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The Incredible Shrinking Catholic Church
Benedict’s ecclesial acceptance of someone most thoughtful people wouldn't invite to a cocktail party showed a disregard of the sensibilities of his own flock.
Suspicion of the Modern Age: The Pope Regresses
Called to the carpet for the decision to reinstall controversial bishops, the Vatican has taken to doing what it does best: issuing public statements, coupled with obfuscation and outright denial.
Roll Over Lenin: Russian Church Elects New Patriarch
The new Patriarch is considered a modernist, but his support for freedom of religion is spotty, and Russia's fledgling gay rights movement will not find an ally in Kirill.
Found in Translation: How a Thirteenth-Century Islamic Poet Conquered America
The best-selling poet in America today was born in Afghanistan, practiced a form of Islam that originated in Iraq, and has been dead for 800 years. How did a white man from Tennessee, who doesn’t read a lick of Persian, make Rumi accessible to mainstream America?
Can Islam Save The Economy?
In the midst of a global financial crisis one sector has yet to suffer the fate of the rest. Islamic finance, or Sharia-compliant banking, offers strict moral guidelines for dealing with money. Trading debt and risky speculation are off-limits, as is investment in immoral enterprises like gambling, prostitution, and war profiteering. It might be time to get the muftis on the phone.
Virtual Islam: Peace, Love, and Some Understanding?
After spending a year exploring life in digital Islamic communities, a new project finds that people are building new narratives to find ways to coexist; their report even includes a policy recommendation for the Obama administration’s diplomacy efforts in the Middle East.
Nonviolence: Between Our Safety And Our Ideals
Nonviolent resistance movements were part of the 20th century’s eternal contribution to human history; can those ideals be sustained and reinvigorated for a new era?
RDPulpit: Israel, The Great Unmentionable
Christians should neither excoriate Israel nor remain silent in the face of horrendous attacks in Gaza and elsewhere. Rather, according to Rev. Laarman, American Christians must heed King and make the issue about US policy and the kind of nation we aspire to be.
The War On Terror Is Over
First of all, the phrase “war on terror” needs to be retired. As a war, it is largely imagined, and as an idea it is ill-conceived. The effect of thinking in terms of global war is to make enemies out of millions of Muslims who would otherwise have been our friends.
Why the Obama/Hillary Clinton Approach to Middle East Peace is Doomed to Failure
There is a method to the madness indicated by the incoming Obama Administration but what kind of solution would it be?
The Horror Mugabe Doesn’t Want the World to See
Bishop Desmond Tutu calls for the world to take action against the regime of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe and the Nobel Prize-winner has signed the preface to a harrowing new report from Physicians for Human Rights on the man-made situation that may, if ignored, match Rwanda.
The Holocaust is Over: Avraham Burg’s Israel and Jews as Victims
A recent book by an eminent Israeli has caused a sensation in Israel as it calls on Jews to move past the Holocaust, which has rendered them oblivious to the suffering of others. Though Burg is firmly rooted in the tradition of Israeli apostates, his thesis overlooks several critical phenomena.
Rest in Peace, Sam Huntington
He was a lifelong Democrat, and opposed to the Iraq war, but his theory of the “clash of civilizations” helped to support the neo-con notion of a war on terror.
RDPulpit: Israel in Gaza: Right but not Smart
Israel is still using a strategy of domination in its struggle with Hamas, trying to use force to gain security. But this is a recipe for endless war.
The Most Popular Stories of 2008
The numbers are in and you, the reader, have chosen your favorite RD stories of the year; from Rick Warren to AIPAC, Sarah Palin, Creationism 2.0 and the fabled “death” of the religious right.
The Sexual Threat to Fundamentalism
Why have homosexuality and gender-bending displaced Jews and anti-Semitism as the bogeymen of fundamentalists across the globe?
Obama’s Divisive Choice of Rick Warren
In his zeal to appeal to all, the president-elect chose a pastor to give the invocation at his inauguration who has compared gays to pedophiles and abortion to the Holocaust. Why did he do it?
The Shoe Thrower: What Bush Didn’t Understand
A young Iraqi woman, frustrated and in tears, explains to her classmates: “If Iraqi people come at you with shoes, you have lost their hearts and lost the war and God help us all.”
‘Jews Who Were Israelis’: Anti-Semitism and the Mumbai Chabad Center
Though Mumbai militants were instructed to kill “Jews who were Israelis,” few of the victims had any ties to Israel and at least one was an Ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist. Comprehending the conflicting notions of Jewishness is essential to understanding whether this was an act of anti-Semitism or not.
Evil has been a favorite foreign policy tool for conservatives in and around the Bush Administration; problem is, there are often unintended consequences.