he is unfit for the office he holds.
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The other Ilhan Omar and her politics of ‘radical love’

The right wing in the US have been on a campaign against first-term Minnesota Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, implying strongly that she is some sort of radical Muslim terrorist sympathizing anti-Semite while stopping short of actually saying so. In a profile of her in the December 2019/January 2020 issue of The Progressive magazine, John Nichols writes that the attacks based on this distorted one-dimensional portrait of her obscures the fact that Omar has a very wide range of issues that she is interested in.
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Why Scientists Should Be Atheists revisited

My Oxford University Press blog post on Why Scientists Should Be Atheists generated an interesting discussion in the comments of my blog post here that linked to it. One issue that was raised was my use of the word ‘should’ and why I was singling out scientists with that imperative. Why should scientists apply the same standards they use in science to everything in life? Of course, no one can be forced to do so and people can (and do) compartmentalize their thinking to enable them to be scientists by day and believers in all manner of supernatural entities by night (so to speak).
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Curious understanding of the word ‘divisive’

The Hallmark TV channel, that has become synonymous with bland programming and anodyne content, had shown an ad from a wedding planning company called Zola that features a lesbian couple briefly kissing at the altar on their wedding day. This of course caused anti-gay bigots to get the vapors and an obscure conservative group called One Million Moms, part of the American Family Association, contacted the Hallmark CEO to complain and the company pulled four Zola ads that featured same-sex couples but not two that did not.
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Knives are less dangerous than guns, duh!

There is a reason that there is a saying that one does not bring a knife to a gunfight and that is because while a knife in the hands of a killer is dangerous, it is nowhere near as lethal as someone armed with a variety of high-powered guns. But that has not stopped gun nuts in the US from pointing to the knife attacks in London as to why gun control does not work because, according to their ‘logic’, if people’s guns are taken away, they will use knives instead. People like Donald Trump paint a lurid picture of knife attacks that have no relation to reality, like in this speech last year.
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Donald Trump is such a charmer

He made the following remarks at a fundraiser last evening.

US President Donald Trump told a pro-Israel conference Saturday night that some American Jews don’t love Israel enough. He also noting that he did not have to worry about getting his audience’s votes, because they would cast ballots with business interests in mind.

Those comments, to the Israeli American Council advocacy group in Florida, drew quick criticism from opponents and were derided as anti-Semitic.

In his 45-minute speech to an audience of over 4,300, the president criticized American Jews who, he said, were not sufficiently supportive of the Jewish state.
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Using anti-Semitism against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party

The UK’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has leveled charges against the Labour party that it has a serious problem of anti-Semitism within its ranks and that its leader Jeremy Corbyn and the top leadership have not done enough to combat it. Under the surface is the implication that Corbyn himself is an anti-Semite. Corbyn has responded.

Speaking the following morning, Corbyn said a future Labour government would be “the most anti-racist government you’ve ever seen”. He said: “Because that is what I’ve spent my whole life doing, fighting against racism, and I will die fighting against racism.”

He said he had made it clear that antisemitism is wrong. “Our party did make it clear when I was elected leader, and after that, that antisemitism is unacceptable in any form in our party or our society and did indeed offer its sympathies and apologies to those who had suffered,” he said.

Corbyn, just like Bernie Sanders in the US, has been a lifelong campaigner against racism and for human rights. But both have recognized the injustices suffered by Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government and called for giving them the rights they deserve and it is this stance that has alarmed the Israel lobby in the UK and the US.
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Chick-fil-A alienates its right-wing Christian supporters

Some of you may recall the big Chick-fil-A controversy that emerged some years ago. The owners of this fast-food franchise are evangelical Christians who disapprove of homosexuality and opposed the efforts to legalize same-sex marriage. This made them the target of boycotts by the LGBT+ community but also the darling of right-wing evangelical Christians in the US who campaigned to have people eat there to show their support.

So I was surprised to read that the company has just stopped funding the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, two organizations that were prominent in also opposing giving equal rights to the LGBT+ community. The company has also contributed to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that strongly supports LGBT+ rights and is a group that right-wingers hate.
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