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Kill Your Patriarchs: An Interview with Michael Muhammad Knight

By Hussein Rashid

…ne else). The flexibility in these terms makes the statement sound like a truism: one who follows does not think; one who thinks does not follow. However, the reality is very different and the passage is in fact a very erudite criticism of superficial understandings of the faith. There is also an undercurrent of Shi’ah-Sunni misunderstandings present in this statement, and throughout much of MMK’s work. In his autobiography, Impossible Man, we lea…

The Revolution Will Be Whispered: An Excerpt From Everywhere a Guest, Nowhere at Home: A New Vision of Israel and Palestine

By Kim Chernin

…r orchards and how the small children ran out every morning to see if the fruit was ripe. When she was little, grandmother could recognize from a distance the ripest fruit and get there first before anyone could stop her. She remembers the names of all her neighbors, of every person in the village and where they lived and how far the apple trees were from the houses. From this, the Israeli girl has decided that in their new world, people will buil…

‘Centrist’ Advocates of ‘Common Ground’ Endorse Abortion Restrictions in Health Care Bill

By Sarah Posner

…of the other Casey amendment endorsers — including Sider and Christianity Today’s editor David Neff, both recently endorsed the Manhattan Declaration, which asserts that reproductive rights are inimical to religious liberty. That “liberty” obviously requires, for them, legislation that restricts other people’s rights to supposedly preserve theirs. At the unveiling of the Manhattan Declaration last month, Sider told me, “I think that the evangelic…

The Abandoned Orphanage: Hillary Clinton’s Mother Teresa Moment

By Jeff Sharlet and Kathryn Joyce

…t behind that curtain and we sat on folding chairs, and I remember being struck by how small she was and how powerful her hands were, despite her size, and that she was wearing sandals in February in Washington. (Laughter.) We began to talk, and she told me that she knew that we had a shared conviction about adoption being vastly better as a choice for unplanned or unwanted babies. And she asked me—or more properly, she directed me—to work with he…

Religious Groups Counter Evangelical Opposition To Equality In Immigration Reform

By Sarah Posner

…about abortion and same sex marriage! — are embracing a bigger agenda and breaking ranks with Republicans by endorsing comprehensive immigration reform. But as I reported on Monday, that support comes with a caveat: no equality for gay and lesbian couples. Now religious groups who support LGBT equality have pushed back, issuing a statement through the group Immigration Equality Action Fund condemning evangelical efforts to exclude the Uniting Ame…

Glenn Beck’s Political Theology

By Daniel Schultz

…d amens.) It’s that opposition to change, the fundamental inability (or refusal) to conceive of a world that is meaningfully different than the one we presently exist in, that marks the Tea Party theology, notwithstanding all the far-right religious “celebrities” Beck put on stage over the weekend. Ignore all the bouncing balls, what you need to know about the Tea Party faith is that it’s in an unchanging, overwhelmingly powerful God. It’s also in…

The Heresies of Christopher Hitchens

By Austin Dacey

…istake of saying, in effect, that while what Susan had said may be partly true or even plain true, she would still have been much better advised not to say it. I think she herself may have feared that she was somehow “objectively” helping Ronald Reagan. But whether her mind changed her, or she changed her mind, she manifested the older truth that all riveters of the mind-forged manacles most fear, and that I here repeat: One cannot be just a littl…

The “Royal Consciousness,” “Confidence Fairies,” and Economic Catastrophe

By Daniel Schultz

…y to order and reorder the situation without adaptation to the new reality breaking in all around. Brueggemann understands this a kind of despair, as with the Israelite kings unable to understand that their fiefdoms were lost, and exile in Babylon was just around the corner. Only when the depth of loss is accepted and internalized can the people be freed to reach out to the new beginnings made possible by what has ended. Prophets, according to Bru…

The End of the Religious Right? Not So Fast

By Frederick Clarkson

…ssues—apparently without consulting those whom he expected to join in the truce. They declared that such a truce is the equivalent of “surrender.” Daniels, a possible 2012 GOP presidential contender, backed right off. Rob Boston, who has written about the religious right for two decades concluded that “Daniels’ quick retreat” indicates “that the religious right has lost none of its political punch.” Politicians and their vassals understandably wis…

Why Taxing the Rich is the Godly Thing

By Peter Laarman

…riety is exactly what we need. There was and is, after all, an element of drunken irresponsibility involved in letting US millionaires sidestep realistic taxation during a time when we’ve been fighting two major wars and watching the economy and basic public services tank. I cannot help observing in this regard that the biblical prophets often used the imagery of drunkenness to evoke a society that oppresses its poorest while the wealthy bask in e…