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“Religious Freedom” and the Conservative Quest for Absolute Truth

By Ira Chernus

…voters so often moved by appeals to religion? What’s in a Wall? The best answer I know rests on the very word “wall” and all its metaphoric meanings, as explored so insightfully by Robert Wuthnow in his analysis of “The Spirituality of Dwelling.” (It’s chapter two of his book, After Heaven.) Though the chapter deals overtly with American religious life in the 1950s, I find it a useful key to unlock the paradoxes that arise whenever religion…

House Votes to Repeal DADT

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…y and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The compromise may be the best we can expect given the climate of the Congress and Obama’s penchant for cutting unappealing deals. This deal leaves the final control of a minority’s status to yet another minority — meaning, in the end, the repeal could still be rejected, even though a whopping 78 percent of Americans say the policy should go. Gays and lesbians are resigned to it, though, used to the…

American Buddhism: Beyond the Search for Inner Peace

By Joshua Eaton

…hat there is support for social engagement in “Buddhist doctrine, ethical ideals, archetypes, legends, and historical precedents.” Which of those do you find most inspiring for your own social justice work? In terms of doctrine, I would start with the Buddha’s tenet that suffering originates from the three unwholesome roots: greed, hatred, and delusion. Classical Buddhism regards these “defilements” as embedded in individual minds and thus primari…

Pox Americana: Franzen’s Tragic Vision

By Peter Laarman

…ped within the constraints of a larger systemic corruption. Franzen’s work deals directly with this systemic corruption and in a way that is both hilarious and highly indignant. Salvation History One also has to wonder how a reviewer might claim that there’s no religion, nothing about the business world, no ethnicity, and no military service. These subjects ripple right through Freedom, though not in un-ironic ways. If anything, for example, Walte…

Well, the Harris-Trump Debate Happened — Now Enjoy Your Freedom and Choose Wisely

By Mary Rambaran-Olm

…lieves he’s “the most respected, most feared person”), and all those peace deals will help him win a Nobel Peace Prize. That should soften the sentencing in his upcoming penalty phase now that he’s been found guilty of fraud. If you listened closely, you would see how US and global lives are just pawns to the two main establishment parties. Both argued about the Covid response without acknowledging that Covid is still costing the healthcare system…

A Devil’s Dozen of the Best ‘New Religion Journalism’ Books of the Decade

By Ed Simon

…ded within the Occupy movement (arguably its own religious revival, in the best of ways), Nathan Schneider’s God in Proof is the rare religion nonfiction book that doesn’t just use the tools of New Religion Journalism to write about ritual, belief, or identity, but to actually get into the syllogisms as it were, and to investigate theology. God in Proof concerns with the ways in which philosophers from St. Anselm to René Descartes, St. Thomas Aqui…

Nostalgia Voters? Not Really. Trump and His Supporters Value This More Than the Past

By Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead

…eep America Great” isn’t just an empty phrase or trite repackaging of the ubiquitous MAGA slogan. Trump’s supporters believe it. They believe it because the appeal of “MAGA” was never really about returning to some golden age when America was at its best. On the contrary, to Trump’s supporters, America is at its best whenever their cultural and political influence is strong. To the extent that such influence can stay strong, from their perspective…

This Year’s Best Books in African American Religion

By Jonathan L. Walton

…ersity of California Press, June, 2007 History and cultural studies at its best! Judith Weisenfeld’s engagement of race films during the interwar era sheds light upon the way the film industry represented, participated in, and shaped the many discourses taking place around religion, race, gender and class in America. This book is written in a lively and lucid manner, which allows it to be as entertaining as it is informative. Weisenfeld shows us t…

Lars von Trier is the Antichrist Best Film Director in the World

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…lude was what followed that line. The full quote went like this: “I am the best film director in the world. I’m not sure if God is the best God in the world.” In one sentence arrogance and provocation, in the other protest, questioning. This “He”—this therapist, this filmmaker, this Creator God—is a bastard. In the end, Antichrist is a condemnation of the world, of nature, of human nature, and of the God who puts a man and a woman together in a ga…

To Pray or to Protest? The Both/And-ness of Black Christianity

By Jamall Andrew Calloway

…tending were “weak and impotent responses.” So instead of going to church Best was, as he explained, “… at home frustrated by the inability of those spaces—deeply conservative as many of them are—to truly bring about social and political change.” I do not agree with Best and, in fact, I think indulging in personal frustration at home about other people’s responses is more of an impotent reaction to injustice than praying at an altar. I want to p…