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Israel Claims Holy Sites, Reignites Religious Flashpoint

By Orly Halpern

…and Muslims are not welcome. As an occupying power, Israel is required by international law to preserve the status quo and to act for the benefit of the local civilian population. But Israel claimed security reasons for its Jewish-only access. “These are Muslim holy sites,” explained Sheikh Taysir Tamimi, head of the Palestinian Shari’a Islamic courts. Tamimi remembers praying in the Bilal Mosque as a child before the Israeli occupation. Today he…

‘Christian Warriors’: Who Are The Hutaree Militia And Where Did They Come From?

By Chip Berlet

…they hope to see the Second Coming of Jesus Christ in their lifetime. The numbers vary over time and due to the ways questions are structured. It is clear, however, that more people are excited by this type of apocalyptic belief than can be explained by counting the actual parishoners sitting in the pews in fundamentalist churches. Most of these folks, however, are not considering actual criminal acts or violence. Brenda E. Brasher notes that apo…

American Nuns Under the Vatican Microscope

By Mary E. Hunt

…civil disobedience and goes to jail to help stop war or nuclear weapons. A number of the questions are clearly designed to elicit answers the Vatican knows full well it won’t like. The data will provide the pretext for concluding that the decline in numbers in progressive groups is a result of their lack of obedience and conformity to the men’s rules. Solution: tighten up the ranks. Enter the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, the alte…

God Grows Up: Robert Wright’s Evolution of God

By Robert Wright

…away with these things in the first place when you live with a very small number of people. 2) That ancient Israel was monotheistic from the get-go. I don’t think monotheism emerged until the Babylonian exile of the 6th century BCE—nearly half a millennium after King David and way, way after Moses and Abraham supposedly signed on to monotheism. 3) That Jesus said “Love your enemy” and espoused universal love. I think the emphasis on a love that c…

The Faith-Based Militia: When is Terrorism ‘Christian’?

By Frederick Clarkson

…s accounts. And while the sentencing was massively covered by national and international media, it would have been fair to describe Roeder as a “Christian terrorist,” though the media didn’t go there; he was described neither as a Christian nor as a terrorist in any of the news or broadcast accounts I could find. In the ’90s, other terms were used to describe what we might now call Christian militias. The most famous militia group at the time, The…

The Sacramental American Day of Thanks

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ncoln) and its sacred shrines (cemeteries at Gettysburg and Arlington, any number of memorials on the Washington Mall, and more recently, Oklahoma City, the Pentagon and Ground Zero in New York). Perhaps most important, the US civil religion boasts its own calendar of “secular” holidays. These days, actually constituting a quasi-sacred calendar, span the entire calendar year: New Year’s Day, the King Holiday, President’s Day, Memorial Day, the Fou…

Martin Luther & the Mass Media

By Svend White

…nailed to a church door in Wittenberg in 1517) from a local dispute to an international cause celebre was the involvement of the printing press that had been invented a half century earlier. To say that Luther’s cause was helped by this new media is to almost lie by understatement, as the singularly wide distribution of his tracts utterly changed the terms of debate and put the religious establishment of his day on the popular defensive for perha…

King as Inspiration, Not Guide

By William D. Hart

…Thus they exaggerate racism as an explanation and minimize a domestic and international division of labor that creates winners and losers across racial lines. Thus they are tempted to address these complexities, as Reverend Wright did, as if nothing has changed since Montgomery in 1955 and Birmingham in 1963. But things have changed and are more complicated now. For these reasons, King may be our inspiration, but he cannot be our guide. The King-…

RDBook: Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa

By Luke Ssemakula

…it distracts them from their true pursuit, salvation. The others who lack international connections are reluctant to advocate political reform because they have nowhere to turn for help in case of state persecution; some of these welcome the patronage of politicians. Others still refuse to buy into the dualism of sacred versus secular, preferring instead to see God as fully invested in humanity’s full experience—these consider democracy an arena…

Purpose Driven Politics: Rick Warren’s Civil Service

By Bill Berkowitz

…ose Driven Network Summit organized, “to create The PEACE Coalition, a new international alliance of churches, businesses, ministries, universities, and other institutions.” P.E.A.C.E. is an acronym for: Promote reconciliation; Equip servant leaders; Assist the poor; Care for the sick; and Educate the next generation. “For the past four years, thousands of members of Saddleback Church have been testing prototypes of the P.E.A.C.E. Plan around the…