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Mitt Romney and the Ghost of Anti-Mormonism

By Joanna Brooks

…alone in 1904. What you see instead are other common pressure tactics: arm-twisting of political leaders by religiously-affiliated constituents, and the use of ridicule as a means of galvanizing public opinion. Ridicule of Mormon underwear, temple practices, and gullibility—these are standard tropes we have seen since the late nineteenth century. And by way of response, Romney is very reserved in public discussion of his religion, as was Smoot. R…

A One-State Solution for Israel and Why It Will Work

By Haroon Moghul

…ot be Jewish,’ or a two-state solution, an Israel and Palestine living side-by-side. Get over it, folks. Not happening. The time for a two-state solution passed in the previous millennium. Friedman didn’t just miss the window of opportunity, he’s missed the closing credits, too. It’s highly unlikely Israel will uproot its settlers, especially considering the strength of support they can summon in election after election. Not to mention, I do not b…

Turkey and Egypt: Islam’s Future?

By Haroon Moghul

…mic practice a far cry from where the country was even two decades ago. Turkey offers something fellow Muslim nations can’t: Access to the West, and the institutional sophistication to be attractive and engaging. But I think there’s another country, too, that will have a new part to play in the changing dynamics of Muslim reform movements. And that’s Egypt. This is something of a forecast, but I see promising conditions ahead. Turkey is farther al…

On Zion’s Mount

By Jared Farmer

…ere essentially Christian Zionists. Their “homeland” mentality was quite un-American. True, many American groups, not just hyperreligious ones, have looked upon the United States as a providential nation; a place prepared for them by God. But a providential nation is different than a providential homeland. The word “homeland” has become so charged—and now so banal—since 9/11 that we have forgotten that the United States is, in terms of political s…

Irony Repeats Itself: Reconsidering Reinhold Niebuhr in the Trump Era

By Gary Dorrien

…curred in writings in which he lamented the supposed inferiority of African-American culture and other non-white societies. Niebuhr argued that the human capacity for free and responsible agency is the highest expression of humanity’s spiritual nature and destiny. Only individuals can do that, for groups have no capacity for self-transcendence. Groups cannot organize for ethical ends; they simply seek to preserve themselves. But Niebuhr said that…

Leper Messiah: A Jesus Freak’s Search for the Meaning of Bowie—A Critical Novella

By Mark Dery

…of Ziggymania, a hormonally fueled religious hysteria that convulsed Anglo-American teen culture from 1972 until 1974, if not later. We’re watching her in a 1973 report on the Bowie phenomenon by the BBC news program Nationwide, uploaded to YouTube. “They said ‘e was comin’ ‘round the back! I’ve been waiting for ages to see ‘im,” she wails, agonized at missing the star’s limousine arrive. “Why’re you so upset?” a bemused interviewer asks, across…

How Breivik’s “Cultural Analysis” is Drawn from the “Christian Worldview”

By Sarah Posner

…erials to start children as early as first grade on a diet of his collision-of-worldviews thesis. That framework forms the basis for his conspiracy-minded theories about American progressives, the Democratic Party, and what Noebel depicts as a fifth column right inside the US Congress led by “hardcore socialist” Nancy Pelosi. Noebel has also looked to Lind, writing in Understanding the Times that Lind “is not bashful in identifying the Marxist inf…

What Did Kyrie Say That Was So Wrong? When Black Antisemitism Meets White Jewish Privilege

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…deas shared by Irving on this question have been circulating in the African-American community for decades. Beliefs that were primarily discussed in Black bookstores, barbershops, Black nationalist study groups, and informal gatherings are now disseminated via YouTube and social media platforms reaching a wider and more sympathetic audience, most of whom have been immersed in Abrahamic religions. As I’ve previously discussed on RD, much of Black l…

When the Golden Rule is Used to Silence Dissent and Protect the Politically Powerful

By John Stoehr

…nd decorum tends to look like authentic strength, and, when that’s set side-by-side with kindness, authentic strength usually wins though it’s a lie. The real problem, West might as well have said, isn’t that Texas is corrupt. The real problem isn’t that the state’s government failed its people. The real problem is carpetbaggers and their “New York values” coming down here, making us look bad. That’s not nice. As I said, Bruni isn’t wrong in terms…

Rather Than Attack Amnesty For Labeling Israel an Apartheid State Critics Could Address the Actual Problems

By Joshua Shanes

…s: from theft and redistribution of Palestinian property by the state since 1948, to the 2018 nation-state law. Yet these groups only rarely acknowledge these issues, let alone discuss what to call them. Is Amnesty’s case for Israel constituting an apartheid state an overstatement, or perhaps the wrong category of international law to apply? Scholars and laypeople working in good faith should be able to discuss this without vitriol, ad hominem att…