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On Religion, Abortion, and Politics: Dr. George Tiller’s Christian Ethics

By Ed Knudson

…n in Geneva even had committees set up to study the Bible to determine how best to build the city’s sewer system! Martin Luther did not see it this way; he saw the Bible as absolutely authoritative concerning the gospel, but detailed legal prescriptions in the Bible were for the people of that time. For Luther, ethical imperatives come from each person’s direct relationship with God (strange as that concept is for many people today). Those in the…

Why Antisemitism is an Insufficient (and Risky) Explanation for Hamas’s October 7 Attack on Israel

By Shane Burley

…sm as an impulsive, populist, misdirected explosion of anger from below is best encapsulated, as noted above, in the pogrom. Across Jewish history, Jews have often been the scapegoat for the economic disenfranchisement of the mass classes, who have their righteous anger projected onto an imagined picture of “the Jew.” Pogroms are a part of our ancestral memory, memorialized in everything from folklore to liturgies, and are archetypal for how we un…

RDPulpit: You Lost the Debate

By Mary E. Hunt

…of unfettered market capitalism, private property, or the common good. At best we hear a plea for an amorphous middle class, while the poor simply fade from view. We missed a chance for careful structural analysis of how the economy works, who profits and who loses. Now is the time to use our economic knowledge to provide for everyone, not revel in the ignorance of Joe Six-Pack about some mysterious system that is beyond us all. No one risks a go…

To Fight White Supremacy We Must Resist Essentialism: The Author Responds

By Andrea R. Jain

…now is this: how can we wage this battle even more effectively? How can we best shield ourselves from the inevitable onslaughts of predatory journalists, readers, and politicians who prefer “fake news” over evidence-based, critical discussions on religion and society? How can we more fully reap the rewards of living dangerously? It is not about policing our tone or maintaining respectability. On the contrary, I beg public intellectuals: do not san…

The Bible Says… and Other Myths About Scripture

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…rifles, not back then anyway. They had everything to do with what language best captured the central mysteries of the faith: “a threefold Divinity which nonetheless was to be accounted as an indivisible Singularity,” most of all. A Translation Around Every Corner One year after James I ascended to the English throne, he commissioned a new English translation of the Bible, to be created by a committee of biblical scholars working both from the orig…

FX’s ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ Adaptation Rejects Reductive Elements of Krakauer’s Book, But Confirms That ‘Mormonism Breeds Dangerous Men’

By Benjamin E. Park

…r the Banner of Heaven appeared the very next year, immediately becoming a bestseller. The book tells the story of the grisly murders of Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter, Erica, at the hands of her brothers-in-law, Ron and Dan Lafferty. Though excommunicated from the LDS church, Krakauer argues that the brothers were inspired by their religious heritage. The Laffertys were the natural culmination of 150 years of history centered on blind ob…

You’re Right, Ross Douthat: Donald Trump Is Kind of Like Islam

By Haroon Moghul

…outhat is reminded of Islam? Strange, yes. I could use stronger words. The best historical analogy Douthat can find to the factionalism rending apart an American political party is a conflict between two great Middle Eastern superpowers, divided by religion, each intent on physically eliminating the other? But it’s not a bad analogy, you see. It’s a Freudian slip of an analogy, revealing what Douthat is really thinking—and offering a surprising in…

Gay Mormons Tie the Knot

By Johnny Townsend

…yman, about a gay Mormon missionary in Italy, was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best of 2011, and my latest, Marginal Mormons, just received a starred review from Kirkus.) I also marched with the Mormons for Marriage Equality contingent this year in Seattle’s Gay Pride parade, amazed to see compassionate Mormons with signs proclaiming “Sorry we’re late!” I belong to Affirmation, an organization for LGBTQ Mormons. I still have my triple combination on a…

A Boundary-Busting Memoir of Love, Mental Illness, and Being Muslim in America

By Haroon Moghul

…your next book? I’m working on three novels, a proper trilogy, that I can best describe as a cross between science fiction, Bollywood, and alternative history. The first, Americans, takes place in the 21st and 17th centuries, and tells the story of two best friends who get stranded outside each other’s timelines and try to find their way back, even as each move they make changes the world the other one lives in. It basically asks what happens if…

Church Uses Facebook for Sacramental Scrutiny at its Peril

By Elizabeth Drescher

…and only very incompletely explored, ethical territory as we sort out the best ways to balance personal privacy and public safety as these are impacted by our engagement with new media. But even given difficulties defining necessary and appropriate boundaries of personal, professional, and institutional transparency, we can see the virtue of transparency overall as having a stabilizing ethical function that invites openness and honesty while disc…