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American Buddhism: Beyond the Search for Inner Peace

By Joshua Eaton

…hat there is support for social engagement in “Buddhist doctrine, ethical ideals, archetypes, legends, and historical precedents.” Which of those do you find most inspiring for your own social justice work? In terms of doctrine, I would start with the Buddha’s tenet that suffering originates from the three unwholesome roots: greed, hatred, and delusion. Classical Buddhism regards these “defilements” as embedded in individual minds and thus primari…

Pox Americana: Franzen’s Tragic Vision

By Peter Laarman

…ped within the constraints of a larger systemic corruption. Franzen’s work deals directly with this systemic corruption and in a way that is both hilarious and highly indignant. Salvation History One also has to wonder how a reviewer might claim that there’s no religion, nothing about the business world, no ethnicity, and no military service. These subjects ripple right through Freedom, though not in un-ironic ways. If anything, for example, Walte…

Convicted Wall Street Con Artist Finds New Target: Gays

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…dishonest present-day work with the ex-gay industry. Whether it was shady deals on Wall Street or shading the truth on gay issues, Goldberg is someone who lacks credibility and can’t be trusted,” Besen said in a press release. It’s more bad news for the “ex-gay” industry that has, for years, sought to make money, and headlines, selling a “cure” for homosexuality. Denounced by the American Psychological Association, the movement relies on question…

The Vampire Who Beat Wells Fargo

By Joseph Laycock

…mericans consider statements from banks to be “not at all believable.” The number is even higher for mortgage companies. Last month, Patrick Rodgers of Philadelphia “foreclosed” on a local Wells Fargo branch. In an act of legal jiujitsu, Rodgers was able to prove that Wells Fargo exhibited a pattern of failing to communicate with its clients and was awarded $1000. When the bank didn’t pay, he arranged for a sheriff’s levy to sell the bank’s assets…

Marriage equality comes to Slovenia, continues to spread in Mexico; Civil Union legislation approved in Sicily, debated in Peru; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…that in doing so it breached European law. The British government asked a number of countries and all 50 U.S. states to clarify whether the jurisdictions recognize the marriages of same-sex couples who wed in the United Kingdom. Equalities Minister Jo Swinson told the Guardian, “One of the things we committed to do in the coalition agreement is recognising that for gay people who are in a civil partnership or now have got married, and who are tra…

Silence of Latino Religious Leaders Enable GOP Tolerance of Trump Spectacle

By Arlene M. Sanchez Walsh

…ing party. So what indeed are we all left with when spectacle is virtuous because it’s spectacle? Because it’s empty of ethical motives and empty of just consequences? We’re precisely here, where Latino/a economic power can shut down some business deals, but can not muster enough political power to shut down the GOP’s rhetorical war against immigrants. Until Latinos/as grow tired of viewing the spectacle of American politics as outsiders and vote…

Mark Twain’s Blasphemy

By Michael A. Elliott

…ult to recall what an unlikely candidate the novel is for that office. “It deals with a series of adventures of a very low grade of morality,” reads the pronouncement of a member of the infamous Concord (Massachusetts) Library Committee, which banned the book from its shelves shortly after its publication. Ever the shrewd opportunist, Mark Twain seized upon the free publicity, calling it a “tip-top puff” in a letter to a nephew. Americans have mad…

Pastor David Brooks, Your Sermons Are Growing Stale…

By Peter Laarman

…ed nation that seems to have lost its way. We are proud that your new book deals explicitly with religious themes. You have been leaning in this direction for a long time, and we are glad to see you make your conviction that good religion is essential to good living ever more explicit. Your own intense and transformative religious experience shines through these pages, and we will never disparage the validity of any experience of the sacred. But w…

Lincoln, Clinton, and Trump: From Strategy to Spin to Straight-Up Bullshit

By Martin Jay

…The second difference between Clinton’s and Trump’s approach to mendacity deals with the very nature of lying itself. The fundamental structure of the speech act we call lying involves four distinct features: (1) the speaker knows or thinks he knows the truth. (2) He or she utters a deliberate falsehood, asserting the opposite of what he or she knows to be the case. (3) This false utterance is performatively designed to persuade the listener that…

Trump and Hindu Nationalism: A Match Made in Bollywood

By Andrea R. Jain

…nfranchise Indian Muslims. Trump insisted, “We must fix our terrible trade deals and protect America’s intellectual property, something you know a lot about.” While Modi and his fellow Hindutva neoliberals want the state out of the way of private enterprise, they want the state to use public resources to actively promote a form of Hindu yoga. United by anxiety about immigration—and especially Muslims—as well as perceived threats to capitalist and…