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When Rabbis Seized Control of the Synagogue: The Role of Authority in American Judaism

By Zev Eleff

…communities—save for the Reconstructionists—identified Jewishness through one’s mother and not the father. I will focus on the substantial political and religious literature during this decade that stresses the “fracturing” and “polarization” of American life. The patrilineal decision decentered American Judaism, causing rifts within the various movements and shifting the center of concern from the United States to Israel. So far, I have delivere…

A Victory for Conservatives in Revised AP History Curriculum

By Peter Laarman

…the test will effectively marginalize important ways of teaching about the American past, and force American high schools to teach U.S. history from a perspective that selfconsciously seeks to de-center American history and subordinate it to a global and heavily social-scientific perspective. De-center American history? Heaven forfend! Subordinate our glorious saga to a “global and social-scientific perspective”? Never! National Review’s Stan…

Mormonism’s Black Issues

By Joanna Brooks

…ership of Mormon Church president Brigham Young, the ordination of African-American men ceased, African-American men and women were prohibited from temple worship, and intermarriage was officially discouraged. Some historians believe that Young’s about-face on the status of African Americans may have been motivated by embarrassment stemming from an 1847 scandal involving an excommunicated African-American Mormon named William McCary, or by politic…

Moses on the Mayflower: Was the Prophet a Founding Father?

By Linell Cady

…the ways in which the idea of God’s chosen people morphs into the idea of American exceptionalism—at times underwriting American imperialistic tendencies. Feiler’s now-formulaic promotion of a biblical figure to resolve conflicts at the intersections of religion and politics may be a successful recipe for book sales. But one wishes that Feiler would use his literary gifts to tell a more complicated story of the interweaving of religion and politi…

What is Juneteenth to America? It Has to Be More Than ‘Black 4th of July’ if It’s to Be Truly Meaningful

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…Black life does in fact matter on a national scale which requires African Americans and all other Americans to see within the Black celebration of emancipation the universal human desire to be free from oppression. Secondly, Juneteenth must not repeat the mistakes of the inclusion of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr holiday in the American civil calendar. The transformation of the radical message and legacy of Dr. King’s life into a bland “day of servi…

Uganda’s Radical Anti-Gay Measure and the American Religious Right

By Michelle Goldberg

…world’s cultural authenticity. Meanwhile, African leaders purport to fight Americanization by aligning with some of the most powerful and chauvinistic of American religious leaders, and even taking US government money. “When it comes to homosexuality… many African religious leaders view progressive social witness on LGBT equality as a ‘Western agenda,’” writes Kaoma. “In many respects, their denunciation of homosexuality is an attack on the West r…

How Trump’s Assertion of “Power to Pardon” Tramples the American Sacred

By Spencer Dew

…lues, values which Philip Gorski, in his recent and impassioned defense of American civil religion, American Covenant, expands beyond simply freedom to include equality, “national solidarity (‘We, the People, in order to form a more perfect union’), the common good (or ‘general welfare’) and active citizenship,” suggesting that “civic inclusion and recognition should perhaps be added to our national creed as well.” Tyranny isn’t merely the opposit…

Gandhi, his Grandson, Israel, and the Jews

By Shalom Goldman

…zed American political atmosphere one wonders if there is any way—polite or impolite—to conduct a serious public conversation about the Middle East in general, and about Israel in particular The clash between Arun Gandhi and the American Jewish leadership, Israeli intellectuals, and American Christian supporters of Zionism may have been inevitable. Sadly, this was a noisy and ugly clash, not worthy of the tradition of exchange and dialogue that pr…

Reading Racism: In Confronting White Christian Fragility ‘Feeling’ is as Important as Ideas

By SueJeanne Koh

…o longer feel like a threat or problem, but a realization of hope for “a more perfect union.” It is to echo, in a different way, Du Bois’s insistence—that one can be Hindu and American, Muslim and American, Buddhist and American; and that perhaps this possibility can lead to transformation for us all….

‘Biblical’ Disaster in Haiti: Pat Robertson and the Curse of Unyielding Ignorance

By Matt Recla

…lation of Haiti is somewhere around thirty percent. In Port-au-Prince that number jumps to almost forty percent. The majority of these churches are Pentecostal. These churches are overwhelmingly independent, indigenous Haitian entities, though some are linked to North American denominational Pentecostal churches. Haiti, along with Jamaica and Puerto Rico, is home to one of the fastest growing Pentecostal populations in the Caribbean. As I watch th…