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It’s Up to You, New York… To Oppose Islamophobia

By Randall Balmer

…what I find deeply disquieting is a recent poll showing that a majority of New Yorkers oppose the project. Such sentiment is not worthy of New Yorkers, and it violates this city’s long tradition of religious tolerance, dating back to the early decades of the seventeenth century. When Jonas Michaëlius, the first Dutch minister in New Netherland, convened the first religious gathering in New Amsterdam in 1628, he commented on the religious diversity…

Welcome to the Shari’ah Conspiracy Theory Industry

By Sarah Posner

…liberal view of America, one which the right portrays as being just as anti-American as the supposed pervasive radical Islamism in our midst. During the uproar over Park51, Newt Gingrich, who last week launched a presidential exploratory committee, gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute warning of “this comprehensive political, economic, and religious movement that seeks to impose shari’ah—Islamic law—upon all aspects of global society…

‘Anti-Romeo’ Vigilante Squads Target Men Suspected Of Being Gay; More in the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…e having trouble reporting exactly which image of the Internet’s many Putin-gay-clown memes is now illegal to share,” The Washington Post reports. “Because, you know, it’s been banned.” Finland: 800+ same-sex couples married in first month; Lutheran priests barred from officiating More than 800 same-sex couples were married in March after marriage equality went into effect on the first of the month; 770 had already been in civil partnerships. The…

As We Survey the Damage of Yesterday’s Violence, What Will Christian Nationalist Politics Look Like in 2021? New Report Offers Clues

By Chrissy Stroop

…-wing Christian slogans like “The Children Cry Out for Justice” and the not-so-apolitical after all “Jesus 2020,” the release of American Atheists’ new report serves as a timely reminder not only of the serious threat that Christian extremism represents to American democracy, but also that the spectacular drama that’s been unfolding on the national stage this year is only part of the story. Many crucial church-state separation battles are won and…

SoulCycle Looks to Sell its Soul

By Michael Schulson

…e stationary biking class—a.k.a. spinning—into a fashionable, upper-crust, New-Agey-communal experience. SoulCycle classes involve candles, loud music, in-sync cycling, and exhortative therapy-speak from instructors, many of whom sideline as models. The spiritual dimensions are sometimes explicit—note the “Soul” and the dharmachakra-esque logo. The phenomenon has been described as a church, a cult, and, more cholerically, as “the most mindless ver…

#OpenTheseDoors: A Movement to Turn New York’s Closed Churches into Shelters

By Kaya Oakes

…that the closed parishes should be repurposed into housing for poor and low-to-moderate income New Yorkers. She explains her work as a “raw daily encounter with the housing crisis.” In response to Dolan’s decision to shutter some parishes that could not fight to stay open, Gargamelli responds that “we’re saying as Catholics that they should be converted to permanent affordable housing, or if they don’t have the resources for that, they should give…

World Congress of Families Draws Anti-LGBT Activists to Budapest; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…should not be lost in the shuffle. But it’s also important that we get rule-of-law countries where they need to be in order to create human rights momentum that’ll be helpful in moving the world forward. We have to make sure that we win the freedom to marry in countries where we can win and use those victories as building blocks so we can to lift up everyone, everywhere. Taiwan: Religious conservatives call for referendum against court ruling on m…

The Collapse of the American Jewish Center

By Sarah Posner

…ion Protective Edge, particularly of women and children—coupled with minute-by-minute coverage on social and traditional media by reporters on the ground for major news outlets—have intensified the opposition. Jewish Voice for Peace, because of its rhetoric casting Israel as an aggressor, and because of its support for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, has largely been vilified by Jewish organizations as not re…

Why I Wrote the Freedom Seder And Why It’s Still Necessary 50 Years After Dr. King’s Assassination

By Arthur Waskow

…ew language I had never known existed. A language of transformation-through-renewal, a language that drew on an ancient language to make it deeply new. A language of serious play that could, with a wink and a twirl, turn reality in a new direction and claim it was simply uncovering a meaning that was already there. A language of puns, serious and funny puns that took as cosmic teaching the clang of words and phrases with each other. And this, the…

Trump’s Inaugural Address Gets an “F” in American Civil Religion

By Spencer Dew

…bility to transcendent value. Indeed, his nationalism may well represent a new American civil religion—an idolatry of empty proclamations reliant on divisions within the American people. In an inaugural address decrying “empty talk,” Trump eschewed detailed articulation of American values for vague proclamations of a new nationalist ethos. Thus, we are offered Orwellian statements like “We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny” and t…