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Dispatches from the Borderlands: Missing Voices

By Daniel Ramirez

…lers, agribusiness, hotel chains, restauranteurs, and consumers) that feed cheaply off their precarious status at the bottom of our economic food chain? How to balance national security concerns with pragmatic ones over economic productivity? The debate has drawn the usual cast of advocates: policy wonks, border vigilantes, and religious leaders. Some religious leaders, that is: Others have been notable in their silence. In the case of Arellano, b…

Religion Profs Critique PBS’ God Documentary, Call it Simplistic

By Matthew Avery Sutton

…r underexplored, from Roger Williams to Native Americans in Puritan New England to the impact of Vatican II on American Catholics to Orthodox faiths to new religious movements. In fact, I was even tipped off before the series aired that the subject of my first book—Aimee Semple McPherson—did not make the cut. A television travesty if there ever was one! I am encouraged, though, that so many academics tuned in to PBS and that the series has provoke…

Want a Slurpee with Your Birth Control?

By Patricia Miller

…r acting forms of birth control that insurance covers, such as IUDs and implants, that can cost upwards of $1,000 for initial insertion. Recent studies show that these types of birth control may well be the key to preventing unplanned pregnancies and breaking the cycle of poverty in populations that have a higher rate of unintended pregnancy, such as younger women and women of color. As usual, the Catholic bishops are tying to undercut support for…

‘People You May Know’ Reveals a War on Democracy Being Waged With Big Data

By Chrissy Stroop

…V: And it’s easy, and also in terms of churches of course, social media is cheap. Traditional outreach might have been much more time-consuming and expensive, whereas now using data you can easily find people who might be open to an invitation. Part II, in which Kriel and Viken will discuss issues related to the coming election, including the Council for National Policy, a secretive conservative Christian organization leveraging these powerful too…

Dispatches from the Borderlands: The Immigration Impasse

By Manuel A. Vásquez

…e of immigration, moving beyond unproductive stereotypes and introducing a language of compassion, mutual recognition, and interdependence, a language that is sorely missing in current debates about undocumented immigration. In the last year or so, I have been working with a team of scholars to explore how congregations in Atlanta are responding to the rapid influx of Latino immigrants, many of whom are undocumented. In the future, I will be repor…

Israel’s Immigration Debate: “Where is the Jewish Spirit?”

By Mati Wagner

…ish state has a special obligation to the foreigner, to the sojourner in a land that is not his. The Jew must remember his history, first in Egypt and later in other exiles, of being a guest in another people’s land. Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Eli Wiesel pleaded with Israel not to deport the children. “Where is the Jewish spirit, the Jewish heart and the Jewish compassion?” The sides were protagonists in an age-old Jewish dispute. Shas’…

Is the Satanic Temple Just an Elaborate Prank? 10 Questions for the Author of ‘Speak of the Devil’

By Joseph Laycock

…Most Americans claim to value tolerance and religious freedom. But talk is cheap, especially if you have never seriously thought about what these commitments might actually mean in a pluralistic society. I was disturbed to read some of TST’s Christian opponents openly renouncing religious freedom if it meant respecting the freedoms of Satanists. I also think TST is forcing the public to think more critically about what “religion” is. They are dire…

On Eve of Sudan Split Clashes Continue

By Ashley Makar

…An old Dinka man once told me the blue represents the Nile, the green the land, the red the blood of Christ. Under a headless palm tree on the parched land of the kibbutz courtyard, William told me how he used to hide in the mango trees near Abyei, their leaves so thick you couldn’t see the sun. Now, the borderland is barren, apart from the few trees that don’t need water and, of course, the oil underground. A Film and a Smoothie Sudanese who arr…

Despising the Holidays: When Christians Led the ‘War on Christmas’

By Ed Simon

…hristmas would return to Britain with Charles II – countrymen across the Atlantic in Massachusetts and Connecticut made the celebration of Christmas punishable by a five shilling fine. The contemporary Christian Right often claims that the New England Puritans are their intellectual ancestors, but this is willfully misreading the historical record as surely as creationists misread biological evidence. Contemporary American fundamentalism, from its…

“Hey You! Anti-Semite!”: A Jewish Krewe does Mardi Gras

By Barbra Barnett

…bauchery, but the parade tradition is about more than drunken tourists and cheap plastic beads. New Orleans’ Mardi Gras parades began in 1857, with the Mistick Krewe of Comus, a secret society that wanted to emulate the Mardi Gras parades of Mobile, Alabama. From the start, Mardi Gras krewes were exclusive, elite clubs. Such organizations can be important networking opportunities in a small community like New Orleans, where people are used to doin…