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Is There Anyone in the Press Who Can Recognize the Bad Faith in Evangelical Faith?

By John Stoehr

…im was right, because they are. When White evangelical Protestants “find a way forward,” it’s not because they’re wrestling with hardship, controversy, whatever. The decision has been made. “Finding a way” is finding justification. Yeah, sure, they vote according to the demands of their faith—bad faith. [Not to be confused with “fake” faith.] Perhaps the worst offenders are secular liberal intellectuals possessing no conception of the bad faith un…

How Robert Bellah (1927-2013) Changed the Study of Religion

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…fied its immediate material needs and can imagine, or act out, alternative ways of being. My guess is that this understanding of religion will eventually have a profound effect on the way that religious scholars conceive of their subject matter, and how to go about studying it in its physical as well as literary expressions. Finally, Bellah’s last book has made a lasting contribution to our understanding of religion as a global phenomenon. As I sa…

How “Gratitude” Underwrites Inequality, Power and Exclusion

By Eric C. Miller

…rce and starts to insulate the status quo. Gratitude operates in a similar way, with similar potentials. When we find ourselves in a position of owing—and people in a democratic society always owe something to other people—we may become vulnerable to control. Certain Roman figures, like Cicero and Seneca, recognized the power of gratitude to maintain social stability. Cicero argued that, when we accept a gift from someone else, we enter into a con…

How Israeli Military Intelligence Cooks the Books

By Richard Silverstein

…written doctrine, which had helped deepen the mistaken conception. In this way, one initial assumption based on quicksand gives rise to a concatenating series of mistaken judgments. Each judgment leads to one of greater import and severity. Before long, you have an entire national policy based on a tissue of lies. Lavie notes that Israel’s initial “no partner” argument not only justified a pre-conceived policy the political leaders wished to adopt…

Hajj Journal: The Journey Begins and Ends

By Amina Wadud

…her than to try in Arabic, is that it marks me as ‘other,’ but in a useful way. Plus, people like to use their English because it also marks them in that situation. I find someone who speaks English and takes my receipt, then walks away. And this leads to the same question, where am I from? But he takes passport receipt and walks into the room. I start to feel hopeful, but after a few minutes he returns and says, not yet. You have to wait. Still,…

Nuns on the Bus: 2700 Miles, Nine States, and a Rock Star DC Welcome

By Mary E. Hunt

…t just grace, as Simone Campbell put it so bluntly, but money. There is no way to justify cutting programs for those who are poor without at the same time expecting that people who are wealthy will pay more than the current tax structures dictate. Messengers like the nuns, who say that without apology, are not naïve. Their rock-star days are numbered; their work is cut out for them. At the 200th anniversary celebration of the Loretto Community thi…

By The Way: Gay Marriage in Iowa, not California?

By Randall Balmer

…eenth Amendment. I’m no expert on the law (not by any means), but it has always seemed to me that the denial of civil rights to gays and lesbians violated the equal-protection provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. Whenever I raised the issue with those who know more about the law than I (which is to say, almost everyone), I got long, convoluted answers, the gist of which seemed to be that I had no earthly idea what I was talking about. Now it ap…

‘Hey Jesus, Do You Love Me the Same?’: Out Christian Rock Star Trey Pearson on Closeted Industry Figures, His Evolving Faith, and Brand New Video

By Chrissy Stroop

…of that went down, I thought to myself that I had seen this movie before, way too many times with people who aren’t famous but handle it the exact same way. It needs to be called out because what these churches really believe is marginalizing. These churches silence LGBTQ voices, and I will do everything I can to expose the toxicity of those beliefs and to work for them to change. What are you working on now, and what are the causes and goals you…

Buddha-Mind, American Style

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…roversies, where it does not belong. The car stuck in traffic is not in my way; I simply perceive it that way. This person who is so aggravating, at school, in the supermarket, in the casual street-corner encounter, this person is not someone offering frustrating resistance to me and my plans; this is a person, a person in his or her own right, one whose needs and value and personhood equal, where they do not exceed, my own. Mr. Breuning was asked…

Arguing Liberally: Rift in Religious Coalitions Goes Public

By Mark Silk

…ncern, but they wanted to know why the press wasn’t interested in them the way it was in the religious right. The answer, I said, was that the religious right had an army and a ground game for rounding up votes—which they did not. The RIC represents a range of efforts, some more overtly political and some less, designed to advance the common cause. These range from the “culture program” of the secular think tank, Third Way, to the Matthew 25 Proje…