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Excerpt: The Christian Roots of Zionism

By Shalom Goldman

…n the United States, The Fundamentals, a series of essays published between 1910 and 1915 by conservative evangelical theologians, emphasized the necessity to believe in the literal truth of scripture. This helped reify the relationship between the Jews of the present and the Israelites of old. In the view of many in the Christian West, Palestine was understood to be ‘‘empty,’’ and this emptiness should be filled by Jews, the descendants of the la…

The Pope’s Interfaith Issues

By Hussein Rashid

A couple of weeks ago The New York Times reported that the Pope has reservations about interfaith dialogue. There are few different ways to understand this pronouncement. Pope Benedict, as both Pope and Cardinal Ratzinger, has never seemed inclined to interfaith dialogue, or interfaith understanding. My own superficial reading of his work indicates a reluctant support of Vatican II. On one level, the Pope is forced into participating in interfait…

Material(ist) Girl: A Philosopher Argues Against the Soul

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…nto this long conversation about reincarnation and I presented him with my reservations about such a thing. Something is left, namely the body, and as that disintegrates small creatures make use of the bits and pieces and in that sense it’s reincarnated, but there isn’t anything else, some nonphysical thing that has feelings and thoughts and memories and personality that goes into the little critters or into a person. What gets transferred from pa…

The Sacred and the Dead: Three Ways to American Beauty

By Aaron K. Kerr

…ceives and embraces the presence of the Dead, and does so in ritual. In the 1960s, the new consciousness from California was opening up, ripping the seams of modernity by way of sound, and pursuing what had been the norm of civilization for 1700 years prior to the modern period— an openness to mystery and the transcendent, consulting the spirits and exorcising the demons of the times: individualism, instrumental reason, and conformity. The corpora…

What The Church Needs More Than a ‘Good Pope’

By Mary E. Hunt

…e this interview is a beginning not an end of a new moment. These serious reservations notwithstanding, my early read of “A Big Heart Open to God” is hopeful—to be otherwise would not be Catholic. Moral theologian Daniel C. Maguire gets it right when he says here on RD, “Never before has so much fresh air flowed through musty Vatican halls.” Let the dialogue get bigger and the table grow more crowded. Like this story? Your tax-deductible $5 or $…

America, Religious Values, and the Death Penalty; Or, If it Was Good Enough for Jesus and Socrates…

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…with the IV tubes already inserted in his arms (Autry was later executed on 14 March 1984). This seemed to suggest that states no longer needed to worry about cruel and unusual punishment. On 15 December 1983, John Eldon Smith was executed in Georgia; his wife was also sentenced to death in this case, but she was not executed. This seemed to indicate that states no longer needed to worry about untrammeled discretion. And on 2 November 1984, Velma…

Pawlenty Stars in American Civil Religion: The Movie

By Michael J. Altman

…al purpose for our country to spread its influence around the world. In the 19th century, Manifest Destiny meant expansion out west. In the twentieth century, Woodrow Wilson used it to back up American intervention in WWI. While the term itself fell out of political usage, the myth expanded as America spread its reach to the moon, to Vietnam, and to the Middle East. If we are exceptional and if we work the hardest, than surely we deserve to grow….

When the ‘Biblical View’ for Evangelicals Was That Life Begins at Birth

By Jonathan Dudley

…the founders of the evangelical Right to neutralize previous, Bible-based reservations about Catholic pro-life activism. By 1980, Jerry Falwell was off to the races. “The Bible clearly states that life begins at conception,” he declared in his book Listen America! Abortion “is murder according to the Word of God.” Falwell’s major reference for this claim was Psalm 139:13, where the author writes that God “knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Mo…

The Story of a Post-Holocaust Group Seeking Revenge Against Nazis is Part of the Story of Israel Itself

By Shane Burley

…y became impossible. While widespread revenge may have not been feasible in 1945, it became infinitely more plentiful in the decades since. Mossad carries out retaliatory attacks as a security strategy, such as the murder of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leaders after the 1972 massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes. This is not a comparison that Porat really brings into the pages of the book, nor does she provide a critical lens to help th…

Allah Made Me Funny: Borscht Belt Goes Halal

By Hussein Rashid

…omantic and otherwise, on a daily basis. There is a way that the strongest reservations about other faiths can be bridged when trying to build or maintain community. Muslim women are successful. I do not think this film needed to be a full documentary on the comedians personal lives, but it did need to make them more human. I do not know how many people will connect to them as humans by watching them stare at a screen and type out ideas. I say all…