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Free Yiddish Lessons, Vacation Liberty School, and Brangelina’s Universalism: The Week in Religion, Poetically

By Michael J. Altman

…ritique of atheists. But atheists in Lakeland, Florida don’t think opening City Commission meetings with prayer is a laughing matter. The Atheists of Florida has filed a suit against the city and the mayor in U.S. District Court. Meanwhile, the North Carolina House of Representatives is rethinking its own prayerful opening to sessions. If your kids don’t have a clear picture of America as a “Christian nation” you can send them to Vacation Liberty…

Euthanasia Billboards, Post-Rapture Pet Care, Can You Tell a Burqa from a Hijab?

By Michael J. Altman

…s. Sufis from Pakistan brought ancient devotional music to modern New York City. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus stands at the crossroads of Christianity, Islam, and Roman paganism. In Italy, the Catholic Church is advocating for the rights of immigrants—Muslim immigrants at that. Do Rastafarians and Quakers have something in common? A Hindu temple in Chicago inaugurated the Swami Vivekananda Spiritual Center this past weekend. The space will be us…

Abe Foxman’s “Irrational Or Bigoted” Positions

By Daniel Schultz

…proposed Islamic center to be built near the Ground Zero site in New York City: An influential Jewish organization on Friday announced its opposition to a proposed Islamic center and mosque two blocks north of ground zero in Lower Manhattan, intensifying a fierce national debate about the limits of religious freedom and the meaning of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The decision by the group, the Anti-Defamation League, touched off angry reaction…

Men Without Guns: A Tribute to Larry McMurtry

By Amy Laura Hall

…I read it in order to understand my father. He grew up bookish near Archer City and became an uncommonly nonjudgmental Methodist pastor. To say the novel is about loss is to state the obvious. It’s in the title. What film critics mistook as a moral core to “Hud,” in the form of the aging rancher Homer, McMurtry shifts to Sam the Lion, owner of the poolhall, picture show, and café, who dies two-thirds through the book. The sagacity Sam holds is act…

Claiming That ‘We Birthed a Nation From Nothing’ CNN’s Rick Santorum Gives a Master Class in Christian Nationalism: An Open Letter to CNN

By Andrew L. Seidel

…America was founded, especially New Amsterdam, which would become New York City. And when our founders looked back at the Pilgrims and Puritans, they saw theocracies and persecution. The popular myth regurgitated by Santorum, your senior political commentator, claims those theocracies as forerunners of the American Experiment when really, the founders viewed them as examples of what to avoid. The myth also hides the settlers’ brutality, which the…

Are They Jewish Bones? Battle for Separation of Synagogue & State in Israel

By Shalom Goldman

…atest controversy were found during construction of a hospital wing in the city of Ashkelon, on the Mediterranean. Barzilai Hospital, the city’s major medial center, which serves hundreds of thousands of people, is in dire need of a new emergency room. The plan was to build an ER that is bombproof, as Ashkelon lies within the trajectory of Qassam rockets fired from Gaza. The Ministry of Health, which approved and funded the new construction promis…

The Kaaba: Center of the Universe

By Amina Wadud

…(all male at that time) standing and bowing in prayer. I left the ancient city only twice in my Thanksgiving day weekend visit, once to mail T-shirts to my children at the local post office and once to see the sunrise over that golden dome. And where did I do that but from the Mount of Olives. I was reminded it is not just the building we erect, in all their splendor, in celebration of the sacred event or person (because Jesus was laid to rest on…

Cooler than Thou: Will Hipsters Wreck Christianity?

By Nicole Greenfield

…en church and cool, individual and community, faith and rebellion, authenticity and imitation, truth and relevance. Jay Bakker’s Christian Star Power Jay Bakker, pastor of Revolution Church and son of famed televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye, is undoubtedly an icon of Christian hipsterdom. It’s not only that he sports full-sleeve tattoos and multiple piercings, that Revolution holds its weekly church services at a local bar, or that he’s been label…

The Leadership Failure of Park51

By Hussein Rashid

…vidual, and the overall style of leadership. It should be easy in New York City to create a visibly diverse group of Muslim supporters that represents the richness of our community, and who can put forward a clearly articulated vision. A combination of Muslims from different interpretations, like the interfaith advisory board the organizers envision, could protect the center from ideologues. I am not the only one raising concerns about the project…

Beneath the ‘Wacky’ Paula White Video is a Dark and Deeply Undemocratic World Propping Up the President

By Frederick Clarkson

…their rhetoric beyond the usual hyper-spiritualized form of ‘spiritual warfare’ language as found in Ephesians 6:12,” Dr. André Gagné, a Professor of Theological Studies at Concordia University in Montreal told RD. “It is concerning in part because they claim that God speaks and acts through them when they speak prophetically to the Church like this.” From grift to glitz to government If this had happened on the stage of a fringe-y evangelist som…