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The Visceral Vote: Obama-as-Sojourner v. McCain-as-Mythic-Hero

By Ira Chernus

…ters ask “Which candidate has values most like yours?” or “Which candidate best understands and cares about your needs?”, Obama consistently comes out ahead. The McCain campaign’s strenuous effort to make the biracial son of a single mom from Kansas a symbol of “elitism” isn’t working very well. What is working is McCain’s focus on “experience” and on the realm of war, the military, and national security. That’s the one area where McCain consisten…

John McCain: No God But Country

By Kathryn Lofton

…d.” When asked whether he has participated in adult baptism, a ritual requisite for converts to the Convention, McCain says no, calling it “a personal thing,” adding on another occasion that “I didn’t find it necessary to do so for my spiritual needs.” McCain’s decision not to participate in a major ritual of Baptist practice may be laziness, may be diffidence, or it may be a desire to evade hypocrisy. If I don’t take communion when I attend an Ep…

Why the Next Archbishop of Canterbury Should Be African

By Jesse Zink

…f reconciliation in countries like Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, of course, the opposite is true for the church in the Euro-Atlantic world. Johnson’s disappointment about the future of the Nigerian Church could best be applied to England, where fewer and fewer people attend church and surveys show young people don’t see the need for faith. The European Union’s constitution omits any mention of Christianity, the historic faith of the continent. Yet Europe s…

RDBook: Bernard Avishai’s The Hebrew Republic

By Mitchell Plitnick

…ic, Avishai takes this argument one step further, suggesting that Israel’s best hope for peace-and for a bright future—is to embrace European-style secular democracy, integrating its Arab citizens into a business-driven globalized economy. Israel and Europe Like many contemporary Israelis, Bernard Avishai deeply admires the European Union. Though Israel spent decades emulating the United States, in recent years, whether intentionally or not, Israe…

Please Reverend, Do Something About the Fat People

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…lem, except it’s not. Aside from its connection to health being tenuous at best, obesity seems to be leveling off. 5. It might be compelling if there were any safe and reliable way to permanently turn most fat people into thin people. But there seems not to be. Of the people that lose a lot of weight, the vast majority—like nearly all of them—gain it back. Many have a little extra weight to show for their troubles. Some have seriously screwed-up m…

New Spencer Book Denies Existence of Muhammad

By Hussein Rashid

…Muhammad knew that people were making things up and created checks and the best methodology that they could at the time to stop it. Modern scholars are revisiting the existing corpus with new tools and methods. Why a famous mosque inscription may refer not to Muhammad but, astonishingly, to Jesus. Stumped by this one. No idea what it refers to. How the oldest records referring to a man named Muhammad bear little resemblance to the now-standard Is…

Bad Karma: Life Lessons From Earl

By Anthony B. Pinn

…the possibility that the United States as a nation has not lived up to the best of its democratic ideals, has not represented in its internal practices and foreign policies the commitment to freedom that fuels its rhetoric. And, while we’re at it, we might throw into the mix some attention to our materialism and its awkward and distorting presentation. There is something useful in examining the policies and practices of our nation and demanding th…

(Ex-)Ex-Gay Activist Alan Chambers On His Prop 8 Epiphany and the Downfall of Christianity and Evangelicalism

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…publicly renounced reparative therapy, they’re still preaching that “God’s best” for gays and lesbians is celibacy and some still believe that God can change sexual orientation over time. What’s your response? It’s kind of a doublespeak. They want to be against what is publicly recognized as the most damaging sort of thing out there. But, they talk out of the other side of their mouth and support this. I think some of them are confused, but I thin…

Men Without Guns: A Tribute to Larry McMurtry

By Amy Laura Hall

…ce, writer of Hillbilly Elegy, has made a mint. Larry McMurtry did the opposite. McMurtry died in March, having spent much of his 84 years arranging words to help readers sympathetically hear life in West Texas. He’s best known for Lonesome Dove, due to the abiding allure of the very myth of the West that McMurtry wrote at a slant. Dwight Garner notes in his New York Times obituary that McMurtry offered “unromantic depictions of a long mythologize…

Marriage Equality: No More (Word) Games

By William Myatt

…nt of this link in paragraph 14, the implicit argument is that marriage is best defined as a one-man-one-woman institution. I appreciated the intellectual care that went into Smith’s analysis. Following the example of some of history’s best thinkers, he took an issue that most people considered straightforward, complicated it, and then redirected the discussion. Ultimately, though, I found his deconstruction unconvincing. Let me explain… Dr. Smith…