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Saddleback — The End of Black Prophetic Politics

By Andre C. Willis

Does Obama's coded evangelical language signal a shift from black prophetic politics to the evangelical politics of personal salvation?

 

Spinning the Faith Forum

By Mark Hulsether

Liberal media claims that Obama was "sandbagged" at Saddleback, but is this just a knee-jerk reaction to evangelical influence in politics?

The Question of Evil: Politicians Weigh In

By Mark Gstohl

What the presidential candidates' responses to a question about the nature of evil reveal about the state of American Christianity...

Sacred&Profane: The Sacred Pelvis

By Gary Laderman

More than Tupac or Marilyn or Di or Kurt or Jimi, the cult of Elvis transcends labels like industry or entertainment; it is worthy of church, but the spirit of Elvis cannot be institutionalized...

Eid stirs fury in Shelbyville, Tennessee

By Kim Bobo

A major union's Labor Day concession to Muslim workers sparks anti-immigrant outrage in a Tennessee town...

Olympics 2008: Ignoring History

By Louis A. Ruprecht

The Beijing Opening Ceremonies had an odd way of ignoring history, politics, and the West itself...

RDPulpit: Clergy Letter to Obama: Reject Beltway Logic

An interfaith coalition of clergy urge Obama to reject war, corporatism, ecological catastrophe and business as usual in favor of "a New Bottom Line"...

Gay Marriage: Religious Right Cranks Up the Fear

By Bill Berkowitz

California's Proposition 8 would overturn the state's Supreme Court decision to allow same-sex marriage — right wing religious groups are girding for the battle they are calling "the Armageddon of the culture war."...

Olympic Ritual and Religion, Hosted by a Religion-less State

By Louis A. Ruprecht

When the modern Olympic Games were revived they were imbued with a religious and ritualistic significance. How that will be handled by Communist China remains to be seen...

Postville: Ground Zero for the Intersection of Immigrant and Workers’ Rights

By Kim Bobo

A rural town in Iowa is the home of the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant, a facility that–while already under scrutiny for its poor treatment of workers and animals–was recently the scene of the largest immigration workplace raid in history...

Condos on Mars: A New Kind of Limit Experience?

By Laurie Patton

The exploration of new worlds has traditionally been both liberating and exploitative; can we can break the cycle with Mars?...

Journalistic Blind Spots and the 'Centrist-to-Liberal' Christian

By Mark Hulsether

When one religious voice seems to dominate public discussion we need to ask why. Is it because it is the only voice speaking? Or is the media ignoring other voices?...

RDPulpit: McCain Attack Ad is “Hopeless“

By Daniel Schultz

McCain's new ad mocking Obama's charismatic campaign of hope and the belief that we can do better is being criticized as 'blasphemous' and offensive to liberal Christians...

Obama Foe Wants His MTV

By Bill Berkowitz

MoveOn wannabe, Colin Hanna, has found a new platform for his Obama attack ads: MTV. Aiming to ”plant some seeds of doubt” in the ”younger demographic” a positive org goes negative to push McCain—along with a border fence, an anti-Jihadist site and a Pastor initiative...

By the Way: Religious Right Eats its Own

By Randall Balmer

Iowa senator Charles Grassley, among the first major success stories of the religious right, opposes abortion and same-sex unions; So why did the religious right leadership in Iowa deny him a place on the state's delegation to the upcoming Republican Convention?

Straightening Up Cardinal Newman

By Mark D. Jordan

Cardinal John Henry Newman, England's most famous convert to Roman Catholicism, is on his way to sainthood. Is this why the Vatican is preparing to move his grave and separate him from the friend he requested to be buried with?

RDPulpit: Why I am going to Iran

By Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou

What do you hope to accomplish, they ask, meeting with “those people”?

RDEpistle: Open Letter to Sean Hannity

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

Bestsellers by the stars of conservative media were found amongst the belongings of the Knoxville killer. Here is a plea for sanity to the author of 'Let Freedom Ring'...

