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Gandhi, his Grandson, Israel, and the Jews

…ial justice. He joined his father’s movement for racial justice in South Africa and spent over a decade in South African prisons. As Arun Gandhi noted in Kasturba: A Life, a biography of his grandmother, “my father was the only one of the four Gandhi sons to adopt voluntary poverty and devote his life to nonviolence…” Arun left South Africa in 1956 and moved to India, where he spent the next thirty years working as a journalist, activist, and soci…

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Among the Problems with Trump’s Proposed Ban: Who is a Muslim?

…e United States, where there are substantial Arab-American, South Asian-American, African-American, and Latino Muslim populations. Still, the subtext of a lot of political rhetoric about Islam is that there’s some characteristic Muslimness that inheres in the body, regardless of heritage. “The whole question is, who exactly are Muslims?” asks Zareena Grewal, a professor of American studies and religious studies at Yale and the author of Islam Is a…

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An Untold Tale: American Fiction vs. The Religious Right

…se has a great history of, as he puts it in his subtitle, How Corporate America Invented Christian America. Where would we be without Frank Schaeffer’s insider, semi-apostate account of growing up evangelical and helping to form the Christian Right? I wish I had Bart Ehrman’s expertise in early Christian traditions or was learned enough to write a book of big religious ideas like Robert Bellah or Charles Taylor. What’s your next book? I’m not sure…

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Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired

…des, but exploded in 2003 with the publication of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code which, more than anything, showcases Brown’s muddled if provocative incorporation of the Gnostic worldview into the novel. Fans of The Da Vinci Code don’t need to go out and purchase Robinson’s translation, they can simply read the Gnostic texts online at the Gnosis Archive. Or, if they’re interested in other early contenders for New Testament inclusion—the Gospel of P…

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Supreme Court to Hear Hobby Lobby, Conestoga Cases

…e free speech cases, the plaintiffs have argued that the separation of the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses by a semicolon requires that the two clauses be interpreted, for these purposes, identically. (Filmmaker Drew Emery calls the upcoming Supreme Court case “the world’s most closely watched semicolonoscopy.”) In Conestoga, though, the Third Circuit rejected those arguments. “We are not persuaded that the use of a semi-colon means that eac…

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SCOTUS Seems to Think You Should Be Forced to Pay For Religious Education

…majority will continue to ignore the establishment clause and blow up the free exercise clause into a broadly applicable special rights provision. A free ticket for the religious to exempt themselves from federal and state laws—most importantly, public health and anti-discrimination laws. JS: Do these special rights provisions apply equally? The court is on a mission to remake free-exercise law. Not too long ago, it held that religious people and…

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Rent-Free Religion in New York’s Public Schools

…granted permits for worship services. The new churches valued not just the free real estate, but also the proximity to children and families, and the credibility provided by their new physical setting. Owing to the fact that schools are generally available to the community only on Sundays, not Fridays or Saturdays, the opportunity was not open in any significant way to Muslim or Jewish congregations. “We have been enjoying meeting in the school th…

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Greed, Socialism and the Free Market

…ut human greed and human nature, then how does that become an argument for free markets? If human beings naturally compete, and are inclined to take more than their share, then why is this not an argument for greater regulation of such markets, not less? And while we are at it, what is an economic system for? Does it serve the ends of efficiency and innovation, or of justice? To be sure, an economic or any other social system should serve all of t…

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Confront Death by Avoiding Fritos: The Gluten Lie, Fad Diets, & Foodie Faith

…or our own culture. People ask me, what’s the harm? Why not just go gluten free? And the answer is that going gluten free has all sorts of effects. It affects your relationship with your friends and family. It affects your relationship with your own past and foods that you love. While there might be some culture in which celebratory foods don’t typically contain gluten, that’s not our culture. Do you think there’s an incentive to setting yourself…

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New Mormon Anti-Gay Policy Sparks Mass Exodus From Church; Christian AID Workers in Africa Refuse to Help Gay Refugees; Ukraine Rejects, Then Accepts EU-Required Gay Rights Law; Global LGBT Recap

…that the fight against homophobia in our country should go a long way, but today’s achievement in any event is a significant milestone along the way and a historical event for Ukraine. The Gay Alliance of Ukraine celebrated, and said the first appearance in law of the terms sexual orientation and gender identity should make it easier in the future given that thunder did not burst from heaven and Jesus did not show up personally to vent his outrage…

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