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“Hey You! Anti-Semite!”: A Jewish Krewe does Mardi Gras

By Barbra Barnett

…g and debauchery, but the parade tradition is about more than drunken tourists and cheap plastic beads. New Orleans’ Mardi Gras parades began in 1857, with the Mistick Krewe of Comus, a secret society that wanted to emulate the Mardi Gras parades of Mobile, Alabama. From the start, Mardi Gras krewes were exclusive, elite clubs. Such organizations can be important networking opportunities in a small community like New Orleans, where people are used…

With Methodist LGBTQ Vote and GOP Support for Trump, White Protestantism Has Hit Bottom

By Peter Laarman

…reason and common sense, only the American Baptists* and the United Methodists still take the view that committed gay relationships are unacceptable. It is surely no coincidence that both of these bodies have a straight white man problem: too much power in the hands of straight men who aren’t especially interested in the rule of reason and whose reading of Scripture is cramped, at best. Seen in this context, it’s a cheap dodge for liberals within…

An Open Letter to Black Clergy on the Disdain for Protest

By Rev. Osagyefo Sekou

…egy is based on the belief that our churches support black resistance against state violence. Even the most hardened young black activists mourned the bloodshed in a holy space that serves to help and hold an often-broken people. As an ordained clergyperson nurtured in the bosom of the black church, I am all too familiar with the way in which we tend to spiritualize the material suffering of black people. Sermons and sonnets saturated with grace o…

Can a Greek Monastery Be Ground Zero of Global Financial Meltdown?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…chools operate with surprising inefficiency, with students scoring the lowest numbers in Europe despite having four times as many teachers as Europe’s highest ranked system, in Finland. There are there separate government owned defense corporations. As for Greek health care, it is unclear whether waste or outright theft by state employees is the greater drain on a hopelessly overburdened system. And then there are the pensions: all men who work i…

Exclusive: Columnist Jonathan Merritt on his Sudden Departure From Religion News Service

By Kaya Oakes

…nto argument. Half an hour later, MacDonald emailed Merritt a “numerated list of questions” about Merritt’s journalistic ethics—have you ever been paid by a publisher for coverage of a book, etc—which Merritt told him was upsetting. Merritt answered no to all the questions and sent MacDonald questions of his own for several days without receiving a reply. Then, on Thursday June 28th, he finally received “a note saying you’ve been terminated, effec…

Spiritual McCarthyism and the Catholic Vote

By Bill Berkowitz

…e Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, publishing magnate Stephen Strang, Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the 15 million-member National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, and mega church pastor Bishop T.D. Jakes. And, the Obama campaign has bigger plans. According to a Religion News Service report, Team Obama “is also launching a grassroots effort, tentatively called Joshua Generation, with plans to hold concerts and h…

The Pope in My Pocket; We Are All Dilettantes Now

By Michael A. Elliott

…or sell for under two dollars). And unlike the internet, the space of the iPhone feels not just private, but personal. Yes, the iPhone might be my means of connection with the world—it is, after all, a phone—but it is also my own little password-locked garden that I carry with me wherever I go. Moreover, I can remake the landscape with a few flicks of my fingers whenever I choose. As a result, the territory necessarily mixes the sacred and the pro…

Behind a Recent Stunt in Idaho Lies a Dangerous Theocratic Movement

By Chrissy Stroop

…t—or between the godly and the godless—or between the libertarians and the statists—or between the individualists and the collectivists.” (This “American Redoubt” just happens to overlap quite neatly with the decades-old neo-nazi separatist project known as the “Northwest Territorial Imperative.”) Not coincidentally, at the June 23 session, Scott stated, “I truly believe a civil war is coming if we do not put an end to what we are seeing.” Meanwhi…

Google’s Benevolent Interfaith Big Tent

By Lucia Hulsether

…aring the story, she returns home, opens Google India, and tracks down the phone number for the sweet shop her grandfather mentioned. Within seconds, she has called the store on her smart phone, and Yusuf’s grandson—who answers—has likewise opened Google to research visas for a reunion too long denied. We can understand the implications of this storyline by putting it into conversation with its longer historical context. The logic of the plot—that…

Gay Marriage Supporters Rally People of Faith for Washington’s November Vote

By Nicole Neroulias

…s Christ of Latter-day Saints gatherings because they feel rejected by its stance against homosexuality. But that can’t be what a loving God wants, Holley believes. And as a Mormon, he’s particularly adept at assuring voters that gay marriage won’t lead to polygamy. A few phones over, Howard Heller, 58, of Burien, enthusiastically told voters about his own “selfish” reason for wanting R-74 approved: so that he may legally wed Carla Robinson, whose…