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Louisiana Students Must Choose: Religion or Science

By Lauri Lebo

…issue when the board there tried to introduce creationism into its science classes. Today, as one of intelligent design movement’s most damning critics, a lot of people don’t like her very much, even though they must have to work pretty hard to come up with reasons to dislike her. As we drive, Forrest keeps up a running narrative of the history of her state. We visit the state capitol and stand on the spot where Huey Long was assassinated. She spe…

Creationist-Leaning Texas Sets Textbook Agenda

By Lauri Lebo

…emental materials” to be used alongside textbooks in public school science class. Of course, the state is an old hand at such tactics. In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s Balanced Treatment Act, which required creationism to be taught alongside evolution. I’m headed to Louisiana tomorrow. While I will be primarily searching for incredible food, wonderful music and one of those ubiquitous drive-thru daiquiri stands, I’ll also b…

What the Danish Cartoon Controversy Tells Us About Religion, the Secular, and the Limits of the Law

By Winnifred Fallers Sullivan

…possible legal framings of the injury, one as an incidence of racism to be classified as a hate crime, the other in terms of blasphemy and free speech. She then shows how each fails in this case for various reasons, but, that it is, in large part, because modern liberal law, a law that assumes a basically protestant, private and belief-based understanding of what religion is, does not recognize a more devotional embodied form of religious adherenc…

Is Joel Osteen, Success Mag Cover Boy, Really “God’s Best”?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…s 1,000 visitors are invited to meet him. I apparently missed the seminary class that taught pastors not to get “sidetracked in controversy.” Instead, my classes taught me that it was theologian Karl Barth that counseled pastors to use both the Bible and the newspaper in their preaching, but Osteen will have none of that. Anything that might get in the way of a happy story, or a story about how God wants you to be happy and be the best “you” you c…

Purpose Driven Atheism: Secular Maharishis Seeking True Believers

By Frank Schaeffer

…ee Brent Plate’s “Why Bill Maher Gets a ‘C’ in My Introduction to Religion Class”]. When I was watching Religulous in an Upper West Side theater in New York, it seemed to me that the laughter and shouted comments were just another version of “Amen!” and “Preach it brother!” I assumed these cries of affirmation were from the more spirit-filled atheists in the audience! In a moment of unintended self-parody, Maher even delivered an altar call at the…

GMO or No: Problematic Intersections of Religion, Biotechnology, and Food

By Brittany Shoot

…genetic modification presented little problem, in part because many North Americans participants were largely unaware that they had been consuming transgenic foods. Reform scholars and liberal laypeople presented more opposition. Most participants agreed that food was a central part of Jewish life and agreed that GM foods are technically allowable since they are not specifically forbidden in Jewish texts. But Jewish ethics and kashrut seek to lim…

A Daily Utopia: Creating Our Moral Values Every Day

By Anna Peterson

…opianism with clearer connections to the everyday life of “ordinary” North Americans. What I find fascinating about utopianism, especially as a theme in social ethics and social movements, is its intrinsic radicalness. But utopianism seems, by definition, to be disconnected from everyday life. Putting those two themes together—utopias and everyday life—seemed a way to talk about the potentially radical dimensions of our ordinary practices and valu…

The Revolution Will Be Whispered: An Excerpt From Everywhere a Guest, Nowhere at Home: A New Vision of Israel and Palestine

By Kim Chernin

…these days they are going to write the whole thing up and read it to their class and find out if there is anyone who wants to join them. No one is going to listen to what their teachers have to say, or their parents, or the people who write books and articles in the newspaper and can’t think of anything except the same old things nobody believes in. Peace conferences in Madrid, declarations of principles, Cairo agreements, Washington agreements, r…

Conservative ‘Cafeteria Catholics’ Favor Opposition to Gay Marriage Over Health Care

By Paul Gorrell

…s do not enjoy all of the same benefits of marriage and, thus, have second-class status. These findings have prompted a new legislative push for same-sex marriage within the state; debate over the measure will begin this fall. To fight potential legislation that would provide marriage rights to same-sex couples in New Jersey, the bishops have joined conservative Catholic organizations like the Knights of Columbus that are aligned with right-wing R…

Rarefied Islamophobia: When Americans Duplicate the European Cultural Talk

By Jocelyne Cesari

…onfuse European discourse on this topic. While Muslims are part of an underclass of Europe, this is not caused by some factor unique to Islam but by specific conditions of labor migration and structural changes in the labor market over the last 25 years. These changes in turn led to the deterioration of significant parts of the working classes across Europe. The various problems and implications of these topics have been subsumed under general ana…