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Common Ground: Winning the Battle, Losing the Culture War

By Chip Berlet

…ebate. Chalk it up to retrograde TMS (Testosterone Madness Syndrome), the root cause of most Internet flame wars. There is unfinished business on this topic for the religious left, however, and it needs to be explored before we reach out to find common ground with opponents of abortion. The debate on the religious left needs to be shifted to focus on simple strategic questions: What will move our society toward increased social and economic justic…

How an 1843 Revelation on Polygamy Poses a Serious Challenge to Modern Mormonism

By Benjamin E. Park

…country—what made this one successful was not who was involved, but who stood quietly to the side: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The LDS Church remains a dominant force in the state, and until recently worked hard to cease any attempts to soften the state’s polygamy laws. This time, however, their silence was deafening, and it allowed the bill to pass. Mormonism has always been inseparably connected to these policies. Utah was…

Under Water: Waiting for the Flood (of Awareness) in Louisiana

By Drew Konow

…ere (I’ve only visited once) or because of anything to do with the way it looks. I love her house because of what it stands for. It’s a symbol of her freedom. Freedom from every man who raised a hand to her, mistreated her, or manipulated her with money; freedom from days of “shopping” in our grandmother’s pantry and from uncertainty about where she would find money for the next rent or mortgage payment; freedom to be alone, to direct her own life…

Oprah, Terrorist Cells, and the Meaning of Life: An Interview with Paul Froese

By Andrew Aghapour

…ake mental snapshots of our aging parents, forming a past-and-future flip book of our own aging bodies. We get scared. We tell old stories and overeat. New Year’s resolutions are what happen when bloated Americans go back to their lives, and then pivot optimistic in the face of death. On Purpose: How We Create The Meaning of Life Paul Froese Oxford University Press (January 6, 2016) I participate in this tradition. Every January, I hold my life ou…

Joyless Primaries Grind On

By Joanna Brooks

Last week, I was talking to an unorthodox Mormon friend about his strained relationship with his sixty-something, highly observant LDS father. My friend described a brief, tension-laden phone call between father and son, wedged into a few free minutes after a church meeting. “Now, I’m going to serve my family,” said the father, bringing the call to a close. “Because that’s what I do.” And Mitt Romney is going to serve his country. Because that’s…

Not All American Muslims Feel the Dread I Do

By Huma Mohibullah

…eaction is not necessarily what might be expected after the election of a doomsayer who used anti-Muslim rhetoric to stoke American insecurities. Not everyone is gripped by intense dread. Rather, some* Muslims on social media describe a Trump presidency as a mere inconvenience that pales in comparison to the plight of those living under occupation and drone strikes in Muslim countries. They wonder aloud where the liberals, who are now eager to con…

The Banality of Bernie

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…s it calls “The Madoff Chronicles.” And in June it published its biggest scoop of to date: the personal story of Madoff’s longtime secretary (she was hired in 1984), Eleanor Squillari. The article begins with a jolt, even before it moves into Squillari’s own story. “In writing about Bernard Madoff for Vanity Fair’s April issue, I frequently heard his victims refer to him as another Hitler, who decimated his largely Jewish clientele by stealing the…

These Are the New Battlegrounds for LGBT Rights Under Trump

By Sunnivie Brydum

…auguration Day nears, and as our new, orange-tinted reality sets in, it behooves all Americans who believe in fairness and equality to take stock of what we’re up against — because that’s how we’ll be able to resist it. On the campaign trail, Trump hurled insults at groups which, combined, represent a vast majority of Americans. He insulted women, Muslims, Mexicans and Latinos, African-Americans, people of color, members of the press, people with…

Religion at Decade’s End

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…sual, reflexivity of this time of year. Even if it is indebted just a bit too much to the artifice of a very old Roman calendar, and the curious modern pretense of a new year’s “beginning” in the depths of winter, just after the vernal solstice tilts the northern hemisphere of our stop-start planet back in favor of warmer weather and the promise of an eventual springtime. I will return to that potent image, of a warming planet tilting its northern…

Mother (Nature) Will Eat You: Lars von Trier’s Antichrist

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…f humans intertwined with nature; and extreme close-ups of human eyes, bamboo in a glass vase, and unkempt hair (the camera sporadically zooms in on the backs of heads a la Hitchcock’s Vertigo) all make for a film that is impossible to get out of one’s sensual body. Antichrist’s images and sounds have infiltrated my dreamscape for the two weeks now since I saw it at the New York Film Festival, along with about 700 other attendees. I wish I had the…