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Too Hot for Shul: Rabbis Seek Healthy Israel Dialogue After Gaza

By Sarah Posner

…estioning Zionism as central to Jewish identity. Rabbi Brant Rosen, who for 17 years led the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Illinois, recently stepped down from his pulpit, following a summer of protest against the Gaza war with the left-wing Jewish Voice for Peace, on whose Rabbinical Council he serves. (Compared to J Street’s 800-plus-member Rabbinic Cabinet, JVP’s two-year-old Rabbinic Council has just 50.) Rosen told me he…

Racist Remarks by popular BYU Religion Professor Spark Controversy

By Joanna Brooks

…for sale in LDS bookstores and on the shelves of LDS homes. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, when questioned about the ban in public, LDS Church leaders continued to sidestep its origins and rationale. Mormons hungry for a more direct approach welcomed LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley’s 2006 address, “The Need for Greater Kindness,” as a long-awaited denunciation of racism: “Racial strife still lifts its ugly head. I am advised that even ri…

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

By Lauri Lebo

There’s an old joke in newsrooms that goes if you can find three examples of something, it’s automatically worthy of a trend story. And so, according to the rule, it’s too early to call this a trend. Still, it is interesting that two news stories came out yesterday about school districts ending government-endorsed religious observances because they recognize that they would probably lose a costly First Amendment battle. Could it be that in the wa…

On the Taliban’s Hit List: An Exiled Pakistani Singer’s Plea to Save Music

By Austin Dacey

…al experience between your musical and artistic life and your religious or spiritual life? Islam and music have never been in conflict. Many people agree with the idea that Islam came to the Indian subcontinent as a result of some great literary and musical work of the Sufis. Pashtuns also have a number of great poets and saints, who always used music as a strong medium for spreading their message of peace and love. The Saudi-funded Wahabi sect, h…

Mormon Bloggernacle is No Choir

By Krista Kapralos

…said Courtney Kendrick, whose C Jane Enjoy It blog is ranked among the top 800 blogs on Technorati. By comparison, Times and Seasons is ranked at about 31,000, and By Common Consent is ranked at about 25,000. Mormon Mommy Wars is ranked at about 40,000. Kendrick has blogged in the past for Segullah, a blog that is included on the list at the Mormon Archipelago, an online portal that aggregates blogs in the Bloggernacle, but she now prefers to wri…

The Fire This Time

By Anthea Butler

…holarship done this summer. Meanwhile, I try to hold it together to write a 800-word piece without crying and wanting to tear my hair out about the pain of my people. I’m not writing prophetic words to you anymore. You fix this shit. I’m done carrying the cross of America, its false promises of democracy and inclusion, the documents that excluded me and called my ancestors three-fifths of a person. You figure it out. I’m about comforting Black peo…

Gambian Leaders Portray Anti-Gay Law as Defense of Islam, Ugandan Politicians as ‘Christmas Gift’; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…u of Kenya, this author, and many others as homosexuals. Regardless, their numbers are growing—forcing anti-gay pastors and their Western allies into social panic. Kadaga’s claim to have discovered Western homosexuals adopting African children and “confining them in gay communities abroad to train them on gay practices” is certainly a new low in her attempts to vilify LGBTQ people. Kadaga does not, of course, have any evidence for such claims—it i…

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

By Michael Pasquier

…a hurricane pounded his home in the coastal village of Cheniere Caminada in 1893. He was swept out to sea and rescued eight days later by the crew of a pilot boat 18 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River. Upon his return to what was left of Cheniere Caminada, he discovered that his parents and brother had died along with 800 other residents. Those who survived the flood moved “up the bayou” (as they still say in Lafourche Parish) to to…

The Horror Mugabe Doesn’t Want the World to See

By Frederick Clarkson

…e Medical School of the University of Zimbabwe in Harare closed on November 18. The next day, 1000 health workers tried to march to the Ministry of Health to protest the ongoing collapse of the health system and to demand food and clean water—but they were quickly dispersed by heavily armed, helmeted riot police (see cell phone photo, top). “If they catch you,” one student matter of factly told Donaghue at the buffet, “you are going to be cut like…

The Intellectual Source Code For National Conservatism Can Be Found at This Niche Catholic Publication

By Peter Schwartz

…unding the National Conservative movement is not without precedent. Between 1800 and 1950, Europe endured what amounted to a second Catholic Counter-Reformation. In the latter portion of the 19th century, predominantly Catholic countries in Europe—which of course European nations have largely been since the 1648 Peace of Westphalia—experienced an upsurge of royalist and irredentist passions to which the Catholic Church often attached itself (for e…