Does the Institute for Religion and Democracy oppose freedom of conscience for service members?
Sacred Real Estate: What Makes Washington’s WWII Memorial So Dreadful?
What does it mean that the World War II Memorial in DC drowns conversation in the roar of its fountains? A new book explains what our monuments reveal about the intertwining of sacred and patriotic in American civic culture.
Monks With Guns: Discovering Buddhist Violence
The co-editor of a new book on the history of Buddhist violence and warfare explains how the notion of a purely mystical and otherworldly Buddhism—promoted by some of the great interpreters of the tradition—denies its adherents’ humanity.
Oppose Afghanistan But Not a Pacifist? Tough.
While Obama used his Nobel Peace Prize speech to legitimize Afghanistan using just war principles, soldiers are currently unable to invoke these principles in refusing to serve. When we punish soldiers who heed their moral compasses, we deny them religious freedom, and our democracy is threatened. It’s time to allow those who oppose the war on ethical grounds the option of ‘Selective Conscientious Objection.’
Leaving Empire: The Risks of American Insularity
Travel imparts one with the indelible impression that something is out there. That something may not be the existence of God, but it is certainly the existence of the rest of the world. Plus, it’s harder to kill those you’ve met.
I would hope that as thousands of my fellow GLBTQ citizens celebrate this day for which they have so long worked, and so hard, that they not lose sight of the cost which has come with it.
Escalating Afghanistan: What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy?
Don’t the clergy have a duty to challenge the march of folly in Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Nothing like dropping in a lot of trigger-happy hired guns to win hearts and minds, right?
Does War Make Sense? Science and Religion on the Battlefield
From thermodynamic war, to cybernetic battle, to the emergence of the “chaoplexic,” a new book by Antoine Bousquet explains what war means in the modern era.
Dilemmas of American Empire: Can Obama Pull Off a Game-Changer in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan?
For Obama to steer us back to the softer side of Empire, withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan (and negotiating with Iran), he’ll have to overrule his key officials, Hillary Clinton and Dennis Ross, risk alienating Israel for its own good, and stand up to bracing public attacks. And he'll need a hand from a strong, anti-imperial religious and secular peace movement.
It’s Hard to be a Jew
A scholar of nonviolence shares his struggle with Jewish identity during a time of escalating conflict and violence in Israel.
We simply took a page from the Israeli anti-terror playbook (“hit them ten times as hard as they hit you”), and we now live in a world as permanently destabilized as the world most Israelis so grimly inhabit.
Sacred&Profane: American Martyrdom
America has defined itself through identification of evil enemies and shared grief for heroes who die fighting them...
The words of our top general in Iraq—words I’ve described as myths—are those that the president says will determine his war policy.