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Evangelical Islamophobia as American as Apple Pie

By Shalom Goldman

…es from a long historical tradition,” Kidd points out that even before the American Revolution Anglo-Americans were predisposed to hostility towards Muslims. Two elements were chiefly responsible for the hostility: the widespread notion that all Muslims had to be brought to Christianity and the rampant speculations about the End Time that saw Islam as the Antichrist. Humphrey Prideaux’s 1697 book The True Nature of Imposture Fully Displayed in the…

Can Atheists Simply Ignore Theology?

By Eric Reitan

…is, rather, a certain holistic interpretation of our experience, one that offers an account of the meaning and significance of the empirical world and the lives we lead within it. To believe in God is to understand the world of ordinary experience in terms of an interpretive worldview that posits the existence of “something more.” In this respect, belief in God is more like belief in metaphysical naturalism—by which I mean the doctrine that the e…

American Sin: Why Pope Francis’ Mercy is Not Our Mercy

By Kaya Oakes

…er of languages, economic classes, ethnicities and cultures represented in American Catholic churches, American Catholics resist singularity. And it follows that they are going to be inconsistent in how they define mercy, as the hierarchy of the American church is often wont to demonstrate. Even the variety of American “Mercy Doors” found online defies comparison to the huge, ornately carved bass doors Francis pushed open at St. Peter’s when he de…

Peter Beinart’s Controversial The Crisis of Zionism: Right Diagnosis, Wrong Treatment

By Shaul Magid

…ost in the roaring tide of history: the liberal humanistic Zionism from the 1940s through the 1960s, though it may be more a product of our post-countercultural imagination than a historical reality (e.g. Ben-Gurion cared little about the Arabs in Palestine). The Kibbutz movement and the Bund were great experiments but they’re gone and they’re not coming back. I agree that we should strive to reproduce the values they embraced, and salvage the rea…

State of the Union Stuck in that Olde-Time Semi-Niebuhrianism

By Ira Chernus

…. But he went further, making the newfound clamor for “civility” a mark of American exceptionalism: All American children share “the dreams of a little girl in Tucson”; all Americans believe that those dreams “deserve the chance to be fulfilled”; and that shared belief “sets us apart as a nation.” As commentators quickly dubbed the president’s optimistic, future-oriented SOTU rhetoric “Reaganesque,” I thought of Garry Wills’ clever term for The Gi…

Unmasking the “Veiled Prophet” Behind a 135-Year-Old St. Louis Tradition

By Spencer Dew

…ligion Project, one of the latest digital means of mapping (and remapping) American Christianities and American religions more broadly. Run by St. Louis University professor Rachel McBride Lindsey, a scholar of religion and visual culture and author of the recently released A Communion of Shadows: Religion and Photography in Nineteenth-Century America, the Arch City Religion Project is a teaching project focused not only on making information (lik…

Playing Hooky: Will Boycott of Catholic Church Spur Reform?

By Nathan Schneider

…l that divides us, whatever it is. The bread and wine we use is materially cheap and unsatisfying; what we experience in them is supposed to come from a wealth beyond. In the presence of God, and among people of different races, classes, and opinions, the mass should nourish us in our common humanity. So whom exactly is one harming by boycotting, by staying home in solitary prayer? The earthly Church might miss your money in the collection—that’s…

The Moral Bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Asceticism

By Vlad Chituc

…d with $1.74½ worth of rice.) Rhinehart does similar accounting: $150 for a 100W solar panel; $65 for lead acid battery that holds 12V; etcetera. Everything considered, Rhinehart claims to have spent $1,450 on a rig that leaves him completely self-sufficient. But Rhinehart isn’t self-sufficient in the same way Thoreau was. Thoreau planted his own food, made his own clothes, and built his own house. Rhinehart outsources. He doesn’t have a car becau…

SoulCycle Looks to Sell its Soul

By Michael Schulson

…economic returns” and “strong Free Cash Flows” that investors crave? After 148 pages I’m still not sure. These two businesses may not be mutually exclusive, but if, as the IPO filing claims, “we believe SoulCycle is more than a business, it’s a movement,” then that movement offers some strange dynamics. On the one hand, it speaks in the frankly universalistic terms of self-improvement, spiritual community, and personal growth: “We do not have a t…

Some Thoughts on Richard Dawkins’ Terrible Tweet

By Haroon Moghul

…the only source of power and patronage. Thus freed—for a multipolar world offers more options—what will Muslims in the Muslim world spend their energies on? What will American and other Muslims contribute to their societies, their communities, and of course the planet at large? Do I pursue a career that makes me more money, or leaves the planet a better place? Do I use what I know about Islam to fight back against its misuse and at the same time…