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

By Barbra Barnett

…bauchery, but the parade tradition is about more than drunken tourists and cheap plastic beads. New Orleans’ Mardi Gras parades began in 1857, with the Mistick Krewe of Comus, a secret society that wanted to emulate the Mardi Gras parades of Mobile, Alabama. From the start, Mardi Gras krewes were exclusive, elite clubs. Such organizations can be important networking opportunities in a small community like New Orleans, where people are used to doin…

Sarah Palin and the Politics of Victimization

By Randall Balmer

…ager for attention. The puppy piddled in the corner more than once, taking cheap shots at political adversaries (including McCain campaign apparatchiks) and using the annoying, sophomoric reference to the Democratic Party as the “Democrat” Party. But Going Rogue was not unpleasant. The second book in the Sarah Palin œuvre, however, America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag, crosses the line from cute puppy bouncing on his back legs…

The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right

By Frederick Clarkson

…ional or decadent. That said, Neiwert slams those who misuse the term for “cheap political theater,” writing that “inappropriate comparisons tend to obscure the reality of what’s taking place.” So what is the reality? Neiwert recently spoke with Religion Dispatches about violent rhetoric, imprecatory prayer, and eliminationism. Religion Dispatches: You begin the book talking primarily about the excesses of media personalities like Rush Limbaugh,…

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

By Andrew Aghapour

…ts. Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Faith Behind Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola Pitchstone Publishing, May 2015 Caught in the Pulpit is a close cousin to The Clergy Project, an outreach effort to “current and former religious professionals who no longer hold supernatural beliefs”—many of whom must closet their newfound skepticism to preserve their careers and communities. For Dennett, closeted atheist clergy are not simply tragic figures, they…

Springtime for Ross Douthat?

By Daniel Schultz

…y now), Gustavo Gutierrez, Marcus Borg, James Cone, Sallie McFague, or any number of other thinkers and theologians that Douthat does not recognize. The only people who want to bring back Niebuhr are conservatives. (I’m an admitted fanboy, but that’s about coming from the same church background as Niebuhr as much as anything.) And that doesn’t even get to the worst of it. Douthat misunderstands Francis’ amazing, charismatic realignment of Catholic…

On Eve of Sudan Split Clashes Continue

By Ashley Makar

…were direct clashes between the SPLM and the Sudanese army in late May. I last saw William on a kibbutz in Israel, where he was seeking asylum. It was three days before the January 2011 referendum in which the Southern Sudanese voted to secede from the North. While his friends in Tel Aviv were revving up to rally for independence, William told me it’s not an occasion to celebrate; it’s a time to pray. The referendum on Abyei’s self-determination…

Evangelicals Clutching Pearls Over Student Debt Relief: Lord Have Mercy!

By Peter Laarman

…king-class and blue-collar Americans aren’t actually speaking for working-class and blue-collar Americans. Then, with his usual acuity, Bouie drills right down to the real story of an epochal risk-shift and wealth-shift going back to the first resurgence of neoliberal thinking in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s: The student loan debt crisis has at least some of its origins in decisions made during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s to reduce state support for…

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

By Shaul Magid

…e solution: develop Haredi communities in the territories where housing is cheap (through government subsidies), where they can maintain a lifestyle separate from secular Israel, and where their communities can continue to grow at an enormous rate. This is a particularly modern problem. The growth rate of the Haredi world is not solely the result of their big families. When you have a society that is essentially middle-class averaging seven childr…

Four Reasons Why Egypt’s Revolution Is Islamic

By Zaid Hassan

…on-Muslims to support those ideals while transcending easy stereotypes and cheap fear-mongering. We should therefore pause in our reactions and ask ourselves; perhaps an Islamic revolution in Egypt is not de facto a bad thing. Finally, I’m reminded of Karen Armstrong’s description of the historical mission Muslims are tasked with: “In Islam, Muslims have looked for God in history. Their sacred scripture, the Quran, gave them a historical missio…

A Shining City: The Occupy Movement and the American Soul

By Elizabeth Drescher

…lizations, unrepressed by social orders that developed for the benefit of classed rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. Aspiration Meets Desperation Mostly, members of the various wedding parties were unperplexed by the protesters offering testimony against an economic system that excludes far too many Americans from the fullness of even the most modest constructions of “domestic bliss.” “That cat’s a f**king loser,” offer…