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Risky Business: The Pitfalls at the Corner of Church & Wall Street

By Elizabeth Drescher

…pian “class warfare” fears of Tea Partiers and other Republicans? When the number of Americans living in poverty—46.2 million, according to a recent report from the Census Bureau—is at an all-time high? When more than 300,000 Christian churches dot the American landscape, the majority with declining membership and largely unused real estate or financial capital that might well be put to work in the service of that stalwart of Christian faith: neig…

Don’t Call It “Prayer Shaming”: Our Moral Failure Exposed

By Willie Dwayne Francois

…d Regional Center in San Bernardino, CA. In the aftermath of the attack, a number of Republican presidential candidates and elected officials issued tweets that, many have argued ad nauseum, demonstrated a commitment to public piety instead of public policy as a response to the massacre. In a rare moment, news and social media outlets in the U.S. became a forum for a surprising debate about spiritual disciplines—the meaning and import of prayer. L…

“As Orthodox As They Come”: A Backstage Conversation With Rob Bell

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…ked on the language so that it had—not playfulness, but just, “this is the best new evidence. This is the best new story we got going now.” Here’s the critique: that, “the universe is expanding” is a very loose way of talking about love or personal development. It’s a superficial connection between things that are substantially different. If the metaphor breaks down, [at least] I took a valiant effort at connecting a few things. Malcolm Gladwell,…

Why Science Needs “Neurodiversity,” Autism Included

By Andrew Aghapour

…ve. Neurotribes documents how selective, “pyramid” thinking has fostered a number of dangerous theories about autism. It tells the story of Bernard Rimland, a widely-read author who took up a comprehensive review of autism research in 1958 when his son was diagnosed with the syndrome. He was so committed to the hope of a simple cure, however, that he latched onto the theory that autism was the result of a simple glitch in a single metabolic pathwa…

The Women’s March, Anti-Semitism, and ‘The Jewish Farrakhan’

By Shaul Magid

…ntisemitic act, is thus interpreted as if it is by definition insincere at best, trickery at worst. Acknowledging the good the NOI has done in helping single Black women and incarcerated Black men doesn’t matter because acknowledging the legitimacy of an antisemite, even regarding things that have nothing whatsoever to do with Jews, puts one in his camp. Antisemitism is no longer a descriptor of behavior, but a tool of exclusion. This controversy,…

What is a “Religious Progressive” Anyway?

By Daniel Schultz

…logger!” “Yes, O Majestic Keepers of the Paycheck?” we inquired, doing our best not to snivel overmuch. “Give me nine hundred words on the definition of ‘progressive!’” O.D.O. barked, nearly upsetting their daily snort of Maker’s Mark and English breakfast tea while they lightly tossed a link from TPMDC at our head: Poll: Majority Of Americans Not Quite Sure What ‘Progressive’ Means. “Define it! Own it! Spare no expense! Send a telegram to the Sov…

GOP Candidate: Obama is Taking Your Freedom to Find the Lord

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…rsonal choice between you and the god or gods you don’t believe in. What’s best about America, though, is that each person, religious or not, has the right to be treated with both equality and equity by their government (though they may have to fight for that right to be recognized). I find it odd, though, that those who make the best arguments for the separation of church and state are most often those trying to marry the two until death do us al…

Why it (Still) Makes Little Sense to Call ISIS Islamic

By Haroon Moghul

…r, as delivered to his army, to ISIS’ practices. I pronounce the Prophet’s best friend a better interpreter of Islam than poorly reconstructed Ba’athists on the Muslim margins.) Suleiman stressed: “Freeing slaves” is so frequently mentioned as a meritorious act in the Muslim tradition that, in the 8th and 9th centuries, biographies of Prophetic companions cited, as virtues, manumission; Muhammad’s wife, Aisha, was lauded for “freeing six hundred s…

Challenge to ‘un-Africanness’ of homosexuality; LGBT Catholics in Africa face church cooperation with persecution; lesbian cartoon project debuts in bangladesh under shadow of violence; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ition: Mr. Abbott, a conservative leader who is a polarizing figure at the best of times, is doing badly in the polls, two years after taking office. His position on same-sex marriage is only one factor, but it is one that analysts say goes to the core of his political vulnerability. “His issue is his inability to reach out beyond a core group of conservative voters,” said Jessica Elgood, a director at the polling firm Ipsos, who added that he had…

An Interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin on the Feminist and Abolitionist Founder Who Has Slipped into a Memory Hole

By Andrew L. Seidel

…One of the brilliant themes in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton—whose closing number is “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?”—concerns the stories we as a nation tell about our Founders, something Raskin invokes. “The absence of a Paine memorial in Washington is a real problem in our political culture. So much of the pop culture debate today is a fight between the fans of Hamilton and Jefferson.” Hamilton’s “scrappy biography” has been so crea…