The Immanent Frame

At Guernica, Nathan Schneider interviews Judith Butler.

Last Friday, the Texas Board of Education ratified—with a seven-vote margin—a series of controversial new textbook standards, reports TPM’s Justin Elliot.

Since stepping down as chairman of Focus on the Family last February, James Dobson’s relationship with the advocacy group and parachurch organization that he founded in 1977 has become increasingly tenuous. Now, reports Talking Points Memo’s Justin Elliot, it appears that Dobson’s growing ostracization suggests a more significant shift in Focus on the Family’s politics.

In Lebanon, “a small group of non-partisan civic-minded citizens called Laïque (Secular) Pride” is organizing a March for Secularism, to take place on April 25 in Beirut, “in support of secularism, and to bring attention to the letter and spirit of the Lebanese Constitution,” reports Alexandre Medawar for Common Ground News Service. In so doing, he draws out some of the complexities that unsettle any attempt to treat Lebanon decisively as either a secular or a multi-confessional republic.

Justin Elliot of Talking Points Memo reports that Don McLeroy, the “top conservative activist on the powerful Texas Board of Education, who rejects evolution and has pushed for a revisionist right-wing U.S. history curriculum,” has gotten the boot.

At Think Progress, Lee Fang reports on the recent actions of Repent Amarillo, an evangelical militia in northern Texas.

John Esposito reports at On Faith that Muhammad Tahir Qadri, an influential Pakistani cleric, has “issued a 600-page fatwa, described as an ‘absolute’ condemnation of terrorism without ‘any excuses or pretexts.’ He declared that terrorists and suicide bombers were unbelievers and that ‘Terrorism is terrorism, violence is violence and it has no place in Islamic teaching and no justification can be provided for it, or any kind of excuses or ifs or buts.’”

In Haaretz, Judith Butler gives a long and personal interview to American-Israeli filmmaker Udi Aloni.

On April 28, the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy will hold its eleventh annual conference, “U.S. Relations with the Muslim World: One Year After Cairo.” Participants include leading scholars, policy analysts, and public intellectuals, including Tariq Ramadan, Brian Katulis, and Reza Aslan. In addition, there will be a concluding keynote address by Senator John Kerry.

Yesterday, Gallup released its 2009 numbers on church attendance (based on more than 350,000 interviews), breaking down the results by state. The distribution is not entirely surprising.