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Newsweek’s Strange Faces of the Christian Right List

By Sarah Posner

…changing and growing more diffuse, even as it remains a potent force in American politics.” While some of the picks seem obvious (Marjorie Dannenfelser of the anti-choice group Susan B. Anthony List, or Jim Daly, the new head of Focus on the Family, or Robert George mastermind of the Manhattan Declaration) legal scholar Melissa Rogers is most decidedly not a member of the Christian right. Rogers, who has worked for the pro-church-state-separation…

American Christianity Is Changing Fast: Five Stories to Watch in 2016

By Richard Flory

…llenging traditional Church leaders as legitimate representatives of the African American community. Will new cleavages appear within evangelicalism (or deepen within the Black Church), pitting these factions against each other? Or, will those groups that are not invested in either the evangelical industrial complex, or remaining culture war issues like LGBT rights, move to create alternative institutions that better serve their needs? 3. The Fran…

Orthodox Jews Begin to Reckon with Sexual Abuse

By Paul Berger

…the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union, co-sponsored America’s first National Jewish Child Abuse Prevention Week. There’s nothing to suggest that sexual abuse is any more or less prevalent in the Orthodox community than anywhere else; but there are a number of peculiarities to Orthodox Jewish life that have made the reporting of abuse less common than in society at large. “I think the subject of abuse is probably the same in any…

Bush Has Helped the Scarecrow of American Religion

By Hussein Rashid

…nce. However, we know both of these traditions are too foreign for most Americans, despite the fact that Jesus was Jewish and Morocco was one of the first countries to recognize American independence. No, the sophistication of language I refer to is the one of nuance. The curse that has plagued the coverage of Islam since the Iranian Revolution, that it is one monolithic religion, is really the plague on religion coverage in general. Over these la…

When Corporations are “Persons” Under the Law: The Real Problem With Health Care

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…were more mundane and predictable: Section Two redefined how we distribute numbers of representatives state-by-state, by “counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed”; and Section Three excluded from future service any member of the government who had previously sworn an oath of office to the State and then joined the Confederacy in open rebellion. Predictable stuff, really. After winning the War, Washington int…

Obstacles for Secularists

By Sarah Posner

…t for the Guardian. Waldman observes: But it won’t be easy for secular Americans to become better organized as a political force, even as they increase in number. The major impediment to that kind of organization is the fact that it is very difficult for secularists to conceive of themselves in tribal terms. Most tribes, whether of nations or ethnicities or sports fandom, can easily demarcate their membership—it’s the people who look like us, or…

The Sacred and the Dead: Truckin’ as a New American Pilgrimage

By Varun Soni

…rateful Dead 50 years ago, especially in terms of the dramatic rise of the number of Americans who are no longer affiliated with traditional religious institutions or denominations. In the absence of traditional religious affiliation, people are increasingly turning to popular culture to explore and interrogate the ultimate questions of meaning and purpose in their lives. That is why in the United States, there is now a Church of Elvis Presley and…

Dispatch from Charlottesville: “It Was a War Zone. It Felt Like There Were a Million Nazis.”

By Sunnivie Brydum

…cipation Park, where the rally was being held, police were inside those barricades. And demonstrators were outside the barricades, presumably? That’s right. Demonstrators, nazis, counter-protestors, were in the streets. And here’s the deal: it looked like a fucking Roman games scenario. These people were just beating each other to a pulp until someone fell to the ground. So when antifa [anti-fascist] and other counter-protestors encountered nazis,…

Missing the Anger for the Shoes

By Hussein Rashid

…feces smeared all over their floors and carpets, although I’m sure a great number of non-Muslims appreciate these artifacts from guests’ shoes. As mentioned previously, shoes are also used to discipline people. Belt-whuppins are difficult when men’s traditional garb does not include belts. Shoes/slippers/etc. are far more common. They are used to help “enlighten” insouciant, arrogant, oblivious, destructive, or otherwise socially maladjusted indiv…

The New Age Fantasy of a Celtic Church that Revered Nature and the Divine Feminine Never Existed — So What?

By Ed Simon

…han reality. Today, the idealization of Celtic Christianity endures in any number of manifestations, from a community like Iona to the shelves of New Age bookstores. Bradley argues that although the idea of a historical Celtic Church may be an exercise in “wishful thinking, romantic nostalgia and the projection of all kinds of dreams about what should and might be,” it’s also a “vehicle through which people have chased their dreams… of deeper spir…