Religion Dispatches
…portant. When he goes to Uganda, he’s not known as Scott Lively, but as an American evangelical. When Warren goes to Kenya, he’s not Warren, but an American evangelical. As long as they have a church title and stand for conservative politics, they have influence. The Africans don’t always have the resources to follow their statements so they say: this man of God says this is going on in the world. Or Scott Lively goes to the Uganda Anti-gay Confer…
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…ny in the deep resonances between Hochman’s and Weyrich’s statements about American conservatism. In a recent guest essay at the New York Times, Hochman argues that contemporary American conservatism has left the Christian Right—which was inspired by Goldwater and built by Weyrich, along with Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, and many others—behind in favor of a more secular, expansive, and dynamic movement that’s protecting a “beleaguered American way o…
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…ugh for us to talk honestly about socially regressive attitudes within the American Muslim community? The reality is that homophobia in the American Muslim community very likely played a causal role in producing Omar Mateen’s hate crime. It certainly wasn’t the only source of homophobic bigotry influencing him, but it was one such source, and that is reason enough for American Muslims to resist the anti-gay sentiment in their mosques and community…
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…at shaped the institutionalization of the field in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. To offer some context, below I briefly sketch this history, with special reference to the founding of the AJS in 1969 and the published proceedings of the meeting at which it was first discussed. A look back, I suggest, might help us to better understand the stakes of this present controversy and its potential for constructive conversations about the futur…
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…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…
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…and then recites from it with “absolute sincerity”. The insights that MMK offers on Muslim American life are woven throughout his non-fiction and fictional works. Between Impossible Man and Osama Van Halen, for example, we get one insider’s view of the implosion of the Progressive Muslim Union, the first female-led prayer in the U.S., and a view of the problems with contemporary Muslim-American organizations. Blue-Eyed Devil, a must for any sylla…
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…ise of American economic power during the crucial formative decades between 1780 and 1860. Beckert’s splendid book won the coveted Bancroft Prize, the highest award in American historiography, but he is far from alone in exploring the role of white supremacist violence in the dazzling ascent of the American colossus. Among recent works of distinction in this area are Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told and Walter Johnson’s River…
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…been here before, from Reconstruction to the Black Freedom Movement of the 1950s and 1960s the struggle to form a more perfect union has been continually been rejected in favor of new intransigent forms of anti-black racism. However, with each return to this very spot a portion of the nation’s soul is permanently lost. Prophets such as Douglass, King, and Baldwin have warned us time and time again that the nation cannot continue on this path and…
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…sraeli political consensus. Buber and M.K. Gandhi: Their Legacies In a July 1946 interview with his American biographer, Louis Fischer, Gandhi compared the conflicts in South Africa, India, and Palestine, “The trouble is that one side begins stabbing and killing and then the other does likewise. If one side did not avenge its deaths the thing would stop.” The inclusion of Palestine in this parallel occasioned the following reconsideration on Gandh…
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…ution.” When Timothy McVeigh carried out the Oklahoma City Bombing on April 19, 1995, he was hoping to spark the Second American Revolution. Instead, people were shocked at the loss of 168 innocent lives in the bombing. As a result, the militias that had formed, especially after the aggressive handling of the Branch Davidian community by ATF and FBI agents in 1993, became quiet until Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. Over the past few ye…
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