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When ‘Church Business’ Yields a Real Page Turner

By Peter Laarman

…xologist who’s always been close to Belinda; and—last but by no means not least—Jennie, a feisty part-Japanese granddaughter of a wealthy church couple who basically purchased Jennie’s participation in the search by making a large special gift just as the congregation’s president was starting to float names for the committee. You can easily guess at least part of what ensues when the search committee gets going. Despite a year of careful preparati…

Americans Lose Faith, Sinning with Transfats, the Elusive God Particle

By Michael J. Altman

This week’s earthquake along the East Coast damaged the National Cathedral in Washington DC. Church attendance is dropping faster among those who don’t have college degrees. Meanwhile, Duke sociologist Mark Chaves finds that Americans are losing faith in their religious leaders. When it comes to baptisms, some are dunkers and some are drunkers. A Sacramento priest showed up to an infant baptism too inebriated to sprinkle the kids. The priest has…

Four Reasons Why Egypt’s Revolution Is Islamic

By Zaid Hassan

…sm.” As events unfold like a collapsing dam in North Africa and the Middle East, the questions flow. What is the nature of the revolution in Egypt? By extension, what do changes taking place in the Muslim world mean? What do they mean for the US? What does this mean for the West? Are we witnessing an Islamic Revolution? Is this Iran in 1979 all over again? Is Obama the new Carter? Should we be afraid? The underlying reasons behind US hesitation in…

Muhammad and the Blind Man: A Lesson in Sensitivity

By Amjad Mahmood Khan

…his eyes set on a 5-acre parcel of land that lay in dairy country 30 miles east of Los Angeles. His mission — to obtain city and county approval for a new mosque in Chino. Week after week, public hearing after public hearing — my father would round up the family in the station wagon and rehearse his “talking points” for the public during the long drives up north. I remember sitting by his side in the school auditoriums as he prepared to take the p…

Talking Prop. 8: Of Rites and Rights

By Peter Laarman

…senior pastor of Hope Christian Church in Bellville Maryland, (yes, on the East Coast) and a figure on the religious right scene, weighs in from the black church pulpit on the other side of the country to express his outrage about “the implicit comparison Judge Walker Vaughn made between racism and opposition to same-sex marriage is particularly offensive to me and all who remember the reality of Jim Crow.” Please. Here’s the problem: long before…

Obama’s Muslim Strategy 2.0

By Haroon Moghul

…ratic perception. Demographics aren’t the perfect determinant, but they’re better than any other determinant we have. The most important consequence? Because America has Muslims, America is a Muslim-minority nation. That means America is as much a part of a global Muslim conversation as any other society. But that’s not the greatest change Obama has indicated. Through the president’s strategy, America has given herself the right to participate in…

Jewish Past/Israeli Future: A Review of The Invention of the Jewish People

By Shalom Goldman

…Semites, then what justification is there for a Jewish state in the Middle East? By attempting to demonstrate the Khazar origins of Eastern European Jewry, Mr. Sand—a self-described post-Zionist who believes that Israel needs to shed its Jewish identity to become a democracy—aims to undermine the idea of a Jewish state. Remarkably, the New York Times published an article titled “Book Calls Jewish People an Invention” without mentioning the call fo…

Beyond Progressive Religion

By Ivan Petrella

…merica, “politicians need not always walk the religious walk, but they had better be able to talk the religious talk.” And that talk is Christian. We need to find, in the chasm between our makeup and our politics, a different way to think about religion, as well as a different way of being religious—for us and for the world. Obstacles: Progressive Christianity and New Atheism The Christian Right is an obvious obstacle to the emergence of a new way…

RDPulpit: Evangelical Manifesto, the “Chamomile Tea” of Theologies

By Daniel Schultz

…public discourse. They’ve overstated their case, is all. The choice is not between theocracy, French-style secularism, or something in the middle, but between prophetic particularism, bland universalism, or some third, as-yet-undefined model of civic engagement. What shape that debate takes may be less important than that there is a debate. Religious believers are less content than ever to check their beliefs at the door to the public square. So a…

The Children of Bellow and Roth: New Book of Short Fiction Takes On the Male Jewish Experience

By Stephanie Russell-Kraft

…A. and because he’s Jewish, people assume he has an interest in the Middle East, but he has no idea what’s going on. If you’re a member of a non-dominant cultural group it’s often assumed that you see your identity in a political way. I wasn’t overtly saying this, but the character gets forced into some sort of political role anyway. I was more interested in seeing him trapped in a situation through his own mistake. He’s just trying to get laid, a…