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That Mercenary Feeling: What the Apparently Unlimited Use of “Contractors” Says About American Empire in Afghanistan and Iraq

By Peter Laarman

…accouterments favored by overseas contractors rather than the fatigues and flight suits of the military.” Sounds kind of cool. Except that these casually dressed folks have the power to wield lethal force with almost no accountability. Nothing like dropping in a lot of trigger-happy hired guns to win hearts and minds, right? The U.S. commander upon whom Obama has placed responsibility for winning what he calls a “war of necessity” in Afghanistan,…

Conservative Points in Pope’s Speech Include Liberal “Chasers”

By Patricia Miller

…viduals, it just sounded like Francis was speaking of the traditional, all-American meaning in terms of the right to worship freely. In fact, Francis’ unannounced visit to the Little Sisters of the Poor at their home across the street from Catholic University, which wasn’t reported until after the fact, could be seen as an effort to rebalance the ledger for conservatives who are closely following the issue but didn’t get a shout-out during the add…

Pope Francis Brokers End to Cuba Embargo, Despite Opposition of Catholic Pols

By Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado

…ile, I think, an island-colony. We can reach it by a thirty-minute charter flight from Miami, yet never reach it at all.” Today, Cuba is more in our reach. As a Cuban-American from Miami I have been raised amidst the existential crisis of the Cuban exile community, a community with a rabid anger towards the Castro regime and simultaneous love and compassion for their fellow Cubans on the island. I, like many children of exiles, was raised holding…

Defying Gravity Defies Sci-Fi Conventions

By Gabriel Mckee

…nning to reach toward the stars, we were becoming emotional androids. “Our flight must be not only to the stars but into the nature of our own beings,” Dick wrote. “Because it is not merely where we go, to Alpha Centauri or Betelgeuse, but what we are as we make our pilgrimages there. Our natures will be going there, too. Ad astra— but per hominem.” That, in a sense, is the fundamental concern of ABC’s hard-SF soap opera Defying Gravity. The show…

RDPulpit: Ahmadinejad Gives Another Victory to the Israeli Right

By Rabbi Michael Lerner

…n linked to a denial of the Holocaust or the anti-Semitism that led to the flight of some one million Jews from Arab countries between 1947 and 1967. When Prime Minister Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman, and other right-wing extremists are able to point to this irrational hatred of the Jewish people as the “real” underlying message of the critics of The Occupation, they stir up fears among Israelis that seem to be rationally founded, given the hatred…

Are Evangelicals Suffering From Buyer’s Remorse with Obama?

By Bill Berkowitz

…t important projects; long-term control of the courts. As a People for the American Way report pointed out, 59 percent of federal appeals court judges were appointed by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and the current Bush. In addition, seven of the nine justices currently on the Supreme Court were appointed by these three Republicans. When the New York Times recently reported that it looked like Obama would nominate Indiana’…

RD10Q: What is Black Religion?

By William D. Hart

…ngs as well. By analyzing the autobiographical narratives of three African Americans who made religious pilgrimages, respectively, to Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism, I seek to accent that diversity. As the most well-known Muslim in American history, Malcolm X represents a tangent in relation to the Standard Narrative, as does the Judaism of Julius Lester and the Buddhism of Jan Willis. Writing this book was personal. I see myself as an intersection…

Google’s Benevolent Interfaith Big Tent

By Lucia Hulsether

…ce the end of World War II. In opposition to Europe’s violent colonialism, Americans preferred to think of themselves as practicing a “benevolent supremacy.” As this idea circulated in media productions and other cultural texts, a national public increasingly understood US interventionism as a courageous, even self-sacrificial, project to protect global freedom. Meanwhile, however, the US found a salient alibi for the ways it maintained colonial p…

The “Nones” Are Here… And Have Been for Over 100 Years

By Emily Mace

…ry that reaches back into the late nineteenth century. Several scholars of American religious history, including Leigh Eric Schmidt and Catherine Albanese (whose relevant works were cited in RD’s “Five Must-Reads on the Nones”) have teased out strands of this older pattern of life on the margins of religious affiliation. A century ago, the religious “nones” were coming, and just as today, religious leaders wondered what they could do to stop the f…

Secularism in the US is Larger, More Diverse and More Dynamic Than Ever, But You Wouldn’t Know it From the Media

By Chrissy Stroop

…e “big three” advocacy organizations—the Freedom from Religion Foundation, American Atheists, and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State—and commented on the increasing diversification of the secular movement, as a result of which “the movement has seen a more intersectional approach.” To be sure, movement atheism has long been dominated by cisgender white men, and much work remains to be done both in terms of diversifying leaders…