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Hank Azaria Offers to Stop Doing Apu. So…Thank You?

By Murali Balaji

…percussion, much in the same way that Family Guy frequently picks on Asian Americans. It showed an incredible lack of self-awareness by the writers of both shows, whose teams have long been lauded for infusing social commentary into their satirical looks into America’s changing landscape. There was never any coordinated effort by Hindus—or even the greater South Asian community —to protest Apu in the 1990s, and so he became an inextricable part of…

Trump’s Magical Appeal: A Dated Anthropologist Offers Clues

By Elijah Siegler

…nergy policy), was the big story of the Republican primaries. Trump is a 69-year-old man, who by his own account is in perfect health and sleeps only a few hours a night. His body language during the early Republican debates has been analyzed as projecting dominance, and, seen through the lens of Frazer, his open palms and expansive gestures seem to project and channel vitality. Of all his insults during the primary—“little Marco,” “lyin’ Ted”— it…

Does NIH Head Francis Collins Believe in Intelligent Design?

By Eric Reitan

…summarizes Lewis’s argument just about every time he claims that morality offers a reason to believe in God, there is good reason to suppose that Collins intends to offer an argument along those lines, as opposed to the moral design argument that Bloom attributes to him. Theism Allows Us to See What Welsey Did in a Different Way But maybe Collins gets Lewis wrong and offers a moral design argument after all. If so, then Collins should not be view…

Mormon Church Finally Notes Black Elders, Still Offers No Apology

By Darron T. Smith

…ernalized white racial frames adopted by much of the rank-and-file. Until the LDS Church apologizes, black folk might want to pause when seeing two out-of-place “clean cut”-looking white boys on bicycles in their neighborhoods….

Blankets, Booties, and Jesus: Spiritual War on the Uterus in Rick Perry’s Texas

By Sarah Posner

…Perry in order to fast-track it through the legislature) amended the “right-to-know” law by requiring doctors to perform a sonogram on women seeking abortions, and to describe embryonic development in detail. The statute mandates that a woman wait 24 hours after the sonogram before obtaining an abortion. Although for women who live over 100 miles from the nearest abortion facility the waiting period is shortened from 24 to two hours, the requireme…

Evangelical Islamophobia as American as Apple Pie

By Shalom Goldman

…hobia: Election Roundup.] Those nativist voices characterizing Islam as ‘un-American’ are likley to be considered another chapter in the story of American xenophobia. Not true, says Thomas Kidd, an American religious historian at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. In his timely and perceptive book, American Christians and Islam, Kidd insists that there is something unique about American antipathy to Islam that differs substantially from earlier Ame…

Brexit Boosters: Why the Religious Right Hates the European Union

By Peter Montgomery

…s, and “pro-family” politicians, what one reporter has called “a Bible Belt-to-Kremlin collaboration around its anti-choice and anti-gay agenda.” The vilification of the European Union and its human rights policies was at center stage at this year’s global WCF summit, held in Tbilisi, Georgia, in May. It is no accident that the WCF met in Georgia, where this Russia vs. the West dynamic has been keenly felt in recent years. The event’s chair, Levan…

“You’ve Never Met a Muslim”

By Hussein Rashid

…hat’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?…This is not the way we should be doing it in America. As he spoke, I sat on my sofa with tears streaming down my face. When I was seven I did firmly believe that if I wanted to, I could be President of the United States. And I am certain that thousands of seven-year-old Muslim-American children across the country be…

Pariah or Charmed Hero: America’s Obsession with Jews and Israel

By Shaul Magid

…That obsession led them, among other things, to construct the Jew as Christ-killer, anti-Christ and a pariah people. America (along with much of the Christian West) has thankfully righted that wrong even as they have yet to cure their obsession. In some way America seems to have retained the structure of the old negative stereotype despite, or precisely due to, their pledge of uncritical support for Israel. Has Israel become America’s golden calf,…

Trayvon Martin and American Exceptionalism

By Anthea Butler

…” Here’s how America is Exceptional: as Joanna notes, a 17-year-old African-American boy, Trayvon Martin, is shot and killed with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea in his hands, by a white man with a gun on “neighborhood watch.” Trayvon’s trip to the 7-11 was not just a run to the store, but another statistic in the long arc of racialized violence in America. George Zimmerman, who shot Trayvon in his role as neighborhood watch captain and executio…