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As Gaza Burns, Jews Disagree, Protest & Pray

By Sam Kestenbaum

…turei Karta, a group of anti-Zionist Haredi Jews, greets the crowd with Salaam Aleikum, and calls Israel an “abomination” whose “very existence is an offence to the Almighty.” The crowd cheers. “Zionism is a rebellion against God, a base nationalism that has no space or place in the Jewish religion,” he says. “We oppose the occupation because we are Jewish.” Payos hang down on either side of his face; he wears a fedora and a Palestinian flag wrapp…

War on Christmas Affirmed by Southern Baptist Convention

By Mark Gstohl

…ortable being forced by their employers to say Happy Hanukah or Happy Kwanzaa or Happy Ramadan to their customers? What if non-Christian customers don’t wish to be to be greeted with “Merry Christmas?” Should Christians care about their feelings? It’s my contention that they should. Loving one’s neighbor involves respecting and being sensitive to their feelings. My suggestion is that if Southern Baptists feel the need to de-secularize Christmas th…

‘Biblical’ Disaster in Haiti: Pat Robertson and the Curse of Unyielding Ignorance

By Matt Recla

…old predictable Charismatic lunatic Pat Robertson is leading the pack once again. If you can’t stand to watch the clip, here’s the quote from Media Matters: PAT ROBERTSON: And, you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you if you…

Lessons Learned this Ramadan

By Amina Wadud

…og came to me on my recent return from Indonesia. While there, my friends said hajj would be a challenge because of gender restrictions. Then a friend described people doing tawaf, or circumambulation around the kaaba, while sending text messages on a mobile phone. I just cannot see totally giving up my one-on-one moments with Allah just for a blog. That being said, let the preparations to meet the king begin….

Why I Won’t Leave the Mormon Church Alone

By Holly Welker

…“People can leave the Mormon church, but they can’t leave it alone” is an adage I heard as a child. It supposedly proves that the Mormon church is true and that those who leave it are broken in some fundamental way—though the exact means by which this is proven is never clearly established. This at least is true: although I stopped attending the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1989, I continue to study and write about it—and I can…

The Wounded People of God

By Anthea Butler

…at I want to address these remarks, although I suspect it will serve as a balance to what has passed, and what most likely will come of my future writing on the subject. It is apparent that there has been a pile-on in the media about the Catholic Church, much of it deserved, some petty, and some just plain old wrong. But it’s hard not to take on the church when its response to the growing scandal is termed as gossip, not once, but twice, and the c…

Gen X, Gadgets, and God

By Elizabeth Drescher

…born between 1946 and about 1959). According to Schwadel’s examination of data from the General Social Survey, adults raised by Baby Boomer parents are more likely to have no religious affiliation—to be religious “Nones,” in current social research parlance. The unaffiliated religious status of Gen-Xers can be attributed to high rates of Boomers disaffiliation in the 1960s that was passed on to their children. Gen-X disaffiliation squares with dat…

“One of Us”: Rick Santorum and the Politics of (Very Big) Family

By Kathryn Joyce

…n kids! Seven kids!” one woman exclaimed at a Rick Santorum rally in Louisiana on March 21, when organizers asked people to say what they liked most about the ultra-conservative Catholic, homeschooling presidential candidate. Two days earlier, the 19-child Duggar family, famous for their reality TV show about large-family living, had released a folksy video in support of Santorum: “19 Reasons & Counting to Vote for Rick Santorum.” In it, Michelle…

Pence’s Religious Freedom Policy Made ‘LGBQ’ Hoosiers Sick—Literally

By Sunnivie Brydum

A new study reveals the scope of psychological damage done by Indiana’s 2015 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to gay, lesbian, bisexual and questioning Hoosiers. Although the study, led by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health’s Center for LGBT Health Research, stops short of suggesting Indiana’s law directly caused LGBQ people to feel physically or mentally unwell, researchers noted that Indiana was the only state…

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

By Benjamin E. Park

…deafening, and it allowed the bill to pass. Mormonism has always been inseparably connected to these policies. Utah was granted statehood in 1896, only after LDS leaders promised to give up the faith’s controversial, yet defining, feature. And though the church took more than another decade to fully divorce itself from the practice, for much of the twentieth century Mormon leaders and politicians alike were unfailing in their quest to purge the st…