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Dutch Treat: Betsy DeVos and the Christian Schools Movement

By Peter Laarman

…rch (CRC) may have broken away from the much older Reformed Church in America (RCA) in 1857, but for us the schism was still so real and palpable that it was as though it had happened yesterday. We were First Reformed (RCA) people, and my dad would privately refer to the CRC zealots as “the cutoffs” and the “holier-than-thou” crowd. (And it should be said that in the Village of Oostburg—pop. 965 when I was attending Oostburg HS—there was real comp…

As Gaza Burns, Jews Disagree, Protest & Pray

By Sam Kestenbaum

…rs and perched on tailgates. Someone is smoking a hookah. The Israeli-American can only speculate as to why they come. Because they are blood-thirsty? To pray for an end? To bear witness? It isn’t clear. After spending two hours watching his country bomb Gaza, he’s had enough. If called to join the other reserves in the ground invasion, he would load his weapon and fire it for the place he now calls home. But tonight he walks down the hill, takes…

The Plot to Turn the Synod into a “Plot”

By Patricia Miller

…the general knowledge and wisdom of individuals, but also to their theoretical and practical knowledge of the matter which the Synod is to take up. The Supreme Pontiff may, if he so chooses, increase the number of members of the Synod of Bishops by adding bishops, or religious to represent the religious institutes, or clerics who are experts, to the extent of fifteen percent of the total number of the members mentioned in articles V and VIII. Desp…

Jonestown at 40: The Real Conspiracy Is More Disturbing Than the Theories

By Rebecca Moore

…f how many adults voluntarily drank the “Kool-Aid.” Suicide is, of course, called into question if they were surrounded by armed guards, though the guards themselves died at the end by ingesting poison. The presence of hypodermic needles at the site also argues against suicide. At the same time, how do we account for those residents who silenced the lone voice protesting the mass deaths? Christine Miller argued with Jim Jones during the last momen…

The Family Research Council’s Mistaken Identity

By Sarah Posner

…a shooting spree in three different cities where he killed a number of African Americans and Jews and Asians that day. Those groups are groups that claim to be extremely anti-government and Christian identity oriented. Southers was not talking about ordinary churchgoers, but rather about the radical far right, described in the FBI’s Project Megiddo report as “a vast number and variety of groups, such as survivalists, militias, the Ku Klux Klan, ne…

Wesolowski Sexual Abuse Case a New Approach or Same Old Same Old?

By Mary E. Hunt

…t Mr. Wesolowski during his tenure in Santo Domingo. I’m hard pressed to recall a case as brazen and heinous. Apparently this fellow regularly had a few drinks by the waterfront in the afternoon and then invited a shoeshine boy or other young man in need of money to accompany him to a secluded spot for sex. Though wealthier than its island neighbor Haiti, the Dominican Republic is a place where these kids make a few dollars for a day’s work. The c…

Belize Overturns Sodomy Law Defended by Religious Right, Ugandan Officials Will Continue to Suppress Gay Groups, And More on the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…akers” who should receive much credit for helping Salt Shakers’ agenda: “I can categorically say that had it not been for Senator Abetz and his consistent stand for Christian values in the Parliament, the tide of evil would have moved much, much faster in Canberra. One day we may be able to tell the whole story, but now is not the time.” The conservative Christian senator has a long history with the Salt Shakers. In 2005, there were calls for Abet…

What’s in a Name? Religious Nones and the American Religious Landscape

By Richard Flory

…et even then we are left with a category that implies a particular theoretical and methodological approach to religion that really doesn’t fit what is going on in real world. Rather than imposing a category that forces a multi-dimensional reality into a dichotomous measure of religious or not, or thinking about religion as a purely numbers game of what group has the most adherents, we might shift our attention to focus on how religion, values, rel…

Forget Right or Wrong

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ng richness of American spiritual life and its interactive balance with secular life. A publicly recognized, government sponsored observation of the complex religious and non-religious American landscape that doesn’t invite rigid polarization might well be something for which we could all give thanks… in whatever way each of us might do that….

Satanic or Silly: Does Yale Press Censorship of Cartoons Insult Muslims?

By Daniel Martin Varisco

…or giving into political correctness. Anyone who has not seen the original cartoons can view them after a few mouse clicks, so contextual appreciation of Klausen’s book is not compromised. The main problem is not over the images—whether viewed as Satanic or silly—but with the lingering fear many Americans have of Islam. Fundamentalist Christian apocalyptic scenarios cast Muslims in the service of the Antichrist; Islamophobic films are obsessively…