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Huckabee in the Holy Land: A Christian Zionist Campaign
The religious right’s preferred presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee recently returned from a visit to Israel. What prompted Time to call it his first campaign stop in the 2012 race?
Fear of a Black President
The president reminds Glenn Beck, and those who identify with his neo-white nationalism, of the lie of their own professed superiority. The pride with which this segment of society has rallied the troops around its shared sense of whiteness reveals that their skin color is the one true object of pledged allegiance and determinant of professed patriotism.
Unregulated Capitalism and Christian Fervor: Report from the 9/12 Rally at the Capitol
Comparing Obama to Hitler and Al Qaeda, and claiming to be agents of God, protesters in Washington—supported by a coalition of conservative Christian groups, as well as pharmaceutical lobbyists—raise the bar on unreasonable discourse.
We Were Powerless: Addiction, the Will, and the Evangelical Roots of the Twelve Steps
For 200 years religion, medical science, and psychology have been involved in an intricate, shifting alliance in response to addiction. With recent studies calling core principles of AA into question—like the admission of powerlessness, for example—is AA still the best we’ve got for addressing addiction, or would a different theological model work better?
New Poll Shows Religious Right and Left Look Very Different
Those on the religious right and left not only diverge wildly on everything from abortion to torture, but in their composition and distribution as well.
Rebuilding the Wall of Separation: A Progressive Discussion on Church & State
Is it time for progressives, religious and nonreligious, to move toward a strategic acceptance of religious language in the public square? Or should efforts be focused on adding bricks to the wall of church/state separation?
“God” is Just Another Word: A Report From a Panel on the Role of Religious Speech in Government
Can government use religious language while remaining neutral in matters of religion? This question, and others, were addressed at a lively panel discussion at Netroots last month. Bruce Ledewitz reports on the event, and sets the stage for further conversation.
Heresy, Bad Taste, or Capitalist Adventure: Is it Still Pentecostalism?
In this chronicle of mutations within the Pentecostal movement, we learn to distinguish among the Prosperity Gospel, Word of Faith, and New Apostolic Movements—and we learn why it matters.
A Whiter Shade of Faith: Saturday’s Tax Protests and the Religion of Whiteness
Dick Armey mobilized his protest troops at the Capitol this weekend, and prompted this meditation from our columnist on the dangerous nostalgia for white dominance—then and now—that this anti-Obama movement calls forth.
Religion and Science: Toward a Postmodern Truce
The New Atheists, armed with swords and cudgels, are still doing old-fashioned battle with religion; but they haven't noticed that the skirmish may have passed them by. Are religion and science poised for a truce?
Presidential Pep Talks and the Religion of Fear: How did an Uncontroversial Speech Become a National Controversy?
The conservatives who were frightened by Obama’s speech to schoolchildren weren’t afraid he’d say something radical—quite the contrary—they were afraid that the president would sound moderate and human. The real question, why did they buy the fear? is impossible to answer without considering religion.
Not that Kind of Fundamentalist Memoir
Carlene Bauer lost her faith, but it wasn’t because she was raised on the far-right fringe of fundamentalist religion—it was more that she thought God deserved better than the clichés of modern evangelicalism.
The Arab, the Feds and the Flood: Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun Rescues America
A Muslim everyman paddles his canoe to the rescue of a drowned New Orleans, and gets, for his pains, locked up in a local version of Guantanamo. This novel—a chronicle of faith and romance, of crisis and conversion—demands not just reading, but recommending.
The Silence of Religious Voices in the Health Care Debates
The national conversation about health care has been about everything but care, or compassion, for those truly in need. Isn’t it simply wrong for religious leaders to sit this one out?
Mythmaking 101, or, Why We Believe in Death Panels
Forget what you learned about myth from Joseph Campbell—this death panel rumor is the real deal: values masquerading as truth, all in service of one heckuva group fantasy.
Sotomayor is Sworn in: Latina Wisdom Personified
The phrase “wise Latina” is a deep part of the experience of Hispanic culture, and connects Sotomayor with a tradition so connected to women’s wisdom that it is known as “abuelita” theology.
Sex Comes For the Archbishop: Rembert Weakland’s Unflinching Memoir
Rembert Weakland is a Catholic progressive, a Benedictine monk, and a former Archbishop. His new memoir tells the story of a career marked by good work, pastoral advocacy, and the public scandal of a gay love life.
Satanic or Silly: Does Yale Press Censorship of Cartoons Insult Muslims?
While the rioting over the Danish cartoons seems to be well behind us, Yale University Press recently removed the images from a new scholarly work on the topic. Do Muslim extremists need a scholarly book as pretext with two wars being fought in Muslim nations and an ongoing crisis in Gaza? The problem isn’t with these images, but with the ubiquitous Islamophobia in the United States.
‘Soul Murder’ in the American Workplace
As the media yawns at the latest unemployment numbers, our columnist seeks religious leadership on the taboo subject of our dysfunctional relationship to work. For even if the economy recovers and “full employment” returns, we will still be encountering a workplace that remains a site of utter terror in some instances and a site of routine abuse and low-grade anxiety in others.
Want to Love Your Neighbor? Pay Fair Wages
On this Labor Day, consider the results of a new report that reveals the pervasiveness of wage theft in the United States: from less-than-minimum wage pay to unpaid overtime to the refusal of meal breaks, many workers are being matter-of-factly robbed.