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Disco-Reggae at Abu Ghraib: Music, the Bible and Torture

By Erin Runions

…he hood”) has reported that he was forced to listen to loud and constant repetitions of Psalm 137—in the jaunty, disco-reggae rendition of Boney M’s “Rivers of Babylon.” The lyrics are taken directly from the psalm, with its poignant opening lines: “By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept.” No one has yet cried sacrilege over this detail of the still-emerging outrages of Abu Ghraib, or even really commented on it. Yet the deep ironies of th…

Public Shrines to Treason: Charlottesville and the Cult of Confederate Memorialization

By Spencer Dew

…of men who led a slavers’ secession from and waged violent war against the United States is essential to an understanding of post-Appomattox existence as, rather than one of surrender and defeat, a state of ongoing truce. This Confederate civil religion, crafted during Reconstruction and continuing to the present day, has served to keep the country tenuously united. But as this Confederate civil religion has allowed the Civil War to continue in a…

#SorryNotSorry: What U.S. Christian Denominations Teach About Homosexuality

By Stephanie Russell-Kraft

…ent. 54% of members believe homosexuality should be accepted by society. United Church of Christ (Mainline Protestant) Members (as of 2010): 1,058,423 The United Church of Christ does not view homosexuality as incompatible with Christian teachings. Since 1972, the church’s Open and Affirming Coalition has advocated for the UCC LGBT community. 82% of members believe homosexuality should be accepted by society. Presbyterian Church in America (Ev…

Trump’s Muslim Ban and the History of Stolen Citizenship in America

By Hussein Rashid and Murali Balaji

…tor” amongst haves and have nots. When East Asians started arriving in the United States, we were not sure if they were “white” or not. In 1922 the US Supreme Court ruled in Ozawa v. United States that being white meant being “Caucasian,” not just “not Black,” or “not Native American.” East Asians were promptly stripped of their citizenship, because they were not white enough for this country. South Asians believed that they were protected from th…

Mormon Group Digging for Scriptural City of Zarahemla in Iowa is a Portrait of Religious Nationalism

By Hanna Seariac

…ir being able to find Zarahemla. Prior to the formation of what is now the United States, Montrose, Iowa was Sioux, Cherokee, and Iroquois land. This excavation perpetuates religious colonialism and superimposes a Mormon narrative onto indigenous persons, specifically a narrative that champions European colonialism and American Christian nationalism. The Heartland Research Group both violently destroys and recontextualizes indigenous material cult…

Restoring Dignity: The Employee Free Choice Act

By Peter Laarman

…workers first got real bargaining rights under the Wagner Act. Led by the United Steelworkers, United Auto Workers, United Mine Workers, United Rubber Workers, and United Electrical Workers, the Depression-era labor movement raised wage standards and working conditions for a vast swath of the workforce, but it did much more than that. The CIO—Congress of Industrial Organizations—used its considerable political muscle to back the full range of New…

A Legal Document with Soul: Will the US Ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?

By Sara Friedman

…country whose government is not recognized by the United Nations, and the United States, which, by its own admission, is the world’s most zealous champion of human rights worldwide and proprietor of the world’s most progressive laws protecting the rights of children. More than 10 years in the drafting, the CRC would not have happened without the support of the United States, including the significant contributions to its language under the presid…

LDS Church Acknowledges Past Racism, Repudiates Racist Remarks

By Joanna Brooks

…a collective process of “repentance”: “An unwillingness to call the former policy racist and, therefore, wrong, unjustified, harmful, un-Christian, and indefensibly regrettable is, however subtly, still fundamentally racist. The priesthood/temple ban is, at present, not just a symptom of a racist past. It is a thorn in the side, an unhealed open wound on the body of a still racist present. And the sooner we can collectively realize that our unwill…

Aliens, Nanobots, & Microbes: The Science of Secular Apocalypse

By Michael Schulson

…clearinghouse. I can imagine someone thinking about these issues with the policy tools available to them. Yeah, totally. And some people have done good work. Although there’s been an incredible paucity of work there. It’s hard to take [these concerns] into the public arena and go, “you know, you really ought to be worried, in thirty years there might be this issue,” without it devolving into an exercise of fear-mongering. Something that I appreci…

PFOX Accuses PTA of being PC

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…press release: “Why is it gay groups meet the PTA Diversity and Inclusion Policy but our families do not? ‘Diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ should mean exactly that — diversity and inclusion of everyone.” Well, not really. Perhaps the PTA has seen the latest news on “ex-gay ministries” and it’s beginning to understand what kind of snake oil salesmen they really are. Perhaps the sight of George Rekers — a champion of the “ex-gay” industry — taking a Eu…