…” amount of force or “too little” force in Gaza, according to a mid-January 2024 poll. That’s 95% support for a plausible genocide: Image: The International MA Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation at the Gershon H. Gordon Faculty of Social Sciences, Tel Aviv University Polling data from the Agam Institute suggests that some 60% of Israeli Jews oppose allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza. That is, 60% of Jewish Israelis believe all 2.2 milli…
…e paragraph Rep. Raskin quoted at the Summit for Religious Freedom in April 2024—think of what it must have been like to read or hear those words in the bleak winter of December 1776. The American people needed a victory on which to pin the last shreds of their hope. They needed a win. General Washington had Paine’s words read aloud to his soldiers on Christmas night before they crossed the Delaware River and routed the British and Hessians at Tre…
…bills, which rolled out starting in 2023 and became a defining part of the 2024 legislative cycle as well. Those aren’t trying to police speech in the classroom per se, because that [tactic] was running into legal issues on First Amendment grounds. Instead, they try to reshape what services schools provide to their students. These bills aim to create the language that talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion and talking about how to create…
…that Trump’s enemies are possessed by demons, while the Trump campaign has promoted the idea of “prayer warriors” fighting the forces of Satan. Not surprisingly, many Christian leaders promised that the January 6 insurrection would be a reckoning with the “demonic influence” that “stole” the election of 2020, and there’s strong evidence that “figures within the Trump White House were strategizing with” the prayer warriors of the New Apostolic Refo…
By Randall Balmer, Anthea Butler, Evan Derkacz, Jeff Sharlet, and Diane Winston
…But the center is an assertion, not a fact; an etiquette, not a place. Its code, its theology, is most fully embodied in Americanized Arminianism—a Protestant tradition of good works and propriety, “distinguished liberals” and polite realpolitik. “Arminian moralism,” notes historian Charles Sellers in his study of Finney’s age, The Market Revolution, “sanctioned competitive individualism and the market’s rewards of wealth and status.” It did not e…
…des, but exploded in 2003 with the publication of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code which, more than anything, showcases Brown’s muddled if provocative incorporation of the Gnostic worldview into the novel. Fans of The Da Vinci Code don’t need to go out and purchase Robinson’s translation, they can simply read the Gnostic texts online at the Gnosis Archive. Or, if they’re interested in other early contenders for New Testament inclusion—the Gospel of P…
…re about the “film noir” feel of Caprica. It’s a cross between a 1930s pre-code movie and Metropolis. The cops, the smoking, the old-fashioned cars; I thought Caprica was supposed to be technologically savvy, not a cross between the future and the past. What does this say about its inhabitants—and the show’s creator? I agree with Diane, this week seems to be a placeholder for something to come, but in the process, I did not learn much. To be fair…
…institutions like the 1788 Constitution, the presidency, and the military code of honor. But at what costs do we maintain a revered institution like the military code of honor? Holocaust levels of genocide threaten the Syrian Kurds. Why isn’t the prospect of mass murder enough to make Mattis reconsider the politics of personal honor? If that grim prospect is not enough, what is? Mattis’ deferral to presidential rights, for instance, should challe…
…ons with tax exempt status under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. Those changes were set in motion after record amounts of campaign spending by (c)(4) groups in 2012, and tea party complaints that their applications for (c)(4) status were improperly denied for partisan reasons. Although Congressional Republicans tried to make a scandal of the application process, further congressional investigation showed both conservative and progr…
…e to mine.” Brunei: US officials discuss human rights, death-to-gays penal code U.S. officials, including the ambassador to Brunei, discussed human rights issues with Bruneian officials at a November 30 meeting in London. The new penal code includes a death penalty for those convicted of sodomy. Northern Ireland: Legal challenge to marriage ban moves forward Two gay couples were granted permission for a judicial review of their challenge to laws t…
