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Rebuilding the Wall of Separation: A Progressive Discussion on Church & State

By Bruce Ledewitz

…lear and unambiguous first principles of the Constitution were and are the best guarantee of our right to figure it all out for ourselves, and our best defense against the rear guard action being waged by the religious right and its allies in our time. So, sure, let’s have public religious and non-religious expressions in all of their richness and variety. But let’s also confront and defeat anything that would erode, in fact or appearance, the rol…

The Case for Treating Near-Death Experiences Like Acid Trips

By Andrew Aghapour

…ese are also the sites of our most entrenched debates. This is perhaps the best context for understanding the rise of the “heaven tourism,” a genre of first-hand accounts of near-death journeys to a supernatural realm. Best-selling books including Proof of Heaven, The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, and Heaven Is For Real share two elements, which are both captured in this trailer for the 2014 film adaptation of Heaven Is For Real : First, these ac…

Updated with Response: The Black Church is Dead—Long Live the Black Church

By Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

…within seminaries of suffering, these venerable institutions represent the best of American society in general, and black human strivings in general. For instance, the organizational acumen and creative cultural genius of early black denominations disrupted the logic of white supremacy. With few resources other than a theological vision of equality and unrelenting commitment to freedom and justice, black congregations became sites of social improv…

The Two Faces of New Atheism

By Konstantin Petrenko

…galvanize American nonbelievers and turn atheist manifestos into national bestsellers. When President Obama acknowledged nonbelievers in his inaugural address, he recognized a group of people who had previously been invisible in American politics. Of course atheists remain a distrusted and despised minority, and it will take time for politicians to begin to acknowledge personal disbelief publicly, but for the first time, led by a group of articul…

Why Taxing the Rich is the Godly Thing

By Peter Laarman

…t capital strike. The hardworking and hard-pressed folks sitting up in the cheap seats would cheer him on—and maybe even think about voting for him again, and voting for Democrats this fall. One little problem with this scenario: Obama has surrounded himself with once-and-future high-income individuals who are themselves highly susceptible to supply-side dogma that says the rich must be curtsied to and coddled if the nation is to prosper. We shoul…

Israel’s Immigration Debate: “Where is the Jewish Spirit?”

By Mati Wagner

…on deteriorated with the beginning of the second intifada in fall 2000 and cheap Palestinian labor became increasingly inaccessible due to curfews and roadblocks designed to prevent terrorist attacks. And they came, creating in the process a mosaic of cultural diversity. Most of Israel’s foreign workers (30 percent) came from Thailand but many migrated from the Philippines (18%), and from China (10%), Nepal (6%) and Romania (5%). They were willing…

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

By Peter Laarman

Talk is cheap, and sentimental talk cheapens public discourse in dangerous ways at a time when total sobriety is required. Eight weeks into a public health and economic catastrophe, the facts before us should be sobering enough: Disease and death in this pandemic overwhelmingly afflict communities of color (e.g. despite making up just a third of the state’s population, 70% of the dead in Louisiana have been African American; in Michigan the numbe…

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

…n Right and the GOP—an assault that’s advancing to disturbing degrees in a number of Republican-controlled states, even if a court in Texas has stayed the investigation into the Does, for now. Apart from that context, I wouldn’t bother writing a column about an incident of online bullying, something I and every vocal marginalized social media user with any visibility, along with every journalist who covers controversial topics—especially if the jo…

Why The Advocate‘s Choice of Pope Francis for Person of the Year is a Mistake

By Anthea Butler

…Pope Francis as much as anyone, I need concrete actions to back up the sentiments. Until the dogma changes, talk is cheap….

Noah v. Kitschy Jesus: A Tale of Two Movies

By Jay Michaelson

…an’t quite pinpoint what all of these had in common, except that they were cheap, over-simplified, and kitschy. And thanks to Walter Benjamin, Clement Greenberg, the Frankfurt School, and a legion of writers and musicians allergic to the cliché, I came to reject kitsch and its quasi-fascistic associations. Feel this way, think this way, act this way—no! It took another several years before I really understood that some people, perhaps most people,…