The Byzantine Bush Tell-All

By Louis A. Ruprecht

The original insider memoir, by Procopius of Caesarea, gave the word 'byzantine' its current meaning...

Op-Ed: Liberal Hatred

By Laurie Patton

When do seemingly manageable ideological differences within a functioning democracy become something more treacherous?

Purpose Driven Politics: Rick Warren's Civil Service

By Bill Berkowitz

Barack Obama and John McCain will share a stage for the first time this August. Their host? Rick Warren, megachurch pastor and bestselling author—and a man with undeniable political influence...

Communication v. Excommunication: Catholic Women and the Church

By Mary E. Hunt

Do bishops have too much time on their hands?...

The Double Life of the War Criminal

By Laurie Patton

Radovan Karadzic has been hiding in plain sight as a New Age healer...

Women's Ordination, Round Two

By Mark D. Jordan

First you ordain women, then you consecrate them as bishops, and—look!—homosexual clergy want to come out of the closet: RD takes a calm look at the latest quarrel between the long-divorced Anglican Church and the Vatican...

American Virgin Doesn't Quite Get It

By Gabriel Mckee

Comic about an evangelical teen suffers from some critical flaws...

Gay Marriage to End “Culture Wars”?

By Bill Berkowitz

It all rides on the passage of California’s anti-same-sex marriage initiative, according to the AFA’s Don Wildmon

Obama's Muslim Problem—And Ours

By William Hart

By all accounts, Obama finds anti-Muslim bigotry offensive. Yet, his behavior during the current presidential campaign leaves a bad taste in the mouth of Muslims and in the mouths of us who believe that openness to the religious others is what America must mean.

Dispatches from the Workplace: Rabbis for Worker Justice

By Kim Bobo

A controversial new ruling from an up and coming rabbi in Conservative Judaism charts a course for a greater focus on worker justice. Several of its recommendations coincide with crucial legislation favored by the American labor movement...

Rumors of God's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

By Nathan Schneider

A leading evangelical takes on the 'God is dead' crowd in the flagship journal of the conservative movement, but, our writer argues, neither theists nor atheists will win this argument until they stop misrepresenting each other and misinforming their readers...

By the Way: Fractured Religious Right Endorses McCain

By Randall Balmer

Evangelicals meet in Denver to pump fists for McCain; the old leadership wasn't all that was missing...

RD10Q: How the Democrats lost the Catholic vote

By Michael Sean Winters

How religion should, and should not, influence politics...

RDGenerations: Religion in the Academy

By Lucia Hulsether, Mark Hulsether

Father/daughter dialogue on biblical literalism, Obama as Antichrist, and God as 'She'...

Abuse in the Name of God? Children and Faith Healing

By Shawn Francis Peters

When parents choose spiritual healing over medical care for their ailing children...

RD10Q: God and Government in the Ghetto

By Michael Leo Owens

Church-state partnerships are a means for black clergy to reaffirm their political leadership...

Organizing with Obama: Faith in Action

By Ira Chernus

The 'compassionate conservatism' of the Bush era was based on the idea that 'sinful sloth' leads to poverty, and only religion can cure such a weakness. But the underpinning of Obama's faith-based plan is political, not theological...

Obama's Faith-Based Makeover

By Bill Berkowitz

Obama pledges to remake Bush's faith-based initiative. No one is pleased...

By the Way: Obama and Faith-Based Initiatives

By Randall Balmer

Obama's proposal is too timid: How about asking religious groups to really step up?

One Nation, Many Bibles: Obama v. Dobson

By Anthony B. Pinn

Americans wrestle with the biblical text, but there is no one correct way to read scripture...

Sacred&Profane: Ecstatic Sex

By Gary Laderman

A romp through America's favorite, most taboo subject; Sacred sex, the mighty orgasm, and the pleasure and pain of the body...

The Immorality of Immortality

By Hava Tirosh-Samuelson

A Jewish theological take on the transhumanist movement...

