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Sharbat Gula’s Experience Exemplifies the ‘White Savior’ Lens Through Which Most Americans View Afghanistan

By Sara Kamali

…teve McCurry, and the media broadly, profit through money, accolades, book deals, and more jobs, while their very human subjects continue to suffer, often remaining nameless and untraceable. Like McCurry’s exploitation of Sharbat Gula and profiting disproportionately from the rights of her image, many members of the international community—the United States’ white military industrial complex and White Feminist Majority in particular—have regarded…

“Religious Freedom” and the Conservative Quest for Absolute Truth

By Ira Chernus

…welling.” (It’s chapter two of his book, After Heaven.) Though the chapter deals overtly with American religious life in the 1950s, I find it a useful key to unlock the paradoxes that arise whenever religion meets conservative politics. The gist of the argument as I read it (begging Wuthnow’s pardon for the oversimplification) is that conservatives want to live in a home and a religious community with inviolable boundaries—stout walls, both lit…

Schools Should Compete for Cash, Obama Says

By Peter Laarman

…d well-paid neo-liberal types who gave us the NAFTA and other skanky trade deals have the nerve to keep saying, “Trust us. We know better than you. This will be good for you.” Very much what Mr. Obama has been saying about his RTTT program. Ethically speaking, this much should be obvious: public education must never be structured like one of those ghastly reality television shows in which the winners are lauded (and often given false hope) while t…

What Did Kyrie Say That Was So Wrong? When Black Antisemitism Meets White Jewish Privilege

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…enounce the antisemitism of West and Irving respectively. Also there are a number Black Jews who felt compelled to denounce West and Irving as not being legitimate Black Jewish voices and causing harm to real Black Jews (read: some attachment to the White Jewish community via birth, marriage, or conversion). This has set up a troubling dichotomy of the “good” Black Jews versus the “bad” Black Hebrew Israelites. The mission of the good Black Jew is…

What Robot Theology Can Tell Us About Ourselves

By Michael Schulson

…t people don’t connect faith to the seemingly commercial details of, say, iPhones, or robots that care for the elderly, or the dynamics of personal relationships conducted over Skype, even though these changes have a bearing on the way we relate to other human beings. As an alternative to this silence, Staley’s work touches on two possible modes of religious response to technology, which I’ll call—because sci-fi topics deserve sci-fi names—the Str…

Capricology: Week 3: Apotheosis, Anyone?

By Salman Hameed

…nted to run away from this excuse of a mother. Meanwhile, Daniel Greystone deals with the fall of his corporate stocks, and his desire to remain in private life, unrepentant about his daughters “actions.” Unfortunately for Greystone, he must enter into the court of the public confessional, and by the end of the show, has agreed to appear on Baxter Sarno’s talk show—to confess in order to shore up the plummeting company stocks. Confession is also p…

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…

Distortions Aside, Clergy Support Gay Rights in Surprising Numbers

By Peter Montgomery

…ial is evidenced by one of the most striking findings in the survey, which deals with support for same-sex marriage among clergy in the “Uncertain Middle” (which, remember, is a 41 percent plurality of the overall group). When asked whether they support marriage for same-sex couples, civil unions but not marriage, or no legal recognition at all, only 26 percent of clergy in the uncertain middle initially choose marriage equality. But when asked a…

Hysterical Heretical Hollywood Humanism: The Theology of The Adjustment Bureau

By Jay Michaelson

…obstacles in his way—everything from traffic accidents to rigged business deals—and threaten Norris with death if he reveals their existence to anyone. One angel, nicknamed “The Hammer,” (played beautifully by Terence Stamp) warns that if he follows his heart, not only his dreams but Elise’s too will be ruined; he issues this warning in the form of an injury during her performance. So Norris faces a dilemma: Will he resign himself to fate, or pur…

Faith-Based Initiatives in the Obama Administration?

By Bill Berkowitz

…of administration cronies, and began reshaping how the federal government deals with the needs of the poor. Despite the administration’s ceaseless touting of its “compassionate conservativism” and its desire to unleash “armies of compassion” to deal with the nation’s social ills, Bush’s faith-based initiatives never made it out of Congress; no effective legislation was passed. Team Bush was able to establish Faith-Based and Community offices at e…