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Russian Operative Maria Butina, Who Leveraged Christian Right Connections, Sentenced For Conspiracy

By Becky Garrison

…ply infiltrating this annual breakfast: In a July 21, 2018 article for The New York Post, [Jeff] Sharlet noted, “At a 2017 prayer breakfast in Moscow, Doug Burleigh—a current Fellowship leader and lifelong Russia hand—appeared alongside Butina’s handler, Alexander Torshin, to declare ‘a breakthrough in relations between Russia and the US is about occur.’” In an email exchange, Rob Boston, Editor of Church & State, spoke about this connection betwe…

Why the World Needs Religious Studies

By Nathan Schneider

…cultures. Christians and Muslims were trading with each other during the Crusades, and Marco Polo made it to China centuries before Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit missionary. Traders have to know how to temporarily avoid inconvenient subjects long enough to get what they’re looking for. They learn to be careful around the sensitivities of others. Scholars of religion learn to do the same thing. Both, it could be said, are on the lookout for value. Busi…

Ramadan: Third Day is the Charm

By Amina Wadud

…he intention was to eat it all, in addition to our family traditional fast-breaking fruit salad, the meal that followed prayer, and then the stash. But the stomach was NOT having it. There it was every chip, every cookie, every piece of cake, every bit of candy, waiting and now permissible, but the stomach just could not hold as much as the eye had coveted during the daylight hours. I don’t know if children who do not fast have this experience — y…

How to Wreck Your Faith: A Theologian Teaches “Outlaw Christianity”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…me when Thomas is talking in the Bible, when Jesus decides to go back to Jerusalem, and all the other disciples say, “You can’t do this. You’re going to get killed. They hate you,” but Thomas is like, “I’ll go!” So, it’s weird that we take this one aspect of Thomas and call him “Doubting Thomas” rather than “Willing to Die With Jesus Thomas,” which he really is. He’s the only person close to Jesus willing to do that. I became fascinated by the fac…

Whatever COVID-19 Brings, This Chaplain Wants You to Remember That the Death Rate is Ultimately 100%

By J. Dana Trent

…offered to these conversations in the public square, as is evident in the New York Times’ ‘Death and Dying’ series with Dr. George Yancy. But even in the face of pandemic, we still search only for cures in lieu of meaning. Is there anything you had to leave out? It was clear to my editor that the earliest manuscript draft was actually three books: a personal narrative of a daughter’s grief; a chaplaincy memoir of an interfaith minister; and an in…

New Age Tragedy in Sedona: Non-Indians in the Sweat Lodge

By Johnny P. Flynn

…; it’s just that no one religion has the corner on the borrowing and incongruity of sacred stories. New Agers who use the sweat lodge are not so much “stealing Indian religion” as they are weaving a new religion out of strands of what they believe to be old religions. Various forms of the sweat ceremony were used by Indians from Canada into southern Mexico. In the south they’re called temescals and resemble a wet sauna or steam room; tribes in the…

Meet the ‘Bronze Age Zionists’ — Far-Right Jews Embracing Fascism in the Wake of October 7

By Ben Lorber

…age, share their memes, repeat their slurs, and embrace their culture war crusades. They circulate with pride videos of rabbis and Jewish academics delivering anti-immigrant speeches at conferences of American Renaissance, a White nationalist organization which has welcomed Jews (though not without controversy). One image shows Israeli and Confederate soldiers bound in ‘one struggle,’ while another caricatures a friendly embrace between a Jew and…

Founding Father John Adams’ Advice to Rick Perry: Don’t Meddle in Religion

By Warren Throckmorton

…these national fasts, he later regretted it, telling good friend, Benjamin Rush, “The National Fast, recommended by me, turned me out of office.” Whether Adams fell from favor over a prayer day is a matter of historical dispute. However, it is quite clear that Adams reevaluated his support for religious declarations. Gov. Perry and the rest of us can take a lesson from Adams’ hindsight. On June 4, 1812, Benjamin Rush had written to John Adams with…

Anti-Gay Forces On Offense in Europe; ‘African Islam’ Challenged by Extremists; Irish Marriage Foes & ‘Sounds of Sodomy’; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…the Offensive’ Cato Institute analyst Dalibor Rohac wrote last week in the New York Times that while “it is probably just a matter of time until gay unions and same-sex adoptions become palatable to most Slovaks, opponents of these reforms have launched a pre-emptive assault to make these reforms legally and politically costly.” Last year a constitutional amendment was adopted to defined marriage as a union “solely between man and woman,”and Rohac…

Rage or Courage?: YouTube Terrorism Take Two

By Bruce B. Lawrence

…erceived insults against them and their Prophet? For starters, pick up the latest issues of Time and Newsweek, still the two leading weekly magazines, known to all Americans and read by many—especially in airports. On my flight to Istanbul, Time was available in the first airport lounge, Newsweek in the second. Against a backdrop of shouting mobs, smoke and fire, Time’s headline reads: THE AGENTS OF OUTRAGE An embassy attacked. Diplomats murdered….