Until the World Laughs with God

By Nathan Schneider

Mike Myers's latest movie, plagued by interfaith protests, bad reviews, and a poor showing at the box office, makes us ask, once again, whether religion is allowed to be funny …

Letters to the Editors: On Gandhian Nonviolence

By Ira Chernus Michael Nagler

Two scholars respond to Shalom Goldman's essay, 'Gandhi, HIs Grandson, Israel, and the Jews.'

'Traditional' Marriage or a Break with Tradition?

By Stephanie Coontz

Marriage as we know it is a recent invention...

Dispatches from the Beltway: The New Public Face of Religion

By Robert P. Jones

The surprising results of the latest Pew survey on religion in America...

The Theodicy of George Carlin

By Kathryn Lofton

Carlin needed a God, wanted a God, but how could the Almighty be all-powerful if “everything he ever makes… dies”?

Spiritual McCarthyism and the Catholic Vote

By Bill Berkowitz

President of the Catholic League tries to blacklist Obama advisors...

Bonnaroo Dispatches: Stages

By Michael A. Elliott E. David Morgen

This four-day rock fest in rural Tennessee is an endurance event, to be sure, but for many it is a makeshift spritual retreat—a 'vibrational healing ground.' The second in a three part series...

A Religious History of American Neuroscience

By Leigh Eric Schmidt

On the 'God-spot,' the psycho-phone, and mapping the mystical brain...

Bonnaroo 3: With a Buzz in Our Ears

By Michael A. Elliott E. David Morgen

In which our intrepid writers let the ethereal sounds of Sigur Ros ripple and echo through them, and learn to speak 'hopelandic.'

Creationism v. Integrationism

By Arri Eisen

While fundamentalists bicker, and a Turkish crank tries to disprove Darwin, a scientist meets a Buddhist who is able to integrate science and faith...

Conservative Christian Book on Obama's Faith

By Bill Berkowitz

Author Stephen Mansfield is getting hate mail. Why does the religious right think that this ex-pastor will roast in hell?

Bonnaroo: The Meeting Ground

By Michael A. Elliott E. David Morgen

It's not hedonistic abandon that draws folks to the rock fest, but something else...

RD10Q: W.E.B. Du Bois, American Prophet

By Edward J. Blum

Was Du Bois, leading African American intellectual and civil rights activist, an atheist?

RDBook: The End of the World As We Know It

By Gabriel Mckee

'Famine, Death, War, and Pestilence' in 'Wastelands,' a new anthology of postapocalyptic fiction...

Gandhi, his Grandson, Israel, and the Jews

By Shalom Goldman

Gandhi's grandson says that Israel promotes a 'culture of violence': Shalom Goldman tells the little-known backstory...

Religion and Reality TV: Is God Watching?

By Kent L. Brintnall

Does God really care who wins Big Brother?

Same-Sex Marriage Showdown in California

By Bill Berkowitz

Religious Right will back county clerks that refuse to perform wedding ceremonies after June 17...

RD10Q: On The Fall of the Evangelical Nation

By Christine Wicker

Journalist Christine Wicker thinks that the influence of the Religious Right, now on the wane, has been disastrous for American Christianity...

Taking It to the Streets: Anonymous v. Scientology

By Gabriel Mckee

A group named Anonymous has been using electronic sabotage and staging street demonstrations against Scientology in what may be a first—an unaffiliated, secular group protesting an entire religion...

A More Perfect Union

By Rev. Irene Monroe

In the midst of controversy, Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson and partner Mark Andrew were joined in a Civil Union...

Onward Christian Soldiers

By Jane Hunter,   Haim Beliak

Army specialist Jeremy Hall, an atheist, discovered an intolerant fundamentalist culture in the armed services...

RDBook: Power Belongs to God

By Nathan Schneider

In The Family Jeff Sharlet explains how a little-known group links religion and power to cultivate influence...

RDBook: Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa

By Luke Ssemakula

How do Africa's churches affect its politics? This anthology sets out to answer the question...

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