Religion Dispatches
…d part of the the world are aware of this selective reporting from Israel; Americans less so. This widespread American ignorance of the variety of political opinion within Israel is the result of a sustained decades-long campaign on the part of organizations represented in the Conference, a campaign which reflects the acute unease that dissident Israeli opinion generates in the United States. One of the prime ‘offenders’ in the eyes of the self-ap…
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…rnalists repeated government lies about things like the Vietnam War to the American people. As Americans lost faith in their media, they became more open to the idea of liberal bias. That widespread suspicion of mainstream journalism created a space for conservative media to grow while promoting the notion of liberal media bias. This is how we wound up where we are today, with a plurality of Americans believing media are biased toward liberalism,…
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…itic Because They’re Anti-White: “A genuinely candid confrontation between American Negroes and American Jews.” Isn’t now the time for communal awakening? Shouldn’t we look for leadership from the recent initiative of Jews pledging support for cooperatives in the South as part of a campaign to commemorate 50 years since the Mississippi Freedom Summer? And from the 30 American Rabbis who went to march in Ferguson right after the high holidays this…
Read More…his is the consequence. Once you accept the historically flawed idea that “American” equals “Christian,” you of necessity must see “Muslim” as “anti-American.” Muslims do not accept the fundamental belief of Christianity, that Jesus was the Son of God and savior of the world. Thus, in this closed world view, they are “anti-Christian” and so are also inherently “anti-American.” This is one of the dangers of the increasingly prominent idea that the…
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…ainly targeted Catholic and Muslim Palestinians. This view was typical for American and European missionaries as well. In the American Christian imagination, Ottoman “Christianity and Islam were coupled,” Ussama Makdisi argues, “as the two pillars of temporal and spiritual corruption that had to be struck down.” Twain’s comic depictions of a desolate, barren, and neglected Palestine later serve as documentary evidence in both Christian Zionist and…
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…om their Americanness. Should American Jews be hyphenated citizens? Jewish-American or American Jew; hyphen or no hyphen. Jews as an ethnos, like Irish-Americans, or Jews as carrier of a religion, like American Catholics? The American Jew lives in the anxiety of the hyphen, and flourishes there. The hyphen allows for considerable leeway in terms of legitimate negotiation between one’s Jewish and American identity. Today it seems that the complex n…
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…ders hoping to gain insight into what it actually might mean to live as an American Catholic who was not a member of the clergy were better served elsewhere. Through much of its history, Time’s blind spot to certain kinds of Catholic stories was compensated by its sister publication, which came to being at the suggestion of Clare Boothe Luce. Perhaps one of the most influential Catholic converts in American history, she had learned the faith at th…
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…cans who would be more fitting (and less problematic) to symbolize Italian-American contributions to American society than an individual who never actually set foot in what is now the United States? Whether it’s the school-age yarn about proving the world wasn’t flat, or the daring and brave explorer setting out to find an alternate route to Asia for spices, to the more complex and unsympathetic readings, Columbus as origin myth is a Rorschach tes…
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…ggles. Of course, the category of “working class” has been used throughout American history to describe White people. In reality, the American working class is racially diverse, and includes many BIPOC people. The 2021 American Community Survey shows: “Black, Hispanic, and other workers of color make up 45 percent of the working class, while non-Hispanic white workers comprise the remaining 55 percent.” But, as we shall see, the song doesn’t seem…
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…ngages more of a public audience. Currently the Lilly Endowment Curator of American Religious History at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, Manseau has been writing with curiosity and verve about our spiritual ancestors for two decades now. A founder of Killing the Buddha alongside Sharlet, Manseau is a prodigious, prolific, immaculate prose-stylist who has explored everything from the Victorian combination of technology and occultism (Th…
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