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The American Media’s Longterm Ambivalence About the Papacy

By Peter Manseau

…after all, a story it knows quite well. *This essay was adapted from a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the American News Media….

A Jewish Perspective on Reparations

By Moriel Rothman-Zecher

…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…

Why The Book of Mormon (the Musical) is Awesomely Lame

By Jared Farmer

…he missionaries defect, and, with the help of the natives, start their own new religion based on their own new scripture: the Book of Arnold. The musical gives Africans far more offense than Mormons. By virtue of being from the American West, the South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, have an intuitive feel for heartland Mormons. The main character, Elder Price—though a caricature—felt real to me (I was born and raised in Utah). All of t…

Liberal or Literal? James Wood, Terry Eagleton, and the New Atheism

By Nancy Frankenberry

…t critic James Wood’s recent, provocative essay/review of Terry Eagleton’s new book, itself a broadside against the New Atheists, in particular Richard Dawkins. Readers who are scholars of religion were puzzled, too. What exactly are Wood’s own views, and what do they tell us about the way “religion” is regarded by certain public intellectuals? Since we are already riding piggyback here, I will ignore Eagleton’s and Dawkins’ books in order to expo…

Change, Not Charity: What Ails the New Left-Right Coalition Against Poverty

By Peter Laarman

…ent of the obfuscation and blame-shifting when I realized that the bulk of new philanthropy going on in New York in the 1990s—an interventionist philanthropy very much focused on support for the deserving poor—was being initiated by committed Democrats. One fast-rising new charity raised staggering amounts from hip young Democratic money managers at its annual galas. It spelled out its approach in big bold letters for all to see: no, we do NOT fun…

The Next Islamists: The Wide Green Smudge That’s Changing Our World

By Haroon Moghul

…cerns itself with anecdotes, anthropology, and economics, informing us how new connections are organically emerging—in astonishing number—between rising Arabs, looking to invest massive sums of wealth in new markets, and risen China, a positive model for socially stable growth. These links involve much more than oil alone (Simpfendorfer makes much of the place of Islam in these relationships), but oil has produced the hundreds of billions that now…

Watch the New Birth Throne: Eddie Long Declared ‘King’ by ‘Rabbi’

By Anthea Butler

…ool Aid” and I don’t use that term lightly. I’ve believed since my trip to New Birth back in 2010, when Long promised to fight his civil case, that New Birth was a cult-like organization. Long’s hold over his congregation reminds me of Jim Jones. That may sound harsh, but Jim Jones slept with his members too, before leading the People’s Temple into the jungles of Guyana. Long however, is in interesting historical company. After all, Father Divine …

Mormonism’s Black Issues

By Joanna Brooks

…ership of Mormon Church president Brigham Young, the ordination of African-American men ceased, African-American men and women were prohibited from temple worship, and intermarriage was officially discouraged. Some historians believe that Young’s about-face on the status of African Americans may have been motivated by embarrassment stemming from an 1847 scandal involving an excommunicated African-American Mormon named William McCary, or by politic…

Muslims Helped Legitimize Lowes’ Decision to Pull Ads From All-American Muslim

By Hussein Rashid

…that actions have consequences. I would love to see a second season of All-American Muslim (AAM) that comes to Jackson Heights in Queens to do South Asian Muslims, or to Chicago to cover African-American Muslims. So, what these criticizers did is to create a narrative that even Muslims don’t believe that this show represents Muslims. There was no positive or constructive criticism, just complaints that the critics themselves weren’t on TV. It take…

An Untold Tale: American Fiction vs. The Religious Right

By Christopher Douglas

…understand Robinson’s Gilead as a representation of the road not taken in American Christianity—that we could have had a wiser, more theologically nuanced, more social justice-oriented political Christianity than the version we ultimately got. I think Robinson’s pal Barack Obama would agree. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Entertain them? Piss them off? Readers will laugh and cry! They will be informed and entertained! There will be some p…