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Pastor David Brooks, Your Sermons Are Growing Stale…

By Peter Laarman

…ed nation that seems to have lost its way. We are proud that your new book deals explicitly with religious themes. You have been leaning in this direction for a long time, and we are glad to see you make your conviction that good religion is essential to good living ever more explicit. Your own intense and transformative religious experience shines through these pages, and we will never disparage the validity of any experience of the sacred. But w…

Sharbat Gula’s Experience Exemplifies the ‘White Savior’ Lens Through Which Most Americans View Afghanistan

By Sara Kamali

…ne 1985 edition of National Geographic, is one of them. Sharbat Gula’s then-ten-year-old face is also one of the most enduring images of Afghanistan for the West. Her picture, however, isn’t merely a portrait of an Afghan girl. It’s a synecdoche for the White Savior lens through which many Americans have singularly viewed and continue to view Afghans, Afghanistan, and the US-led invasion of Sharbat’s nation of birth. This approach to Afghans and A…

Lincoln, Clinton, and Trump: From Strategy to Spin to Straight-Up Bullshit

By Martin Jay

…honest person. In one familiar tale, which was included in Horatio Alger’s 1883 semi-fictionalized biography Abraham Lincoln: The Backwoods Boy, Lincoln walked a long way to return a petty sum to a customer who had been inadvertently defrauded in a store where Lincoln then worked. Despite his reputation, in his own day Lincoln was criticized by his opponents for lying. He could certainly spin the truth for political gains. The historian Richard H…

“I Worship Jesus, Not Mother Earth”: American Christian Exceptionalism and the Paris Withdrawal

By Jacob J. Erickson

…acknowledge the awful of this event just as we acknowledge the awful coast-to-coast ecological meltdown politically geo-engineered across time. The duty of scholars of religion and theologians is to expose the religious stories that construct this ecocidal scaffolding, rending apart wildlife preservation and those diverse coalitions of peoples and creatures coalescing to protect the water and the land. We must expose these stories because the atm…

Why I Won’t Leave the Mormon Church Alone

By Holly Welker

…ve been but no longer be a devout Mormon. Luckily a diverse community of ex-, post-, or lapsed Mormons (we differ on what to call ourselves) thrives on the internet. Another thing that makes leaving Mormonism difficult is how little it is understood by the world at large. It’s frustrating to have to explain fundamental elements of the church before discussing the crisis of faith those elements prompted. Mormonism has unusual and esoteric doctrines…

A Test of the Prophetic Imagination: Seeing a “Good Liberal” in All His Corrupt Glory

By Peter Laarman

…d Glaser says in Sasseen’s piece—that legislators like Frank who cut sweet deals for well-heeled interests are merely “bowing to reality.” Yes, but here is where some prophetic imagination is needed, because it is an unholy reality that these same insiders and lobbyists have created. What the lobbyists choose to call “political reality” translates into the reality of a Congress that is utterly beholden to them. So it really doesn’t matter if the…

CNN Editor Leaves Over Tweet on Hezbollah ‘Giant’

By Hussein Rashid

…o repercussions. I have no doubt that Nasr’s intention was misconstrued. Nor do I have any doubt that Twitter was not the best medium to express the thought she wanted to. However, CNN’s willingness to fire a 20-year veteran of their organization over less than a 140 characters speaks to the strong forces that prevail against creating nuance in reporting about minorities, in this case Arabs and Muslims….

Still Captivated by Southern Gospel

By Douglas Harrison

…ts to even more songs were just too expensive. For this, we can thank hydra-headed corporations that have bought up thousands of songs and catalogs of songs and then turn around and charge licensing fees on comparatively obscure gospel music as if it were “I Will Always Love You” being licensed for The Bodyguard… Ok, I’m exaggerating a little, but the corporatization of cultural productions is not just frustrating; it potentially poses a serious c…

Romney: “A Life Balanced Between Fear and Greed”?

By Joanna Brooks

…or whom Romney would seek to maximize profit? Downie writes: “In this post-Citizens United world, the voters of America are not Bain’s investors, but the workers at companies Romney’s Bain took over. The wealthy donors who are financing Romney’s campaign are the investors.” As both the Obama campaign and the media continue to cast about for handles on candidate Romney, the weekend’s stories seem to consolidate a picture of Romney as a man whose…

Distortions Aside, Clergy Support Gay Rights in Surprising Numbers

By Peter Montgomery

…ial is evidenced by one of the most striking findings in the survey, which deals with support for same-sex marriage among clergy in the “Uncertain Middle” (which, remember, is a 41 percent plurality of the overall group). When asked whether they support marriage for same-sex couples, civil unions but not marriage, or no legal recognition at all, only 26 percent of clergy in the uncertain middle initially choose marriage equality. But when asked a…