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The Problem with Christian Gentlemen: A Short Goodbye to Ted Cruz, the “Mr. Pecksniff” of Presidential Politics

By Peter Laarman

…d self-congratulation. Dickens makes the most of Pecksniff by giving him a number of interior monologues, as here when Pecksniff is rationalizing his decision to pimp out his younger daughter at a rather cheap dowry price to a rich but grotesquely uncouth suitor: All his life long he had been walking up and down the narrow ways and by-places, with a hook in one hand and a crook in the other, scraping all sorts of valuable odds and ends into his po…

Want a Slurpee with Your Birth Control?

By Patricia Miller

…ce?” It’s one of the bishops’ favorite arguments: that birth control is so cheap and so widely available that it isn’t even a question of whether the religious freedom of objecting organizations should be burdened by having to pay for it. The bishops have been claiming since 2012 that birth control is “ubiquitous and inexpensive” and anyone who wants it can get it without insurance coverage for $10 at Target. And as usual, bishops’ allies on the r…

Can a Greek Monastery Be Ground Zero of Global Financial Meltdown?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…onastery on Mount Athos. It is currently being sued for the return of government property, with damages. It has already been subject to one government investigation and is now being investigated again. Its story runs in surreal parallel to the story of the Greek nation I just rehearsed. Trading a Worthless Lake for Valuable Property The Vatopaidi Monastery is led by its abbot, Father Ephraim, and he is assisted by Father Arsenios, who has become…

The Bible is a Good Book, But God Didn’t Write It

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…r. We victimized women. We victimized homosexuals. We victimized the environment. We’re currently victimizing immigrants. It’s all the same mentality. What is it about Christianity that makes us constantly be a victimizer? I think it’s because we’ve adopted victimizing theology. We spend all our time in church talking about how sinful and evil human beings are. The only way you can tolerate listening to that is to pass it on. We have to pass on th…

Dispatches from the Borderlands: The Immigration Impasse

By Manuel A. Vásquez

…e in effect subsidized the expansion of the American economy through their cheap labor, the provisions in the bill allowing for a path to legalization were hard to defend. Into this vacuum come restrictionist voices that frame the issue in purely individualistic, ahistoric terms: hordes of immigrants are coming in, willfully breaking our laws, selfishly taking advantage of this country’s freedoms and resources. Here the word “illegal” becomes a ra…

Dispatches from the Borderlands: “They Came at Night, Trying to Kill Us!”

By Manuel A. Vásquez

…ion, and economic turmoil in their home countries. They have come in large numbers, many of them undocumented, settling among poor South Africans who often resent their presence. While the situation confronting immigrants and poor natives in the United States is not as dire, there are clear signs of simmering tensions around the issue of undocumented immigration, particularly in poor rural communities and around towns that witnessed factory shutdo…

Can I Get Some Birth Control Pills With That Slushie?: Unpacking the Contraceptive Mandate Rollback

By Sunnivie Brydum

…r more than half the country? The Departments have concluded that the governmental interest in ensuring that the employees of such organizations receive contraceptive coverage as part of their employer sponsored health plan is less significant than previously stated. PM: What will be interesting is what the courts will make of this statement, especially the “less significant than previously stated” part. Is the Trump administration going to argue…

Must We Burn Something to Get Attention?: 50 Years After the Catonsville Nine

By Jason C. Bivins

…olic in its goals and orientations. But while those protests multiplied in number, and continue still, they were drowned out by the hosannas of Ronald Reagan’s America™. If burning children are the price paid for our stock portfolios or geopolitical advantage, well, just keep smiling, America. The whole world is now the land of burning children. So, too, has America’s never-ending war (who are we fighting now, again?) marched on. There is fire in…

Fear of a Catholic Ghetto

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…te the backstory there. Haley’s use of the phrase “Catholic ghetto” is not cheap hyperbole, if you consider the history of Catholics in the United States. The US Catholic hospital system grew up in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries; largely under the care of women’s religious orders, and largely to serve the poor. (Read about a few of the women who helped build Catholic health care.) The surrounding cultural landscape could be pr…

Changing the Jewish State and the State of Jews: J Street and the Future of Israel

By Mark LeVine

…ues that the organization “not only opposes one policy of one Israeli government, it opposes all policies of all Israeli governments.” His words are in fact not exaggerations. No Israeli government has ever considered Palestinians as having anything close to equal rights within the territory of Eretz Yisrael/Palestine, and none have condoned anyone, particularly from the Diaspora Jewish community, openly criticizing its policies and actions. What…