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Are American Christians “Persecuted”?

By Eric C. Miller

…ent rhetorical resource, and since it is also a central theme of the Christian tradition, Christian complaints about systematic marginalization tend to blend quite seamlessly into a broader narrative of persecution. As a practical matter, I’m not sure where one ends and the other begins. For Dreher, then, the explicit disavowal of the word “persecution” may be insufficient to overcome the impression of it in his writing, especially since this has…

Celebrate Jesus with Weird Merchandise!

By Gwynne Watkins

…to define Easter by marshmallow chicks and colorful baskets, rather than bring theology into it. But there are always exceptions. One is the Oriental Trading Company. Founded to create cheap plastic toys for carnivals, OTC is now a leading supplier of cheap plastic stuff for church groups and Christian schools. Their party supply catalog always contains a small section dedicated to Jesus merchandise, which results in some odd juxtapositions. Here…

How Not to Support Obamacare

By Peter Laarman

…ttle-discussed provision of the ACA, hospitals that serve disproportionate numbers of the urban poor are losing their subsidies. But for Obama not to stand his ground and say that the cheap, low-level policies that many healthy people now have should be cancelled for the sake of the common good: that’s just inexcusable. On the other hand, he’s not getting a lot of help from his Democratic “friends” on this one, and for the same reason: They likewi…

Why I Wrote the Freedom Seder And Why It’s Still Necessary 50 Years After Dr. King’s Assassination

By Arthur Waskow

…reedom Seder in the basement of a Black church in Washington DC, with about 800 people, Jews and Christians, Black and white. It was not only my engagement with the Jewish text, with all the Jewish texts, that “rewrote” me. It was also my engagement with other Jews who were rewriting themselves, my engagement with communities that came together in the very process of wrestling with these texts. For indeed, it turned out that others were entering t…

A Muslim Reflects on Christian Theologian (and UCLA Coach) John Wooden

By Amir Hussain

…dence to convict me.” Many of us have grown tired of the hypocrisy of self-described “Christian athletes” who can glibly quote Bible verses but can’t manage to live by them. Coach, as always, was different. We both agreed that Abraham Lincoln was the greatest American, but he said that the greatest person of his generation was Mother Teresa. Like her, he lived out his Christianity in service to others. In 2005, I moved from a secular religious stu…

Too Hot for Shul: Rabbis Seek Healthy Israel Dialogue After Gaza

By Sarah Posner

…to undermine both Kleinbaum and Brous. After reading the names of Palestinian civilians killed in this summer’s Gaza war, which led to the loss of one board member and a handful of congregants, Kleinbaum’s board stepped in to defend her against a “misleading” article, published in Tablet, that “misrepresents both CBST’s position on Israel and the tone of community within the congregation.” For Brous, the criticism came after she was critical of w…

Teaching Love: Soulforce Takes it to the Quad

By Nick Street

…in entrance to Central Baptist College in Conway, Arkansas. The group includes a local lesbian couple who have been together for 35 years, a young African-American trans-man who came out of the closet a week before he graduated from another Southern Baptist college in Missouri, and a 22-year-old aspiring minister from Philadelphia who quotes Proverbs, declares his love for God—and laments the recent breakup of his relationship with a boyfriend. Th…

Pentecostal Prayer Gangs: New Film Documents Religion in a Brazilian Prison

By Nick Street

…in Rio said, oh they’re just doing that to look good in front of you. A Brazilian professor remarked that she thought the inmates were just being bonzinhos (“goody-goodies”) because I was an American sociologist. But she had never been in prison. People make a lot of assumptions about prisoners’ faith that just aren’t accurate. What were the key things that the skeptics weren’t getting? Pentecostalism in Rio’s prisons had a gang flavor to it. Chu…

Why Crux‘s Knights of Columbus “Partnership” is Problematic

By Kaya Oakes

…n analysis of the murder of a Congolese priest again focuses on anti-Christian attitudes and calls for a “new concept of martyrdom.” The focus of the site seems to be moving more toward being about Pope Francis and anti-Christian terrorism abroad, and less about the American church and the laity. Where Crux will go from here is unknown, but its demise as a project of secular journalism about the church, and its move toward being supported, at leas…

Hajj Journal: M & M

By Amina Wadud

…though this, the men would hover around the tent entries, send notes, make phone calls, actually get their phone cords recharged, and send food and drink through every possible opening in the tent. As far as I could tell, it was always the men hanging around our tent and not the women hanging around the men’s tent. Pretty funny if you think about it. They were like lost puppies without their women. Yet patriarchy would have us think they are the m…