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Churches Can No Longer Hide the Truth: Daniel Dennett on the New Transparency

By Andrew Aghapour

…uals and practices, modes of being. Is the Clergy Project itself perhaps a way for atheists to do more than just talk about belief and non-belief? “Daniel Dennett 2” by Dmitry Rozhkov – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons My own view is that we ought to pay attention very closely, gather as much evidence as we can, take advantage of the new transparency: learn, learn, learn, and in turn inform, inform, inform. Get the infor…

The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right

By Frederick Clarkson

…s currently featured by elements of the conservative movement, “is in many ways,” he stresses, “the signature feature of fascism.” An authentic, broad-based fascist movement is not here yet, he avers, though he warns that eliminationist rhetoric is not unlike “the distinct odor of burning flesh. And when it hits our nostrils, we dare not ignore the warning.” Neiwert guides us through some of the current thinking about the definition of fascism, an…

“Hey You! Anti-Semite!”: A Jewish Krewe does Mardi Gras

By Barbra Barnett

…rather not disclose their membership standards. Jews were often, but not always, excluded from these patently goyisha festivities. In 1872 the first Rex, “King of Carnival,” was Jewish businessman Louis Solomon. But by the mid-twentieth century, the notable and obvious exclusion of prominent Jews from Mardi Gras merriments had become the norm. Historians and journalists of 1960s New Orleans society observed that in order to avoid embarrassment (pr…

Of Zionism and Anti-Zionism: The Ultra Orthodox and the Settler Movement in Israel

By Shaul Magid

…to their rabbis and could conceivably move en masse. Second, they have the numbers that no other settler community has. If they decide to move back to Israel, the facts on the ground would change considerably. This does not bode well for the Settler Zionists. They know that one day, perhaps soon, there will be a peace agreement, and that agreement will include significant uprooting of facts on the ground. The more bodies living in the settlements…

Is the Satanic Temple Just an Elaborate Prank? 10 Questions for the Author of ‘Speak of the Devil’

By Joseph Laycock

…Most Americans claim to value tolerance and religious freedom. But talk is cheap, especially if you have never seriously thought about what these commitments might actually mean in a pluralistic society. I was disturbed to read some of TST’s Christian opponents openly renouncing religious freedom if it meant respecting the freedoms of Satanists. I also think TST is forcing the public to think more critically about what “religion” is. They are dire…

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

By Mati Wagner

…rocess their discriminatory work permits. These “guest” workers, who today number between 250,000 and 400,000 (half of whom are illegal) did not only toil. They fell in love and established families and had children, probably more than 2,000 children, who were sent to state-run schools like Tel Aviv’s Bialik-Rogozin to learn with young Israelis their age to read, to write and to add and subtract—in Hebrew. They also were taught about the miraculou…

‘People You May Know’ Reveals a War on Democracy Being Waged With Big Data

By Chrissy Stroop

…his stuff that’s free and really hard to say ‘no’ to. CS: Sure. I like the way you emphasized that in the film, because I think it’s a really important American reality that many Europeans probably don’t grasp. Just, the extent to which it’s difficult for those who aren’t religious to get themselves plugged into a socially supportive community, which you need all the more because we hardly have a social safety net in America. KGV: Absolutely. Down…

Want a Slurpee with Your Birth Control?

By Patricia Miller

…e?” It’s one of the bishops’ favorite arguments: that birth control is so cheap and so widely available that it isn’t even a question of whether the religious freedom of objecting organizations should be burdened by having to pay for it. The bishops have been claiming since 2012 that birth control is “ubiquitous and inexpensive” and anyone who wants it can get it without insurance coverage for $10 at Target. And as usual, bishops’ allies on the r…

Religion Profs Critique PBS’ God Documentary, Call it Simplistic

By Matthew Avery Sutton

…tuffed with facts and dates and figures” and sometimes strained “to find a way to tie them together.” He also called it “an unusually serious and, to use a word the producers would probably rather not see, intellectual endeavor for television, one that doesn’t make many compromises for short attention spans.” Some professional historians and scholars of American religion, in contrast, criticized the show from the opposite direction. This is not a…

Crowdsourced Catholicism: New iPhone App Lets Users Forgive Sins

By Vincent Gonzalez

…ed that she had a disabled son. Here and there, Penance hurts. Between the cheap jokes and bourgeois self-loathing are murmurs worth hearing, if only as microfiction. Likewise, the app’s agnosticism facilitates a lucid tableau of spontaneous popular theology. Of the 24 confessions, only one references God as an active third party, two command the Sinner to forgive themselves, and three confessors speak in the first person as God. “God forgive me,”…