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An Open Letter to Black Clergy on the Disdain for Protest

By Rev. Osagyefo Sekou

…other Emmanuel AME, and the anti-Muslim venom spewed by a leading presidential candidate, revealed a simple truth— Christianity remains a barrier not a bridge. Attacks on black churches are a tried and true tactic of the enemies of black freedom. This violent strategy is based on the belief that our churches support black resistance against state violence. Even the most hardened young black activists mourned the bloodshed in a holy space that serv…

Want a Slurpee with Your Birth Control?

By Patricia Miller

…onth for birth control pills that you can get at Wal-Mart? Why should—especially Catholics and people of faith, and Christians and people of other faiths that this is against their religious teachings … why should other people be buying others’ birth control? Why are people accused of waging a war on women if they don’t want to pay for their birth control, which is inexpensive? Now, first of all, I don’t know which 7-11 the cardinal frequents, but…

Why Egypt is America’s Enemy

By Haroon Moghul

…f it, but took whatever potential it had and drowned it in the Nile. Those who failed so many times before are not suddenly going to succeed. Because, as we saw yesterday, and as we saw so many times before, the Egyptian military does not care about Egyptians. It cares about itself. It’s no different than so many of the institutions and movements that claim to empower the Arab world and Middle East, but do nothing for it….

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

By Anthea Butler

…ntials, he is forcing the United Methodist church to perhaps take him to trial and strip him of his credentialing—simply because of his belief that the Methodist Book of Discipline is discriminatory. Rev. Schaefer is not just talking, but he is walking the walk—standing up for his son, same sex marriage, and his deeply held beliefs. That is the mark of a person of the year. While I like Pope Francis as much as anyone, I need concrete actions to ba…

Noah v. Kitschy Jesus: A Tale of Two Movies

By Jay Michaelson

…rban lawns, patriotism, douchey fashion accessories, believing in the bromides of politicians—I can’t quite pinpoint what all of these had in common, except that they were cheap, over-simplified, and kitschy. And thanks to Walter Benjamin, Clement Greenberg, the Frankfurt School, and a legion of writers and musicians allergic to the cliché, I came to reject kitsch and its quasi-fascistic associations. Feel this way, think this way, act this way—no…

Despising the Holidays: When Christians Led the ‘War on Christmas’

By Ed Simon

…ty on their part. The irony over the kabuki-play that is our annual ceremonial anger over perceived attacks on Christianity is that the only actual sustained “War on Christmas” in the West was promulgated by religious Christians. The World Turned Upside Down was written in angry response to an actual attempt at banning (or at least heavily regulating) Christmas festivities under Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan government in Britain, and concurrently in…

Want a Slurpee with Your Birth Control?

By Patricia Miller

…onth for birth control pills that you can get at Wal-Mart? Why should—especially Catholics and people of faith, and Christians and people of other faiths that this is against their religious teachings … why should other people be buying others’ birth control? Why are people accused of waging a war on women if they don’t want to pay for their birth control, which is inexpensive? Now, first of all, I don’t know which 7-11 the cardinal frequents, bu…

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

By Andrew Aghapour

…of human civilization, thanks to the new transparency brought about by social media and the internet. It used to be a lot easier to keep secrets than it is now. In the March issue of Scientific American, Deb Roy and I compare this to the Cambrian Explosion. The Cambrian Explosion happened 540 million years ago, when there was a sudden, very dramatic explosion of different life forms in response to some new change in the world. Oxford zoologist An…

Lindsey Graham’s Lying “Eye-ranians”

By Haroon Moghul

…make sure you, I, and everyone here, are focused not on wage gaps but Iranian liars? For lie they do. But how much? When crowds gather to chant ‘Death to America,’ do they really mean ‘Live Long and Prosper’? If so, was Spock a jihadist? Should we interrogate Zachary Quinto? When some Iranian leaders suggest Israel has no place in the Middle East, do they really mean Israel has a right to all of the Middle East? When they say they’re the resistan…

Dylann Roof Was Wrong: The Race War Isn’t Coming, It’s Here

By Willie James Jennings

…whiteness and the poison-filled faith in competition embedded in it. Christian forgiveness when processed on the American social and political landscape emerges as a kind of rhetorical narcotic, homemade and constantly offered to dull the pain of our racial violence. This soothing high does not help. We need to end this war by unmasking whiteness, challenging our religious faith in competition, and dealing with the long painful history of white (e…