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Sacred Real Estate: What Makes Washington’s WWII Memorial So Dreadful?

By Michael A. Elliott

…ctable and fluid. The Lincoln Memorial, for instance, has acquired a whole new symbolic register thanks to its role in the African American freedom struggle of the last century, particularly as the site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s oratory. Who knows what work it might perform in the future. And who can tell what the World War II Memorial might mean to Americans decades from now. If we are lucky, its unapologetic braggadocio will look like a histor…

What Happens When We Use Horror Movies to Interpret the Real World? 10 Questions for the Authors of ‘The Exorcist Effect’

By Eric Harrelson and Joseph P. Laycock

…he Exorcist Effect” has contributed to some destructive outcomes that have ruined lives. The greatest of these was The Satanic Panic, a conspiracy theory that was rendered more plausible in the 1980s after cable television put films like Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Omen into heavy rotation. So we hope this book encourages readers to think about the power of media. We need to find ways to get the public to think more critically about the…

Savoring the Haterade: Why Jews Love Dara Horn’s ‘People Love Dead Jews’

By Shaul Magid

…, the Soviet Union, Syria etc. Many locales where Jews once lived, and sometimes still live, but were also banished from or murdered. And then memorialized. People Love Dead Jews is a book about collective victimhood and the inability to disentangle from it. Not circumstantial victimhood, not situational victimhood, but systemic victimhood. The premise is that people—not everyone of course—but all kinds of people in all kinds of places, throughout…

A far-right protestor wears a MAGA tophat with a grim expression.

Conservative Evangelicals Aren’t Hypocrites, They’re Sadists

By Daniel Schultz

…an imperfect instrument of God’s work to maintain the sacred order of the world. The cruelty is indeed the point because the cruelty manifests the justice that maintains the proper order. So how do you counteract all of this? Arguments from reason don’t work—they’re working from a different mental model. Arguments from values don’t work—they don’t share the same values, or at least not in the same way. Arguments from identity don’t work—they don’…

In His ‘Forgiveness Day’ Sermon — a Slightly More Sophisticated ‘GloboHomo’ Rant — Kirill Lays Out an Authoritarian Vision in Which His Version of God Might Dominate and Rule the Human Race

By Sarah Riccardi-Swartz

…oviet Russian Orthodox Church, which sees itself, in many respects, as the new moral arbiter for the world. My western interlocutors, those who convert to ROCOR and align with Putin’s traditionalist—and one could argue fascist—values, do see Russia as the defender of Christian values “in a world gone mad.” Post-Soviet Russia, the creation of both church and state as it were, a geopolitical, religiously attuned country, becomes a beacon of hope for…

The Omission of the “New” Evangelicals

By Tom Davis

…ct is that if women do not have control over their reproductive lives, they cannot get economic justice. It would be a huge oversight if a key fact of women’s lives were increasingly slighted in the desire to forge a new kind of political liberalism….

Will Mindfulness Change the World? Daniel Goleman Isn’t Sure

By Jay Michaelson

…to-social-psychologist for the TED Talk set. And his new book, Focus, is a New York Times bestseller. But before any of that fame, Goleman was a hardcore Buddhist meditator—and remains one today. His early books were about the development of the contemplative path, and throughout his work has run the theme of how meditative practice, in secular or spiritual contexts, can lead to greater happiness and peace—and conversely, how the disconnects in ou…

The Lethal Mix of Religion and War, Or, Why the World Ended in 1099

By Jay Rubenstein

…e history of the Middle Ages. After French and German warriors conquered Jerusalem in 1099, there was incredible excitement back home—a sense that one of the most important events in history had just happened and that the people who had fought in this war were among the most virtuous men who had ever lived. When the veterans returned home, however, they acted in ways far from saintly. One of the heroes of the campaign, Thomas of Marle, was declare…

Why I’m Grateful for 2012, The Rapture, and other Millennial Delusions

By Jay Michaelson

…uade moderates of their political platform. And religious millennialists’ crusade for ideological purity has torpedoed the Republican Party, creating a “Republican Gomorrah,” as Max Blumental called it, that cannot appeal to both swing voters and its insane rightist base. In other words, unless millennialists are right that a massive change is coming, they tend to subvert the realization of their dreams. December 21, 2012, the absurdly popular Lef…

Obama Gets Religion in Indonesia

By Hussein Rashid

…Indonesia as an equal in his speech. Unlike Cairo, where the (Arab) Muslim world was treated as unequal potential partners, the Indonesians are treated as a country worthy of America’s respect. Cairo was aspiration, and Jakarta was the real. There are huge differences in political processes in play. Indonesia is a democracy with strong civic institutions and a thriving civil society. The Arab world is dominated by autocracies, while Afghanistan an…