Fred Clark on Rev. William J. Barber's Moral Revolution: A Rebuke to White Evangelical Reading of the Bible

As Fred Clark says, there's a reason Rev. William J. Barber cited "Revive Us Again," a venerable hymn long beloved by Southern white evangelicals, in his stirring commentary at the Democratic National Convention. I blogged about this commentary yesterday; a video of Rev. Barber's address to DNC is at this posting.

"This Campaign Is a Choice Between a Normal Political Party and an Abnormal One": Ezra Klein on the (Moral) Choice Confronting American Voters in 2016

Ezra Klein on the significance (a moral significance) of the 2016 U.S. presidential elections:

Rev. William Barber on 2016 Elections: "I'm Troubled and I'm Worried by the Way Faith Is Cynically Used by Some to Serve Hate, Fear, Racism, and Greed"

Proponents of the religious right have been in the business for a long time now of pretending that they and they alone mediate God to the rest of us. Remember when Anita Bryant, the wildly popular Southern Baptist anti-gay crusader (well, until her marriage crashed and burned [the gays made that happen, her shameless ex-husband maintained] and she went through multiple bankruptcies), solemnly assured us that God did not intend a woman to be president of the U.S.?

Father Thomas Reese on How Catholic Vote May Well Decide 2016 Elections: This Analysis Leads to the Question, What's Wrong with White Catholics?

Father Thomas Reese at National Catholic Reporter this morning on how the 2016 elections, which present a stark choice between two very different presidential candidates and two very different visions of American democracy, may well hinge on what Catholic voters choose to do:

White Catholics, White "Liberal" Churchgoers, and Racism: Three Discussions Hot Off the Presses in Light of Trump

Three passages from my reading in the past day that speak quite directly to questions I have raised repeatedly in the last several days here:

Apologies for Errors in My First Posting Today — Have Now Corrected Them

Just a note to tell you I've re-read my posting earlier today about Robert Jones' book The End of White Christian America, and have spotted some glaring errors in the text — for which I apologize. I've now corrected them, and wanted to tell readers this, in case you tried to read the garbled text and could not make sense of it. 

I know I'm behind in acknowledging and replying to your very welcome comments in the past few days, and I apologize for that, too. Still trying to deal with health issues and not feeling very energetic much of the time, though I can't let myself stop reading and thinking and trying to share ideas in this very critical time in American political-religious life, I also tell myself.

Jennifer Finney Boylan on Moral Imagination and the Anti-Trans Agenda of the GOP: Once Again, What Good Does Church Do?

Jennifer Finney Boylan argues that developing "moral imagination" — the ability to imagine the lives of those different from ourselves, and to empathize with those different from ourselves — is an essential human task. We become fully human precisely by developing this ability in ourselves. We are not fully human when we have not developed it.