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Religion Profs Critique PBS’ God Documentary, Call it Simplistic

By Matthew Avery Sutton

…arratives to a few clear points, we all use evidence selectively, we all repackage our original sources, and we all attempt to craft engaging narratives. In sum, those of us sitting comfortably in our cheap desk chairs in our sterile offices in the nation’s colleges and universities have no higher ground to stand on. While we all labor to maintain an appropriate level of nuance, complexity, and context in our work, there is no doubt that we could…

Doubt v. Predator: A Vatican II Parable

By Gabriel Mckee

…cit reference to the Council made in the play, but it’s still clear: Doubt paints a picture, from the cheap seats of the Bronx, of the Church in mid-transformation. But things are even more complicated than that, as the story is also an elaborate critique of the way power is wielded in the Church—and the fact that Vatican II managed to change very little. Sister Aloysius is paralyzed by her position, unable to do anything about Father Flynn direct…

Why Taxing the Rich is the Godly Thing

By Peter Laarman

…while refusing to hire new workers or even restore laid-off workers to company payrolls. Back when we had a bit more clarity and courage about these matters, progressives would have called this situation by its right name: a capital strike. Today, progressives have grown wary about using language like that—they think it’s too provocative and too Marxist-sounding—whereas conservative bloviators like Charles Krauthammer and Amity Schlaes openly cel…

Build the Muslim Community Center at Ground Zero

By Donna Schaper

…can’t forgive, we remain victims) who might become able to forgive if they participated in a program at a community center, got to know someone, had a swim or listened to a lecture. Forgiveness needs signs and symbols. Religious institutions need signs and symbols. Forgiveness doesn’t happen all at once. But it could begin with a building permit at Ground Zero. Finally, that word love, which so many wrongly imagine as a soft verb. There is nothing…

Playing Hooky: Will Boycott of Catholic Church Spur Reform?

By Nathan Schneider

…nd their own members, they should be not a replacement but a supplement to participation in the wider community one hopes to reform. Point the way forward, not the way to the door. For those who want to make a difference in the Catholic Church, I have a simple piece of advice: don’t walk out—sit in. The tradition, fortunately, offers lots of things people can do that honor God even while raising a bit of Cain for man. Form organizations and networ…

National Association of Evangelicals Supports Immigration Reform, But Elsewhere Discord Reigns

By Donna Schaper

…ter for Immigration Studies (CIS), which bills itself as an independent nonpartisan think tank on the impact of immigration on the United States. The announcement of this panel caught my attention because none of the panelists seemed to represent the views of the nationwide Interfaith Immigration Coalition, the major collection of religious organizations dealing with immigration today, or of any of the many religious denominations that have spoken…

The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right

By Frederick Clarkson

…ts opposition as beyond the pale, the embodiment of evil itself, unfit for participation in their vision of society, and thus worthy of elimination. It often further depicts its designated Enemy as vermin (especially rats and cockroaches) or diseases, and disease-like cancers on the body politic. A close corollary—but not as nakedly eliminationist—is the claim that opponents are traitors or criminals and that they pose a threat to our national sec…

Pop-Eye: Meat The Wrestler

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…myriad dimensions of religious experience, and how body and soul are not separate. Even the film’s accompanying Web site made clear that he understood the ambiguous relations between religious ecstasy (i.e., Kabbalistic mythologies) and chemical imbalances in the mind (i.e., migraines). Aronofsky is too smart to deal in binaries, and so even back then he was already dissecting this material-spiritual difference with that of artificial intelligence…

A Startling Number Believe You Can Be Jewish Jesus Follower; Why It’s Not As Crazy As It Sounds

By Michael Schulson

…Jewish subpopulations, Reform Jews were the least likely to accept any compatibility, doing so at the rate of just 25%. This denominational pattern indicates that at least some of the respondents were answering in terms of Jewish law, not theological ignorance. Messianic Jews may also have influenced these results. It’s reasonable to expect some effect from their vocal claims that Christianity and Judaism are perfectly compatible. “There has been…

Why are Nuns and Monks in the Streets? (Parts I & II)

By José Cabezón

…n the Chinese government and Tibetans, but more important still are the campaigns of “patriotic re-education” that have been waged within monasteries. Beginning in 1996, this policy brought teams of party members into monastic institutions to “disseminate patriotic educational reform within the monasteries.” The ostensible purpose of patriotic re-education was to (re)train monks in party ideology. In actual fact, the campaign was aimed at identify…