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What Would Ai Weiwei Do? What the Smashing of a Million-Dollar Artwork Has to Teach Us

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…Buddha statues in Bamiyan in 2001, they made sure they announced it to the world’s media outlets before doing so, and a Google search will quickly show how proliferous is the depiction of that destruction. Or, here is an image made of pious Dutch Reformers in the sixteenth century, smashing a Marian statue in a church—the artist captures the carefully orchestrated mob just as they tear the statue down. Tradition is itself a series of creative an…

Vatican Fires Shot at US Religious Right, Calls Out “Religious Liberty” Industry and “Evangelical-Catholic Alliance”

By Patricia Miller

…cs, institution and Church.” But this link underpins much of the conservative religious understanding in the United States today. And breaking it may take more than just words….

Black Church Leadership Gathering Excludes Women

By Hazel Cherry

…is unacceptable to invite them to the table when strategizing for “ground breaking” change. In other words, they want everything women have to offer, except their opinions. What kind of message does this send to the daughters and wives of these men? It bothers me that men admonish their daughters to be politically involved, but do not put this into practice in their own ministries. Sexism is alive and real. Men face racism, classism, and commerc…

The Debt Ceiling Crisis and Biblical Economics

By Julie Ingersoll

…illips and his Constitution Party, and Gary North and the Christian Reconstructionists.” But Bachmann’s position on the debt ceiling is likely more significant than Palin’s on the Fed because her view could win the day. It’s much harder to make something happen (eliminating the Federal Reserve) than it is to keep something from happening (raising the debt limit). When tea party leaders like Bachmann seem to think default won’t be Armageddon, they…

New Poll: ‘Faithful Catholics’ an Endangered Species

By Linda Woodhead

…mly into the existing sheepfold of moral teaching, the tension may reach a breaking point. Perhaps Francis is clever enough to have anticipated that, and perhaps he has subtle plans to turn such a crisis to good ends. Perhaps not. *** The research reported here was funded by two of the UK’s research councils, designed by Linda Woodhead and administered by YouGov. The surveys are available at http://faithdebates.org.uk/research/. Three separate sur…

Goodbye to Amy Winehouse, Living Celebrity Dead

By Mathew Schmalz

…larify that Amy Winehouse was no Kali. Kali is a Goddess of liberating destruction; of breaking the connections that bind us to the world. Alcohol, considered so polluting within traditional Hinduism, becomes an offering precisely because it suggests transcending the very distinction between pure and impure and other dualisms that prevent us from seeing the unity of all things. While Kali does live at the cremation ground, Amy Winehouse was no Kal…

Women, Religion, and Film: Higher Ground Raises the Stakes

By Sarah Sentilles

…especially if they are women, especially if they are part of institutions run by men, especially if they have subscribed to the notion that it is belief—not works, not acts, not love, not justice—that saves. In Heaven, or Outside with the Dogs Higher Ground makes clear that the logical consequence of structuring faith on belief is that there is very little room for doubt. Doubt is something to be overcome, silenced, ignored, prayed over, moved th…

Seth Meyers Tries to Unpack Trump’s Faith: A Narcissistic Prosperity Gospel

By Sunnivie Brydum

…Night with Seth Meyers, the host took a break from lampooning the breaking news that constantly dribbles out of the White House, instead focusing on “Trump’s evolving views on faith, religion, and separation of church and state” in his nightly segment, “The Check-In.” Meyers’s recounting of Trump’s anything-goes-as-long-as-it-makes-money religiosity is impressively nuanced, calling out several of the self-proclaimed faith leaders surrounding the p…

Why I Wrote the Freedom Seder And Why It’s Still Necessary 50 Years After Dr. King’s Assassination

By Arthur Waskow

…scovered each other, we granted each other the truths of our own different stories, ultimately the truth that we could share a journey of many different journeys. We discovered how astonishingly rich were the Judaisms—plural—we had barely known, and how our forebears also had walked many different paths. And we discovered how astonishingly nourishing were the new Judaisms we ourselves could shape as we intertwined our own lives with each other and…

Spiritual (And Jewish), But Not Religious

By Martin Kavka

…r support to Jewish arts and service organizations, and loosening (but not breaking) the link between Jewishness and the state of Israel. It may even entail hiring secular leaders to join the staffs of synagogues. The history of Jews in America is a story of decentralization, in which Jews refuse to heed authorities telling them how they must perform their Judaism and/or Jewishness. If Jewish leaders fight that story, the time when Jewish “nones”…