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RDPulpit: Why I am going to Iran

By Rev. Osagyefo Sekou

…f Reconciliation, the 93-year-old interfaith and international movement to promote peace and nonviolence. “What do you hope to accomplish?” they ask. Then the concerns of friends, critics, and loved ones diverge in intent. Critics, if they don’t immediately call me unpatriotic, point out my naiveté. Decrying any meeting with “those people” as futile, they insist that the Iranian government is oppressive, possesses nuclear weapons, and needs to be…

Star Trek: Politics Anti-Matters

By Nathan Schneider

…rn how to deal with them, sometimes violently, but usually peacefully. The central challenge of that universe, since our heroes were representatives of a federation of many planets, was getting along. Star Trek was about overcoming petty differences in the presence of a universe too large and too full of mystery for squabbling. It was, at its core, about creating a society. Society, Freud wrote in Civilization and Its Discontents, rests on a dose…

Why Immigration is Such a Key Motivator of Nationalist Aggression and Hostility

By Willie Young

…anation was wanting to deny President Biden a “win,” as another example of Republican intransigence enabling the blame of a Democratic administration. Political strategy is certainly part of the issue, but it doesn’t get at the deeper question: apart from the maximalist few who won’t stop until every last demand of theirs is met, why would Republicans, and Christian nationalists more specifically, want to keep this specific issue alive? A brief co…

Bad Karma: Life Lessons From Earl

By Anthony B. Pinn

…n sacred and profane, “right” and “wrong,” is blurred. But capital remains central. But what of the more complex arrangement that actually frames the notion of karma or “right action”? In the show, karma is plucked out of Buddhism: No mention of the “four noble truths” and the relationship between suffering and desire. Earl crosses things off his list, but what of the surrender of desire through the eight-fold path? Yes, there are ways in which th…

Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

By Patricia Miller

…holic community that Francis faces the biggest problem. Only 28 percent of Republican Catholics have a very favorable opinion of Francis, versus 53 percent of Democratic Catholics and 45 percent of independents, according to a poll from Faith in Public Life. And while 92 percent of Catholic Democrats think Pope Francis is leading the church in the right direction, only 70 percent of Republican Catholics are confident of his leadership. Just as the…

WWJD Or The First Amendment?

By Sarah Posner

…’s obviously an argument to be made that Christianity shouldn’t be used to promote war, and shouldn’t be used to seemingly promote religious war between Christians and Muslims. But constitutionally speaking, the issue isn’t “abusing” faith but having it play a role at all. That’s a problem in the military that runs much deeper than Trijicon’s inscriptions. UPDATE (1/22/10): Trijicon has agreed to voluntarily remove the scripture engravings from th…

Death With Dignity: Combatting Religious Opposition to Physician-Assisted Suicide

By Krista Kapralos

…ble finding doctors who will write them a prescription for lethal drugs. A central Washington man diagnosed with pancreatic cancer asked his doctors for the drugs, but not one would approve his request. Stephen Wallace died on April 8, after what his family said was a painful struggle that could have been avoided had doctors respected his wishes. “Patients need professional medical support for their choice, not abandonment at their moment of need,…

What Pence and Kaine Reveal About Divides in Catholicism

By Patricia Miller

…ommunist-backed forces. It’s no coincidence that Catholic defection to the Republican Party during the Reagan era coincided with the start of John Paul II’s papacy. John Paul’s emphasis on opposition to abortion as a core Catholic value—and his warnings about a pro-choice “culture of death“—perfectly meshed with the Republican Party’s use of abortion as a wedge issue. But even before John Paul, the U.S. bishops’ conference had, in 1976, meddled in…

Sometimes Dialogue is Not the Answer and Neutrality is a Trap: An Interview with the Authors of ‘The Neutrality Trap’

By Chrissy Stroop

…cloud on our future that climate change presents—all seem to reinforce our central point, which is that without disruption, connection alone won’t deal with our problems. But without a strategic approach to disruption, which also requires connecting across our differences, we won’t achieve system change either. My basic advice to activists is to pay attention to how to build a movement that’s prepared to endure through the inevitable pushbacks it…

Mauled by an Angel: Why Do Americans Need “God’s Secret Agents”?

By W. Scott Poole

…Christian experience (which, I argue in Satan in America, actually forms a central theme in the American religious experience). Angels, portrayed as warriors fighting beside evangelical Christians, became a hugely popular representation of spiritual life. Billy Graham’s 1975 Angels: God’s Secret Agents increased this fascination with angels, demons, and the possibility of spiritual warfare. Graham insisted that what he viewed as an increased inter…