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Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

By Lisa Miller

…nces to heaven as well as history and theology. I spoke to the head of The New Yorker’s cartoon department about cloud-and-angel cartoons; to David Byrne, formerly of Talking Heads, who wrote that great song “Heaven” (“a place where nothing ever happens”); to Albert Brooks, who wrote and directed Defending Your Life. I included references to Marc Chagall, The Simpsons, folk songs, slave spirituals, Monty Python, Michelangelo, Hamlet, Homer, popula…

Haiti and the Push for Theological Questions

By Paula M. Cooey

…nine on the Richter scale. It devastated the population. Estimates of the number of people killed range from 10,000 to 100,000. At the time the quake struck, worshipers filled the churches honoring their dead. The churches, the worshippers, and the city around them were effectively destroyed. Not long after the major quake hit, a tsunami followed that killed those who had rushed to the beaches in fear to avoid the havoc of the earthquake. The cat…

Aasif Mandvi on Islamophobia, Acting, and the Long Shadow of Jon Stewart

By Haroon Moghul

…out? Anything to make a social impact?” I had been on the Daily Show for a number of years at this point, and spoken to a lot of Islamophobes, people who had a lot of misinformation about Islam and Muslims. It was a personal thing to me, and it was an issue I thought I could lend my voice to in a satirical space. Were there any particular misconceptions or fears you wanted to address? There was a lot of stuff about Shari’ah Law, the protests again…

Another Manufactured Outrage: Rep. Ilhan Omar Did Nothing Wrong in Listing Hamas, Israel, and U.S. Together

By Joshua Shanes

…more effective if it were honest. And perhaps that would have lessened the number of death threats and other vile correspondences she has received. Second, others have said that she deserved the criticism for its political harm, that this hurts the Democratic party. Perhaps, but that doesn’t make much sense either, because the manufactured outrage made it worse. If a Democratic leader had privately contacted her and said, “Ilhan, you have to clari…

Diplomatic Suckerhood: Why Israel Is Fighting Toward its Own Demise

By Ira Chernus

…yed the same sense of anxiety about weakness when he complained to the New York Times that with the Obama administration “focusing solely on settlement building and not on what the Arab countries should also be doing for peace, Israel felt that it was being driven to its knees and delivered to the other side.” That’s a bizarre exaggeration. In fact, the administration is also focusing on what the Arab countries should be doing: moving toward norma…

Debate Heats Up Over “Francis Effect”

By Patricia Miller

…one to measure the pontiff’s influence” than, say, actual metrics like the number of people going to mass or returning to the church. According to Burke, you just have to “ask around” Boston to find folks who know someone who’s thinking about returning to the church or who feels less horrible about the church than in the darkest days of the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal, which had Boston at its epicenter. That’s a pretty low bar, but of course n…

‘Pro-Life’ Theater, Open White Nationalism, and Virility Fear — Day 3 of NatCon

By Annika Brockschmidt and Ben Lorber

…Ancient world: Let me tell you what I see on the horizon at the dawn of a new chapter, as we embark on a rebounding, what I like to call the New West, a vision of a sprawling global empire, but of a collection of nation states working in concert, borne together by shared culture and common values. Philosophy, Roman law, and the values of the Holy Bible. This is what we mean when we say ‘Western civilization’. “Pro-life” theater Catholic Universit…

Death With Dignity: Combatting Religious Opposition to Physician-Assisted Suicide

By Krista Kapralos

…The debate has largely focused on spirituality and ethics, but experts say new medical technology that has opened the door to the practice leaves religious organizations in a bind. Catholic leaders have long been supportive of pain-management measures, up to and including high doses of morphine that slow a patient’s respiration to the point of death, said Courtney Campbell, a professor of religion and culture at Oregon State University, and an exp…

U.S. Bishops Reject Pope Francis’ Priorities

By Patricia Miller

…was the last time the guide was completely overhauled, rather than draft a new guide for 2016. The 2007 guide was created after the previous version was widely interpreted as saying that Catholics had to elevate opposition to abortion as their main criteria for evaluating candidates, which was used to pillory John Kerry in the 2004 election. The 2007 edition, however, retained opposition to abortion and euthanasia as “foundational” issues for Cath…

When God and Gender Mix: New Book Examines the Southern Holiness Movement

By Colin Chapell

…ge how they understand their own identity. If academic achievement and the number or type of initials after your name is the most important thing in the world to you, then it will change how you view your own masculinity and femininity. Similarly, if having children matters most to you, then you can only be truly “manly” or “feminine” if you have kids. Is there anything you had to leave out? Historians always want to include every interesting anec…