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The Bible is a Good Book, But God Didn’t Write It

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…force that aura around the Bible and competing to be seen as taking it the most literally. What do you make of that? I think it’s sick, though I think there is less of it now than during the Bush years—we’re making progress, as strange as it sounds. The only one really talking this way now is Rick Perry. He keeps coming out against gays and in favor of being a Christian as if those are two things that go together. I think it’s a reality show. I th…

In a Time of Irrational Fear and New Media: The Deadly ‘Dance Plague’ at 500

By Ed Simon

…a full-scale epidemic than making its victims perform their dances in the most public of spaces. The authorities turned a crisis into a nightmare scenario worthy of a canvas by Hieronymus Bosch. Breughel’s painting can scarcely impart the full nightmare of Strasbourg’s dance plague, when what was typically joyful was transformed into something hellish. The gaping mouths and spinning eyes, arms and legs akimbo, leather shoes in bloody tatters and…

Changing the Jewish State and the State of Jews: J Street and the Future of Israel

By Mark LeVine

…s it directly at odds with AIPAC, which has long been considered among the most powerful lobbies in Washington and the spearhead of the “Israel lobby” more broadly in the United States. With extremely close ties to leading politicians and policymakers and the fearsome ability to elect or defeat candidates based on their positions on Israel, AIPAC has for decades been able to help shape US foreign policy in the Middle East, and toward the Israeli-P…

Fear of a Catholic Ghetto

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…tic Catholic identity? Say it with me, class: No artificial contraception! Most Protestant church bodies in the United States have come to approve of contraception under some circumstances. The Roman Catholic Church has not. I mean, not officially. If you are inclined to think of the Catholic Church as the church which has stayed faithful while other schismatic sects have veered from the truth, that will likely strike you as significant. Some of…

Can I Get Some Birth Control Pills With That Slushie?: Unpacking the Contraceptive Mandate Rollback

By Sunnivie Brydum

…ad permission to deny an entire category of coverage? Patricia Miller: The most interesting thing about the astounding breadth of the proposed exemption is that it confirms what I and other opponents of the original, ever-expanding exemption suspected in the first place—that this was never about an actual conscience exemption as they have been traditionally understood, but was about allowing any employer to opt out of birth control coverage just b…

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

By Anthea Butler

…c and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.” What Pope Francis is doing is walking a tightrope. Instead of pushing dogma, he’s pushing a change in tone, not in substance. Because he is carefully eliding the church’s teaching and focusing on compassion, many liberals and media pundits—including Th…

When Being “Christian” Means Supporting Trump: An Argument For Hiding Your Faith

By Jonathan Malesic

…Bush’s presidency, when I wrote the book. Since then, I have rethought my strong stance in favor of secrecy. But the deep problem remains the same: by identifying their faith so strongly with politics, conservative Christians have married their self-understanding to the fortunes of the Republican Party’s presidential candidates. Even if that candidate manifestly aims only at self-aggrandizement, well, so be it. In the Bush years, conservative Chr…

Dispatches from the Borderlands: The Immigration Impasse

By Manuel A. Vásquez

…own responsibility in encouraging undocumented immigration, and without demonstrating how unauthorized immigrants have in effect subsidized the expansion of the American economy through their cheap labor, the provisions in the bill allowing for a path to legalization were hard to defend. Into this vacuum come restrictionist voices that frame the issue in purely individualistic, ahistoric terms: hordes of immigrants are coming in, willfully breaki…

Dispatches from the Borderlands: “They Came at Night, Trying to Kill Us!”

By Manuel A. Vásquez

…ural communities and around towns that witnessed factory shutdowns. In the most visible example, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is investigating the murder of an undocumented Mexican immigrant by four local teenagers in a Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, a small town in the Appalachian Mountains, which has experienced tough times as its coal-based economy has collapsed. Into this post-industrial marginal space, immigrants, oftentimes flee…

Want a Slurpee with Your Birth Control?

By Patricia Miller

…rt case as inspiring examples of American religious conviction and told guest host Norah O’Donnell that cutting contraception out of insurance policies wasn’t a problem: Is the ability to buy contraceptives, that are now widely available—my Lord, all you have to do is walk into a 7-11 or any shop on any street in America and have access to them—is that right to access those and have them paid for, is that such a towering good that it would suffoca…