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On Eve of Sudan Split Clashes Continue

By Ashley Makar

…s a long history of violently suppressing liberation movements in Central, Western, and Southern Sudan, where the populations are mostly black African. A major cause of the war was the application of shari’ah law in 1983, which incited rebellion from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), a secular, though largely Christian group now ready to declare independence for Southern Sudan. But the Khartoum government and the SPLM have not agreed…

Too Hot for Shul: Rabbis Seek Healthy Israel Dialogue After Gaza

By Sarah Posner

…the people of my generation or older do,” said Zimmerman, who is 40. In one-on-one conversations, she said, younger Jews are “questioning the assumption of Israel being connected to Jewish identity.” Last year’s Pew Research Center’s Portrait of Jewish Americans, a major survey of American Jews, found declining attachment to Israel among younger generations, while older Jews are more likely to see “caring about Israel” as an “essential part” of be…

‘Anti-Romeo’ Vigilante Squads Target Men Suspected Of Being Gay; More in the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…e having trouble reporting exactly which image of the Internet’s many Putin-gay-clown memes is now illegal to share,” The Washington Post reports. “Because, you know, it’s been banned.” Finland: 800+ same-sex couples married in first month; Lutheran priests barred from officiating More than 800 same-sex couples were married in March after marriage equality went into effect on the first of the month; 770 had already been in civil partnerships. The…

Snake-Handlers, False Messiahs, and a Few Great Souls: 14 Who Died in 2014

By Daniel Silliman

…some moderate civil rights supporters. Author of numerous works on American-American religious history, including There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America and Martin Luther King: An Inconvenient Hero, Harding taught at Illiff School of Theology in Denver, Colo. for more than 20 years. Nelson Bunker Hunt A Texas billionaire remembered mostly for his business exploits, Nelson Bunker Hunt bankrolled the religious right. He underwro…

World Congress of Families Draws Anti-LGBT Activists to Budapest; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…should not be lost in the shuffle. But it’s also important that we get rule-of-law countries where they need to be in order to create human rights momentum that’ll be helpful in moving the world forward. We have to make sure that we win the freedom to marry in countries where we can win and use those victories as building blocks so we can to lift up everyone, everywhere. Taiwan: Religious conservatives call for referendum against court ruling on m…

Mitt Romney’s Prosperity Gospel

By Peter Laarman

… no longer the world’s most mathematically-inclined nation. We’re a scratch-to-win nation. We’re a roll-the-dice people. And our god is that God: the one who makes water flow from the rock (Numbers 20:11); who surprises us all the time by blessing us in the least likely circumstances. Mr. President: You need to understand this. You need to work with this, but very, very carefully. Because, like it or not, the endgame in this election is going to b…

What’s Islamophobia, and Do I Have It?

By Haroon Moghul

…hawarij,’ or secessionists. They went to war with Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law Ali, the first Shi’a Imam and fourth Sunni Caliph, and eventually assassinated him. An extremism so self-righteousness that it did not stop to wonder what kind of “understanding” of Islam would bring it to war with the Prophet’s flesh and blood. Before his assassination, Ali and some Khawarij had a debate over his rule as Caliph. The latter demanded that Ali govern…

Does War Make Sense? Science and Religion on the Battlefield

By Nathan Schneider

…ight. We’re now almost a decade into an Orwellian state of perpetual war-at-a-distance. Yet Bousquet writes that we are still only in the “birth pangs” of the chaoplexic paradigm. God save us from what this baby looks like when it’s born; and from the belief systems that soldiers will need to entertain in order to enact it. The root of Bousquet’s credulity regarding the chaoplexic may come from taking too seriously Clausewitz’s axiom that war equa…

The Economy is Racism: Ending Race-Based Economic Violence is the Real Challenge of This Moment

By Peter Laarman

…much including the “decent” white Christians, completely abandoned African-American aspirations for full equality within a few years of the bloody Civil War’s end. And why did these whites “move on” so quickly? Because there was so much money to be made in the first Gilded Age and because the reintegration and rehabilitation of the former Confederate states could contribute to that project. If you are one of today’s activist allies who thinks tha…

Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

By Lisa Miller

…ogy. I spoke to the head of The New Yorker’s cartoon department about cloud-and-angel cartoons; to David Byrne, formerly of Talking Heads, who wrote that great song “Heaven” (“a place where nothing ever happens”); to Albert Brooks, who wrote and directed Defending Your Life. I included references to Marc Chagall, The Simpsons, folk songs, slave spirituals, Monty Python, Michelangelo, Hamlet, Homer, popular jokes, my grandparents, Giotto, Billy Gra…