More naming the problem from Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, quoting Robert Bellah:

The extreme of this view [post-denominationalism], however, is that ultimately everyone’s faith is under their own hat. Could we have millions of faiths, each with only one member? The sociologist Robert Bellah described this phenomenon in the person “Sheila” “whose faith was so private and personal she called it ‘Sheilaism.’ In terms of our [Bellah et al.] categories of basic American values, she was an example of expressive individualism.”

Do you find this video as creepy, disturbing, and scary as I do? Parse its elements.

Feminists are incensed at opposition to Hillary Clinton, and especially to women who are supporting Obama instead of one of their own. “There are some people who promote Barack Obama because they want anybody but a woman,” says NOW official Marion Wagner. “Would they like a white man instead of a black man? Of course. But they’ll take a black man over a woman.”

As Wagner and other NOW executives toured Ohio last week, they repeated a resounding message: Clinton has been mistreated by an opponent who subtly demeans her, by a mainstream media that ridicules her, by voters too threatened to vote for a confident woman, by young women who no longer feel the urgency of the women’s movement, by African American women for whom race is more important than gender. . . .

They point to the way Obama pulled out Clinton’s chair before each debate, immediately establishing the upper hand in their interaction. “You can bet that’s a calculated move,” Wagner said, “and it’s absolutely demeaning.”