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No Longer At Sea: Kate Bornstein Talks Scientology

By Kristin Rawls

…lock himself in the closet? Because Hubbard doesn’t think he’s the world’s best actor. We all craved his approval that way, and now that he’s dead the only way you can get his it is by doing exactly what he wrote—or what Miscavige says. What made Hubbard so compelling? He was a charmer. All you wanted from him was a smile. He was magnetic. Some people have that ability to charm people to protect themselves. He would stare into your eyes whenever y…

Unreleased Religious Freedom Manifesto Isn’t the Culture War Compromise It Hopes to Be

By Frederick Clarkson

…ain,” he said. “The answer is not simply civility or the knowledge of our ideals, because we have in fact known them, even written them down in times past, and civility has never saved us; it just makes us feel good while some others suffer.” DuBois recalled how: “civil rights giants like Dr. C.T. Vivian and Joe Lowery… explained to me that it was the religious freedom advocates, the civil and moderate and center left and right pastors who were in…

Smelling a Secular Funk: Debating the Power of Religion in The Public Sphere

By Anthony Petro

…f the Jewish state, she noted, was to risk the accusation that one was, at best, unsympathetic to the history of Jewish oppression, or worst still, guilty of anti-Semitism. To open space for critique, Butler drew upon the writing of Hannah Arendt to rethink the very terms of political Zionism, beginning with the question of “Jewishness” itself. Rather than consider Jewish identity as a state of being unto itself, Butler suggested that we think abo…

War of the Worldviews: Why Avatar Lost

By Bron Taylor

…triotic sensibilities. Underscoring her own patriotism, when accepting the best picture and best director awards, Bigelow dedicated them to the “women and men in the military who risk their lives daily to keep us safe.” With these words and in the film, Bigelow reminds us that war is hell, while reassuring us of our good intentions. For all the terror it depicted, the message was predictable and safe. A Modern Form of Nature Religion In Avatar, di…

Why America’s Whitewashed Thanksgiving Needs to Go: A Short Study in the Power of White Christian Mythmaking

By Peter Laarman

…nd Margaret Fuller and Charles Sumner and the Oliver Wendell Holmeses. The Best and Brightest with their Harvard and Yale pedigrees, keeping the flame of conscience and freedom alive in the face of ignorance and evil. Today the most formidable exponent and curator of the Noble New England legacy is Marilynne Robinson, who writes ceaselessly—and powerfully, let it be said—about the gifts showered upon us by high-minded New England Protestants. As m…

Letters to the Editors: On Gandhian Nonviolence

By Ira Chernus

…at was the kind of outcome Gandhi in principle always opposed. Rather, the best resolution was the binational state that Buber so courageously worked for, in which each group could faithfully serve the best interests of the other. Unfortunately Gandhi and Buber never met—neither personally, nor in a confluence of thought that might have produced a kind of “nonviolence of I and Thou.” Who knows what effects such a globe-spanning new interfaith trad…

New Poll Shows Gays and Lesbians Believe in God

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ment to Jesus Christ active in their life today. What’s surprising is the “best-selling author” who has made this startling statement is none other than George Barna – who is a conservative author and pollster. His latest poll is a spiritual profile of “homosexual adults” and the “surprising insights” are that gays and lesbians are just as apt to believe in God and be Christians as any other human being, despite their sexual orientation. As a Chri…

Why We Must Reclaim “Religious Freedom” from Christian Conservatives

By Bill Berkowitz

…njoying refugee status in the United States is an affront to our country’s best traditions and aspirations for religious freedom and equality under the law. President Obama rightly said there should be no “religious test” in our policies on these matters. But Senator Ted Cruz, among others, has said in response to the Syrian refugee crisis that the U.S. could limit refugees to Christians. I am reminded of the Spanish Inquisition in which Jews and…

Updated with Response: The Black Church is Dead—Long Live the Black Church

By Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

…d to maintain a posture of resistance to the American status quo. At their best, to borrow from Cornel West, they too are often “progressive yet co-opted.” This simply means to recognize that black Christians are a part and parcel of, as David Wills has long written, the Protestant establishment. Yet even this view of black churches says little about what is religious in the discussion. We might ask, what distinguishes “post-black church” rhetoric…

Making Sex Costly… In More Ways Than One

By Daniel Schultz

…best policy, interest groups from both sides of the question will do their best to lobby them, which, as Goldstein points out, is a much more difficult proposition than twisting the arms of elected officials. But it’s difficult not to agree with Amanda Marcotte on this one: In a common sense world, there would be no controversy over including contraception in the slate of preventive services that the federal government will soon require insurance…