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Reading Beinart and Lerner as Gaza Burns

By Ira Chernus

…he [imagined] danger through aggression and power.” As Beinart argues, the number of American Jews who act out of fantasied oppression is declining. But their political strength remains much greater than their numbers. Yet curiously Lerner, the professional psychologist, downplays this and the other psychological wellsprings of support for militant Zionism. Instead he focuses time and again on compassion for the very real historical sufferings of…

What Coverage of a Fatal Orthodox Baptism Reveals About Western Media

By Katherine Kelaidis

…at uncommon.” And that’s true. Millions of infants have been baptised this way over centuries (including me, by the way). What’s uncommon is for an infant to die, as was the case last week. So what happened? Well, the Romanian, Greek, and Russian press all make note of the fact that the priest baptized the infant face up while holding his hand over the infant’s face and mouth (something observable in the video of the baptism). This is not the posi…

Hell, in Rob Bell’s Own Words: State of Belief Radio

By The Editors

…who say: “I always had these questions, I always wondered about this, I always knew there was another way to understanding this…” It’s really… It blows me away. Every night, at one of these events, I just… Wow. What an amazing thing to be a part of. [WG]: Tell us, what has been your favorite comment from a reader, or, one or two of your favorite comments. [RB]: There’ve been a number who have said, “You know, I might actually believe in God now.”…

The Same Toxic Christian Right Theology Supports Both the Online Bullying I Experienced and the Cruel Anti-Trans Policy in TX — And it’s Not Remotely Fringe

By Chrissy Stroop

…bullying derives support from conservative theology, and in turn paves the way for state-sponsored persecution of, and extralegal violence against, members of the targeted groups. There’s no more room for doubt about the extent to which an authoritarian ethos characterizes the mainstream of American evangelicalism, and the human cost will be high if we can’t find a way to stop the Christian Right from destroying what’s left of American democracy….

A Shining City: The Occupy Movement and the American Soul

By Elizabeth Drescher

…working 60 hours a week. Aspiration meets desperation, and looks the other way. Or, at least so it has usually been since the Reagan ascendency of the 1980s, with middle-class Americans curiously reorienting their dreams away from what might reasonably be attainable for pretty much everyone and toward a level of affluence available to ordinary people only through a freakish, high-stakes contortion of the economy. Now that the curtain’s been pulled…

‘We’re all in this together’: The Perils of Kumbaya Rhetoric

By Peter Laarman

…eing exposed long preceded Caligula’s reign. White supremacy and the white way of thinking have held sway for 500 years now, and we see the result. This could be the point at which we start over with entirely different framing. But that won’t happen if conventional liberalism prevails. What the good liberals want to forget is that the old “normal” is precisely what stands now revealed as ethically abhorrent: the grotesque stamp of American racism,…

National Association of Evangelicals Supports Immigration Reform, But Elsewhere Discord Reigns

By Donna Schaper

…y have the only truth and a whole lot less self-righteous about it. By the way, Jesus always said that the real sin is self-righteousness. The not-so-funny thing about sin is that when you keep on sinning, real people get really hurt. When you stop sinning, repent, and are forgiven for what you have done and don’t keep on doing what you did, often real people are blessed. Isn’t That a Kind of “Amnesty”? Can We Get Consensus on That? The rest of my…

Can a Greek Monastery Be Ground Zero of Global Financial Meltdown?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…t out or submit sales receipts, and those sales are untaxed too. It was always a recipe for disaster: little in the way of reliable state income; staggering amounts of money borrowed on the cheap to make up the margins; and books consistently cooked to hide the scale of the national debt. (There are more sympathetic ways to tell parts of this story, about which Lewis has little to say. Greece was singularly ravaged by the Second World War; the G…

An Open Letter to Black Clergy on the Disdain for Protest

By Rev. Osagyefo Sekou

…y or by a wannabe Martin Luther King. While the President sermonized about cheap grace, a daughter of the church climbed a flagpole and took down the American swastika. Like Mary and Elizabeth, Bree Newsome proclaimed that our salvation—wrapped in swaddling clothes—is here in our hands. As an ordained clergyperson nurtured in the bosom of the black church, I am all too familiar with the way in which we tend to spiritualize the material suffering o…

Odd Comments by Michigan Football Coach Reveal Who Anti-Abortion Christians Think They’re Defending

By Karen E. Park

This past Sunday, at a “Right to Life dinner and auction” in a Detroit suburb, University of Michigan head football coach and keynote speaker Jim Harbaugh told his audience that women must “have the courage to let the unborn be born.” This odd phrase, which is getting attention on Twitter and elsewhere, is worth unpacking, and not just for the incredible hubris of Harbaugh essentially telling women and those who can get pregnant that they should…