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Religious Differences Are Real (and Tolerance Can Be an Empty Virtue)

By Stephen Prothero

…or a generation. That is largely true. But not many religious studies scholars write popular books on religion, so the most widely-read books on the subject still preach pretend pluralism. What good does it do our soldiers in Iraq to tell them that Sunni and Shia Islam are essentially the same? Or our diplomats in the Middle East to tell them that the differences between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are inconsequential. So I’m for those soldie…

Islam=Peace: What’s in a Slogan?

By Brie Loskota

…pelling stories and motivating factors that are important to understand, so that we can begin to craft policy solutions to problems too often ignored or treated reductively by the policy community as simply religious, tribal or cultural.” Read as part of a larger in-house movement to reassert the soul of Islam and push back against the forces of extremism, this bumper sticker had new meaning for me. And I realized that I had cynically underestimat…

Pence Meets With One of Putin’s Top Clerics: Strange Bedfellows at BGEA’s World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians

By Chrissy Stroop

…hristians to be among the most persecuted people in the world. While there are parts of the world where the persecution of religious minorities, including Christians, is a real problem, the United States is not one of them. Russia, on the other hand, has enacted laws that bar Protestant groups from proselytizing on penalty of fines, and has even gone so far as to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses entirely. At first blush, then, it might seem odd that one of…

Why Obama for the Nobel? A Nudge? A Reminder?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…Anwar al-Sadat and Menachim Begin. It came again to three men in 1994: Yassar Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin. The Nobel Committee was clearly offering its support and congratulations to renewed Arab-Israeli peace processes. The 2002 decision to make the award to Jimmy Carter seemed similarly motivated. Yet it is a cautionary tale for all of us, the fact that these several awards spanning a quarter century did not advance the cause of Arab…

Religious Freedom Gets Hollywood Treatment

By Daniel Ramirez

…rival of the cristero forces in their towns and villages—their side has a martyrdom narrative too—and why they were relieved at the government’s suppression of the revolt. This also helps to explain the congratulatory telegram sent to President Calles by the Methodist annual conference meeting in Saltillo in October 1928. The ministers lauded Calles for his “brilliant governmental action” in the aftermath of the assassination of president-elect Al…

Mennonite in a Midlife Crisis (of Faith)

By Brittany Shoot

…r than anyone else’s. Simply put, blessing is better than impressing. Janzen’s memoir serves as a reminder that we all share common ground. That our respective childhoods share hilarious similarities is just icing on the cake—or rather, Schmauntfatt cream gravy on the Kielke homemade noodles….

Who Are Michigan Catholic Bishops to Judge?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ps do go a little Pope Francis in the letter, insisting that, “it is necessary to state clearly that persons with same-sex attraction should not be judged, but rather accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity.” Well, sure “it’s necessary” to state this when you’ve just judged and disrespected the relationships and families of lesbians and gays in Michigan. But it’s even more necessary to act as though you actually believed that. The good n…

Who Says The “Partly Jewish” Are Bad For The Jews?

By Susan Katz Miller

…or the world and for interfaith children, to preserve the specificity and particularity of each religion. At the same time, I agree with Orthodox rabbi Brad Hirschfield, who wrote a recent essay pointing out that all religions are ultimately syncretic, and that “Syncretism is simply the word for a religious borrowing project whose success is not yet assured, which ultimately doesn’t gain popular support, or which some current religious authoritie…

Telling the World a ‘Big Story’: RD in Conversation with Karen Armstrong

By Laurie Patton

…importantly, each of these traditions developed in a time of violence and warfare; society had become more aggressive; merchants preyed upon one another; kings fought to expand their territories—and the new technology made these wars more deadly than ever before. In every single one of the Axial regions, a revulsion from this violence was a catalyst of religious change: the great Axial Sages developed the compassionate ethos largely in response to…

The Landmark 85-Year-Old Report Absent From Debates Over Missionary’s Death

By Amy Fallas

…at bringing this progress to them “in love” justifies the means. As a scholar of missionary history, I’ve seen how American missionaries have assisted those in need. During World War I, American missionaries across the Middle East were key protagonists in forming the Near East Relief, which administered aid to millions displaced by war and conflict. Into the mid-twentieth century, missionaries and faith-based organizations were at the forefront of…