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‘Rising Global Tide’ Of Anti-Gay Crackdowns; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…report on a massive corruption scandal, was the latest in a series of anti-Western campaigns that have “targeted civil society and pro-democracy groups.” LGBT groups are seen as a symbol of the West’s attack on traditional values. And no group is more symbolically associated with the West. As political scientist Emil Edenborg explains in his new book, LGBT rights have been characterized as the key difference between the West and more traditional…

Rick Perry’s Jesus Imperative: A Report from Saturday’s Mega-Rally

By Sarah Posner

…ecostal movements, especially those emphasizing spiritual warfare and round-the-clock prayer and worship, and which have produced another sort of army. That one is not particularly intrigued by the horse race of politics, but rather focused more exclusively on the supremacy of Jesus and preparing for his return. That caused some controversy for the organizers of Perry’s event, which included speakers and endorsers who follow the New Apostolic Refo…

Why We Need a Public Black Theology for the 21st Century

By Vincent Lloyd

…c Radio, in The New York Times, and even at The Root, the Henry Louis Gates-founded blog geared toward the Black upper-middle class. Where were the Black theologians? They do exist: in our age of institutionalized multiculturalism, every divinity school and seminary knows that they need one. Academic Black theology began with Black Christian intellectuals inserting themselves into the public square. In 1966, a group of theologians bought an advert…

Lying About Our Religion, And Other Problems With Polling

By Michael Schulson

…kind that fills your Facebook newsfeed and comes up in conversation at low-key parties—will be lucky to attract more than a couple million readers, out of the country’s more than 200 million literate adults. In other words, the “public” is more scattered, niche-y, and diverse than you might think, given the way the term is used in highbrow media, or in political appeals like the State of the Union (not that you watched it). Polling is one way to…

Peter Beinart’s Controversial The Crisis of Zionism: Right Diagnosis, Wrong Treatment

By Shaul Magid

…stic foundations over the past forty years. One can argue with details, out-of-context quotations (show me one writer on this topic who isn’t guilty of that), and premature conclusions; but on an issue this complex and volatile, one can always do that. However, such criticism misses the point. Or, more accurately, perhaps that is precisely what the fervently pro-Israel critics do to evade confronting the real issue. The basic narrative of Crisis i…

Death in the Desert: Riding With the Samaritans

By Lauri Lebo

…ho had crossed the border. Recently she spoke with a mother looking for her 13-year-old son. The coroner had recently received the remains of a body that might be the child. The body had a missing front tooth with other teeth grown in. Rodriguez called the woman to ask for a photo of her son smiling. “Why smiling?” the woman kept asking. Rodriguez was trying not to say. Finally, she explained as delicately as she could, for dental identification t…

Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?

By Lee Gilmore

…This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various participants bring to the playa each year. With issues like these in mind, part of how I’ve come to understand this event is by looking at the various ways in which participants are…

Secure Borders? Not a Chance, Senator

By Ira Chernus

…ony that history teaches. The feverish quest for “national security” in the 1950s and early 1980s only underscored America’s sense of insecurity and made the nation seem less secure. Now, too, the more we spend on guaranteeing absolutely “secure borders,” the more we will reinforce our fears that the border may not be secure. The faster we chase the elusive goal of security, the further into the distance it recedes. This is always the sad fate of…

RDBook: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World: An Interview with Michelle Goldberg

By Mandy Van Deven

…ights than by terror of overpopulation, which was incredibly intense in the 1960s and 1970s. Since then, women’s rights activists have mostly taken over the structures created by the population controllers, and they’re also doing work that helps women around the world challenge prevailing power arrangements. Partly as a result, conservative and fundamentalist forces accuse feminists of being American imperialists. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega’s San…

A Response to Hussein Rashid

By Amjad Mahmood Khan

…al Shezad, a United States citizen, was recruited and trained by the Tehrik-e-Taliban — the very group that proudly claimed responsibility for the May 28th attacks on the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Lahore. In short, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community courageously seeks to defend Islam in the face of bitter persecution and hostility. Groups like the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community deserve an opportunity to be heard in America. Instead of advancing and at…