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The Battle for the Bible Against Christian Nationalism Seeks to Continue Historic Campaign

By Frederick Clarkson

…ory of recognizing that the state can use its power to take away religious freedom.” The kind of religious freedom the panelists discussed, of course, isn’t the Orwellian distortion posed by the Christian Right in both its Catholic and evangelical wings, in which religious freedom is invoked in order to justify the oppression of others, but the liberatory idea of religious freedom for all, including the non-religious, that traditional Baptists hav…

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Men “Stand Up” for “Religious Freedom”… On a Plane

By Kara Loewentheil

…“Hundreds of ultra-orthodox Jewish men delayed takeoff of a transatlantic flight by refusing to sit next to women, and then caused chaos once it was airborne [by standing in the aisles for the entire flight and refusing to occupy their seats].” Obviously a congested plane aisle isn’t the end of the world (although one can imagine it might be a safety issue in some situations), and the news reports have treated it as a kind of amusing oddity. But…

Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate

By Anthea Butler

…church, they’re marinating, so to speak, in the the various teachings of a number of people. I’ve covered many an event where I’ve been waiting in line to get in, and the inevitable conversation with the people around you goes something like this: they ask first where you go to church, and second which teachers you admire, and then you get into a long conversation about the relative virtues of all of them. A really good example of how all these te…

Pope Francis Dithering About Women, Skittish About Cops

By Mary E. Hunt

…ost other Christian denominations have done with good results. My own deep reservations about the women’s diaconate come from its very nature as a recipe for a woman’s job in a patriarchal culture. Surely it shores up the current system to have women handling all of the everyday work—visiting the sick, caring for children, helping the abused, teaching religious education, which they do already—so that the men can get on with the preaching, teachin…

Colonialism and the Crisis Inside the Crisis of Catholic Sexual Abuse

By Kathleen Holscher

…, which together extend their ecclesial jurisdiction over 6 federal Indian reservations in South Dakota. By 2010, more than 65 Catholic priests and religious formerly employed at Indian boarding schools within those dioceses had been named in lawsuits targeting sexual abuse—a number that suggests a far higher per-capita rate of offending clergy than even in New Mexico. In New Mexico, the victims of abuse were mainly Nuevomexicano and Indigenous ki…

Free Arabs: Satire, Disobedience, and Disclaimers

By Nabil Echchaibi

…, the same (almost identically the same) way that Muslim clergy, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, appropriated the Iranian revolution of 1977–1979 entirely for itself, far beyond their own fair share. Free Arabs is right to expose religious anti-intellectualism or fight for the rights of atheists in Arab societies, but their defiance would be much more effective if it rose above colonial constructs of secularists versus Muslims or Islamists. Satirizing…

American Jewish Leaders Get Gaza Wrong

By Sarah Posner

…ed today. And so must the Israeli shelling of civilians in Gaza (the death toll there is now at 13). It’s not a war game, or an occasion for the cold, sophomoric tweet of the IDF spokesperson (or the tweet back by the Al Qassam Brigades). Yousef Munayyer provides some history of the numbers from Gaza at Open Zion: For example, in 2011, the projectiles fired by the Israeli military into Gaza have been responsible for the death of 108 Palestinians,…

Heterosexual Martyrs and Gay Saints: Did AIDS Coverage Clear the Way for LGBT Equality?

By Diane Winston

…fied as AIDS, did not receive ongoing or thorough coverage. By 1982, nearly 800 AIDS cases had been diagnosed. According to one study, infants and children were increasingly infected. Although a threat to the general population was quickly dismissed, the implication was clear: anyone could be infected. The epidemic had exposed social and cultural fault lines that made coverage more than just a medical story. Its initial outbreak in the homosexual…

‘A Slice of Heaven’: Lakota Look to Buy Back Stolen Sacred Lands

By Johnny P. Flynn

…Anaya, Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples for the UN, met with Indians from several states and reservations. He has advocated the return the Black Hills to the Lakota and his full report is due in late 2012. Although Lakota spiritual leaders are careful regarding the details of their continued use of the Black Hills for religious purposes, there is no doubt they visit and still use th…

God Dissolves into the Occupy Movement

By Nathan Schneider

…dated ourselves to these new circumstances, but not happily and with grave reservations about where this is taking us. And now it seems a mainly youthful Occupy movement is giving voice to all of our previously silent reservations and shouting out a very loud non serviam! It really leaves the establishment with very little to say. What’s their response going to be: domination is good for you?? It was a little more than three decades ago when Marg…