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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…

Pop-Eye: Meat The Wrestler

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…he matter of identity is the human body in all its aged protuberances, its scarified flesh, its rotund, risqué, and otherwise resolute features. That many major US film critics (Ebert, Turan, Hoberman, Scott, et al.) praised Rourke’s performance and ignored the religious dimensions shows how little, again, the news media has any clue about religion, except when something like Mel Gibson’s Passion is stapled to their foreheads. Stranger still, even…

Doubt v. Predator: A Vatican II Parable

By Gabriel Mckee

…oss-pollination of secular and religious cultures. Set in a Bronx Catholic school in 1964 (taken from Shanley’s own childhood experience), the school’s principal, Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), is almost comically tyrannical. The parish priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), is unconventional, almost hip, peppering his sermons with jokes and hugging students. The setting is ripe for tension, though it doesn’t explode until Sister James (A…

‘We’re all in this together’: The Perils of Kumbaya Rhetoric

By Peter Laarman

Talk is cheap, and sentimental talk cheapens public discourse in dangerous ways at a time when total sobriety is required. Eight weeks into a public health and economic catastrophe, the facts before us should be sobering enough: Disease and death in this pandemic overwhelmingly afflict communities of color (e.g. despite making up just a third of the state’s population, 70% of the dead in Louisiana have been African American; in Michigan the numbe…

RDBook: Apocalypse Without God

By Nathan Schneider

…nd constructive theology. I’m not particularly interested anymore in doing scholarship. I’ve done that. For me, the goal of scholarship has always been thinking constructively. We must begin to understand how these complex systems work and how they’re interrelated. This means understanding not only how natural systems work, but also the interrelationships of symbolic systems, of economic systems, of political systems, and the like. But where do re…

Romney Goes to Bat Against Reid in Nevada

By Joanna Brooks

…s the ugly down side of a speculation-and-spending fueled boom cycle, with many voters looking for a politician who will mirror their own feelings of fear and resentment. How ugly is it getting? Check out Sharron Angle’s latest television ads which depict Reid as the ally of scowling, bandana-browed Latino gangstas and Angle as the ally of white schoolchildren and college graduates—an open appeal to the racist us-vs.-them sentiment that always sur…

Can a Greek Monastery Be Ground Zero of Global Financial Meltdown?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…s.” The public schools operate with surprising inefficiency, with students scoring the lowest numbers in Europe despite having four times as many teachers as Europe’s highest ranked system, in Finland. There are there separate government owned defense corporations. As for Greek health care, it is unclear whether waste or outright theft by state employees is the greater drain on a hopelessly overburdened system. And then there are the pensions: al…

Religion Profs Critique PBS’ God Documentary, Call it Simplistic

By Matthew Avery Sutton

…ars contributed toward) American higher education has dramatically shrunk. Scholars are simply not doing a good enough job of making their research accessible and relevant to the public. Meanwhile, we have successfully mastered the art of boring people. PBS (especially its American Experience series) has stepped into the academy-public gap, bringing together the very best scholars with writers, directors, and producers who understand what it means…

Playing Hooky: Will Boycott of Catholic Church Spur Reform?

By Nathan Schneider

…l that divides us, whatever it is. The bread and wine we use is materially cheap and unsatisfying; what we experience in them is supposed to come from a wealth beyond. In the presence of God, and among people of different races, classes, and opinions, the mass should nourish us in our common humanity. So whom exactly is one harming by boycotting, by staying home in solitary prayer? The earthly Church might miss your money in the collection—that’s…

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

By Mati Wagner

…arrangement violated basic human rights, annulling in the process 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 s…