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Moses on the Mayflower: Was the Prophet a Founding Father?

By Linell Cady

…the ways in which the idea of God’s chosen people morphs into the idea of American exceptionalism—at times underwriting American imperialistic tendencies. Feiler’s now-formulaic promotion of a biblical figure to resolve conflicts at the intersections of religion and politics may be a successful recipe for book sales. But one wishes that Feiler would use his literary gifts to tell a more complicated story of the interweaving of religion and politi…

Fear of U.S. Marriage Equality Exported to Africa

By Kapya Kaoma

…lse meme perpetuated by the likes of Pastor Rick Warren, Scott Lively, the American Center for Law and Justice, Lou Engle, and Sharon Slater’s Family Watch International. It’s a claim that has been reflected in the reactions to the Supreme Court ruling from African political and religious leaders who’ve vowed to “defend” their nations from what, they’re being told, will be an invasion of same-sex marriage from the U.S. From conservative religious…

Mormons Fight Marriage Equality in Mexico; Is Catholic Church Italy’s Anti-Gay NRA?; Nigerian Anglicans Cut Ties With UK Diocese; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…reports BuzzFeed’s Lester Feder. Armenia: Folk dancing group kicks out gay American Kyle Khandikyan, a 23-year old American living in Armenia was kicked out of a folk dancing group after the instructor learned that he was gay. Khandikyan, who currently lives in Yerevan and first came to Armenia through Birthright Armenia as a volunteer with PINK Armenian, was told by the instructor that he did not belong to this “nation,” that he was “not Armenian…

State of the Union Stuck in that Olde-Time Semi-Niebuhrianism

By Ira Chernus

…. But he went further, making the newfound clamor for “civility” a mark of American exceptionalism: All American children share “the dreams of a little girl in Tucson”; all Americans believe that those dreams “deserve the chance to be fulfilled”; and that shared belief “sets us apart as a nation.” As commentators quickly dubbed the president’s optimistic, future-oriented SOTU rhetoric “Reaganesque,” I thought of Garry Wills’ clever term for The Gi…

Peter Beinart’s Controversial The Crisis of Zionism: Right Diagnosis, Wrong Treatment

By Shaul Magid

…. If Beinart’s book were an indictment at all it was not of Israel, but of American Jewry. And the anger it evoked tells us more about what the fervent American Jewish pro-Israel critics really care about. Some years ago I presented an academic paper at an American Academy of Religion conference comparing Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Jewish Reconstructionism, to Baruch Spinoza, the quintessential modern Jewish heretic. A senior scholar stood up…

Beinart’s Indictment And The Evangelical Right

By Sarah Posner

…the close ties between these organizations and the apocalyptic wing of the American evangelical world — and the American Jewish establishment bears blame for glorifying that relationship, as well as for its role in the destruction of democracy in Israel, and of liberal Zionism. (For example, I have reported on two of the organizations Beinart discusses, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major American…

A Shining City: The Occupy Movement and the American Soul

By Elizabeth Drescher

…That’s what makes the “city on the hill” shine. That’s what, at the end of the day, offers hope for the resurrection not just of the American Dream, but of the American soul….

The Irony of the American Studies Israel Boycott

By Jon Pahl

…a course of action that isn’t hypocritical and arbitrary, U.S. scholars of American Studies pledge to “boycott” American academic institutions (e.g., give up their salaries) if those institutions tacitly or explicitly, through investment or research grants, for instance, supported U.S. violations of human rights—occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, drone strikes, NSA monitoring, Guantanamo Bay, Jim Crow incarceration patterns, immigration walls an…

Reflections on an Ineffective Negro Leader

By Jonathan L. Walton

…ion. It further goes without saying that the vast majority of contemporary Americans would have sided with the abolitionist movement, fought against Japanese American internment, supported anti-lynching laws, and would never in a million years have voted for Richard Nixon! In our minds, we are a moral people—we always will be, because we have always been. This explains, in part, America’s contemporary love affair with Martin Luther King Jr. We wer…

Changing the Jewish State and the State of Jews: J Street and the Future of Israel

By Mark LeVine

…ent Israeli Ambassador to the United States, is clearly very worried about American Jews losing faith or even interest in Israel. As an American himself, he knows that while support for Israel is extremely broad within the Jewish community, it is not necessarily that deep, and has to be reinforced continually to insure it is there when needed. And so, since his arrival as Ambassador, Oren has had a sharp eye out for dissent in the Jewish community…