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Dilemmas of American Empire: Can Obama Pull Off a Game-Changer in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan?

By Gary Dorrien

…(in the midst of an already ferocious insurgent war) in Iraq produced huge numbers of weekly attacks and casualties, averaging 2,000 attacks per month. The numbers then dropped dramatically as ethnic cleansing was completed in many areas, the “surge” of U.S. forces restricted the flow of explosives into Baghdad, the Mahdi Army suspended its attacks, and the U.S. co-opted Sunni insurgents. But violence has spiked again recently; it’s a perilous bus…

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…

RDBook: Whither the Religious Left?

By Bill Berkowitz

…ve religion and politics, and he has been interviewed by many national and international media including CBS Evening News, ABC’s 20/20, the BBC (radio and television), and the Voice of America. Through a series of e-mail exchanges, we discussed the current state of the Religious Right, the growing influence and media presence of Pastor Rick Warren, efforts made by the Obama campaign to court evangelicals, and how an authentic Religious Left can wi…

Will Women Priests Change the Church?

By Mary E. Hunt

…re. The Origins of the Fight for Women’s Equality in the Church St. Joan’s International Alliance, a suffrage group founded in London in 1911, was the first to raise the ordination question. According to Belgian writer Anne Marie Pelzer, the Alliance put to the Holy Father its first official request for women to become deacons (1961), then for lay men and women to be present at the Council, as observers and experts (1962). In 1963, it presented a…

RD News Round-Up—September 29, 2008

By Bill Berkowitz

…ulation. In 2006 Dobson even head-butted Cizik in the press for supporting international regulations of emissions, calling his views ‘anti-capitalistic and [having] an underlying hatred for America.’ And who will Cizik be voting for come November 4? Unclear. Obama doesn’t have the experience all of us would like. I’m not in Washington to be an advocate for the Republican or the Democratic Party; that’s not my calling. I’m not an ideologue. I do wi…