…in 2000. Kaylor wrote, “You were correct to connect the news about Perry’s phone call with Robison’s effort in 1980. In fact, the connection is much stronger.” Kaylor reported in June that although Robison denied that his group was supporting a particular candidate—in fact, the group was divided over who to support, as was the religious right leadership in 2008—the televangelist appears to be a prime motivator of Perry’s prayer rally scheduled for…
…e’d made plans to meet up in case we got separated and had exchanged phone numbers. In the middle of the tawaf, the call to prayer came. The guards stopped the tawaf. Some people complied and started to form lines. I found a spot between two women, each with their husbands, and sat down on the line. This seemed an ideal spot until a woman in black niqab squeezed in on my left just as we started the prayer. Okay then. Before we had completed silent…
…inant image to reflect Muslim responses to what seems to be provocation at best and blasphemy at worst, from an Islamic perspective? Neither cover story attempts to provide the genealogy of rage/outrage, which needs to be traced; its source tells much about its original, durative power. It comes not from 9/11, but from the end of the Cold War, and it comes not from Samuel Huntington, the Harvard political science professor and his (in)famous “clas…
…But instead of inspiring figures of human potential, they come off more as cheap foils that Brooks is using to market his theories to the wealthy, literate class of policy wonks that he hopes will take his ideas seriously. More, Brooks is no Rousseau. And no novelist. If there is something mildly, warmly inspiring about his theoretical claims, they fall flat when explored through the medium of these sadly hollow characters. Brooks is perhaps best…
…purpose. Following Jesus’ own path of virginity, however, was seen as the best life of all. Even when Protestant reformers emptied monasteries and convents, what they celebrated about marriage were friendship, parenthood, and sexual discipline; as Paul famously wrote, “it’s better to marry than to burn.” Apart from seeing the demise of sex as a problem, Regnerus’s argument further distinguishes itself from Christian thought by calling upon Gary B…
…tic ability, size, shape, profession or personality, to connect with their best selves.” On the other hand, scarcity is essential to SoulCycle’s business model. The classes may be open to anyone “regardless of their…profession,” but I somehow doubt that sanitation workers outnumber investment bankers in SoulCycle studios (one of which is across the street from the Goldman Sachs headquarters in Tribeca). Classes with popular instructors sell out in…
…anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred and sixty-six.” The author of Revelation meant that 666 was a person’s name turned into a number via the Jewish numerological practice of gematria. Since every Hebrew letter was also a number, the letters of a name could be added up to produce that person’s number. Here’s an example of gematria using an alphabet we’re more famil…
…istian Zionism, and its usually concomitant apocalypticism, of “paranoia.” Best even dismissed prominent evangelical author and pastor John Hagee’s view that God ostensibly used Hitler to forward his divine plan of gathering the Jews in Israel as mere “dabbling in anti-Semitism.” As I argued in a rebuttal likewise published by The Forward, Best’s breezy, dismissive whitewashing of the more unseemly aspects of evangelicals’ support for (the most ag…
…nts than their quota allows. Most Muslim countries have a quota; a limited number of hajjis permitted from that country in any one year. This number is set by hajj authorities in Saudi Arabia, because, in all fairness, there has to be a cap on how many Muslims converge on the place. Right now, it stands at around 3 million! Countries with large populations of Muslims have many more applicants than their allotted number of pilgrims. This means you…
By Randall Balmer, Anthea Butler, Evan Derkacz, Jeff Sharlet, and Diane Winston
…o-gooders—we should respond with—more noblesse oblige? A government of the best and the brightest, the myth of meritocracy, a carrot for strivers and the bludgeon or the dole, depending on which party is in power, for those who’ll never make the cut? Thin gruel. Randy writes: “faith functions best from the margins of society and not in the councils of power. When you conflate religion with the state, as some members of The Family are prone to do,…
