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Reading Beinart and Lerner as Gaza Burns

By Ira Chernus

…owing the truth as they see it. Lerner’s path to peace begins with “The first step: listening to and embracing the other,” so that each side can learn to see the world through the other’s eyes. Martin Buber, the greatest exponent of Jewish spirituality, called it “experiencing the other side.” Among Jewish Americans, this approach is put into practice most often in dialogue groups and listening circles, where Jews and Palestinians begin for the fi…

Orthodox Rabbi Imitates Pat Robertson

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…“kooky” Levin knows his stuff. His release goes on to mimic Robertson’s past statements about gays and lesbians – and the alleged acceptance they are currently enjoying in the United States – as the cause of natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes. We have seen the underground earthquake, tsunami, Katrina, and now Haiti. All this is in sync with a two thousand year old teaching in the Talmud that the practice of homosexuality is a sp…

Conservative Christians Oppose New ‘Inter-Religious’ University

By Philip Clayton

…ian Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley; its website calls it “the largest and most diverse partnership of seminaries and graduate schools in the United States, pursuing interreligious collaboration in teaching, research, ministry, and service.” Why would this relatively benign-sounding news frighten conservatives so deeply? Yet resistance from the Christian Right has already been swift and strong. Even prior to the June 9th announcement, conse…

Are School Districts Getting the Message on Government-Sponsored Prayer?

By Lauri Lebo

…gious observances because they recognize that they would probably lose a costly First Amendment battle. Could it be that in the wake of the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, in which the Dover school district had to pay $1 million in legal fees for trying to force intelligent design into science class in violation of the Constitution, other school districts around the country could be finally paying heed? True, it’s not exactly a victory for reason…

Fox Makes Mockery Of Promise To Rein In Beck’s Anti-Semitism

By Sarah Posner

…is a foe of communism and anti-Semitism). He’s wealthy; he’s a philanthropist for justice causes; he’s a Jew; he’s therefore the scapegoat, whether conservatives invoke tropes about wealthy Jews or their secret control of money or an imaginary one-world order; or as Beck put it, a “shadow government.” Beck — unoriginal, as usual, but also as usual taking his derivative conspiracy theories over the top — further peddled the utterly false claim that…

Why Faith Needs Redemptive Struggle to Be Meaningful

By Liz Theoharis

…. Barber reminds us of the importance of education and history in the long struggle for justice and righteousness. Referring to how those in power kept the poor divided in history, he speaks about how both enslaved persons and poor whites were denied literacy before the Civil War. He implores all of us to see the connections among our struggles and to come together to build a powerful movement. He summons us to resist the divide-and-conquer strate…

What To Do When Fred Phelps Arrives in Your Neighborhood

By Susan Henking

…” approach to theology and to picketing was, in an 8 to 1 ruling, deemed distasteful but protected speech. So far, the Court has not offered a view of whether recently-enacted laws limiting picketing at funerals are constitutional. Cohocton recently passed a resolution (which has limited legal standing) to ensure picketing is located as far from funerals as possible. Why? Because of this Supreme Court ruling and Fred Phelps. Yes, his website indic…

Racist Remarks by popular BYU Religion Professor Spark Controversy

By Joanna Brooks

…missionaries, to as many as 3,000 students a year. This semester, more than 800 students are registered in Professor Bott’s classes. (Eleven are registered for BYU’s African-American history course this semester.) Professors at BYU routinely find themselves having to address racist and sexist content taught in Bott’s classes, and many are outraged and embarrassed by his rogue remarks to the Washington Post, say sources at the university. “Dr. Bott…

Something So Broken: What’s Frightening About Beasts of the Southern Wild

By Michael Pasquier

…the film’s “screw-tightening methods,” smothering musical score, and “a distrustworthy slickness reminiscent of a British Petroleum oil spill clean-up commercial.” Much of the applause is directed at the film’s heroine, Quvenzhané Wallis, the six-year-old non-professional actor who grew up in a Louisiana bayou town and who may soon become the youngest Academy Award nominee of all time. Sharing much of the admiration, and the object of much of the…

Colorado’s Personhood Initiative Fails—For Now

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ain waves!). She is an actual member of the species homo sapien, at an honest-to-goodness stage of biological development. She has a body and a life, about which she gets to make decision. She has circumstances, which she takes into account when she makes those decisions. And I’m betting she understands all those things—body, life, circumstances, the whole deal—better than does the average voter, even a well-meaning voter who doesn’t like to think…