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Why Antisemitism is an Insufficient (and Risky) Explanation for Hamas’s October 7 Attack on Israel

By Shane Burley

…riod of violence, bigotry or persecution of Jews has such a different historical context that it’s nearly impossible to identify a unified, coherent, and transhistorical phenomenon. This isn’t to say that the various episodes of anti-Jewish persecution weren’t ghastly, only that Jews have been persecuted for so many conflicting geopolitical, ideological, and xenophobic reasons, it’s nearly impossible to label every single instance as holding some…

Religion at Decade’s End

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…nnelly observes in his important new book, Capitalism and Christianity, American Style, one of the most striking features of a contemporary Religious Studies department is its easy acceptance of permanent pluralism as the necessary starting point for religious reflection. It’s easy to miss how new, how important, and how startling that starting point really is. Gone are the days when even conservative Christians dream of the eventual “conversion o…

Battling for the Soul of the Democratic Party

By Sarah Posner

…the poor—a discourse which is best embodied by the radical tradition of African-American religion. Wallis’ inability to claim the radical politics of the prophetic tradition serves to undermine the stated mission of his working, thereby limiting his capacity to articulate the development of an authentic Religious Left. Indeed, Wallis publicly argues against the organization of a Religious Left, arguing instead for a “moral center.” Wallis, Sekou…

Shukr: Gratitude

By Amina Wadud

…on the heels of the birth of my second grandson. One minute we were on the phone and I was describing the birth event and sharing photos on Facebook. The next day, she went to bed, coughed once, and then breathed no more. She was 44. I thought about her when I read in the Qur’an how “every soul will have its taste of death.” So gentle was her moment of passing, and yet so painful has been these few months without her here to enjoy this Ramadan to…

A Religious History of American Neuroscience

By Leigh Eric Schmidt

…between religion and neuroscience, but also, more specifically, between American religious history and American neuroscience. By way of proposition and broad outline, I want to suggest three conversational pivots for that kind of discussion: 1) The first is the historical interchange between religion and technology. It is useful, I think, to step aside for a moment from the religion-science nexus and to foreground the religion-technology relations…

Hillary Flirting with Fear

By Ira Chernus

…taps into a huge reservoir of feeling deeply buried inside millions of American voters. And those feelings run so deep precisely because they are inextricably linked to values. “No Surrender” is not a sensible basis for making policy. But it is a powerful expression of a whole web of values that many Americans cling to for dear life, at a time when they feel that the world around them is swirling faster and faster, moving closer and closer to the…

We Declare You Restored: How Christian ‘Forgiveness’ is Deployed to Enable Abuse and Corruption

By Greg Carey

…or his reformation. Popular Christian piety contributes to the problem. American Protestant Christianity emphasizes a quick and easy forgiveness: tell Jesus you’re sorry, and you’re forgiven. Not only are you forgiven, your sins now stand “as far as the east is from the west.” That’s good news, and I believe it, but it has nothing to do with one’s qualification to hold moral responsibility in an institution. God may forgive a person, and so may we…

These Are the New Battlegrounds for LGBT Rights Under Trump

By Sunnivie Brydum

…majority of Americans. He insulted women, Muslims, Mexicans and Latinos, African-Americans, people of color, members of the press, people with disabilities, and career politicians whom he denounced as “crooked.” That means it’s not at all hyperbolic to issue a warning call to each of those groups who will, in all likelihood, have their freedom targeted by the incoming administration. But even though the President-elect was relatively quiet on LGBT…

A Faith-Based Opportunity for Obama

By Sarah Posner

…ns of the president. Last year, he came under fire for meeting with the American Bible Society president “to begin a dialogue on the importance of the Bible in the founding of the country.” In 2010, the White House refused to comment on DuBois’ phone call to religious right ideologue David Jeremiah after the latter called the president “a dangerous person” moving the country toward “socialism.” It was obviously an incident the White House would ha…

Is Pro-Life Cause Célèbre Chen Guangcheng Actually Pro-Life?

By Lindsay Beyerstein

…out the case over the years. “[…] Chen is not the kind of activist that American authorities would have wanted to help,” claimed Julio Severo a blogger for LifeSite, “Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are shamelessly pro-abortion, while Chen is pro-life.” Matthew Cullinan Hoffman alleged in a LifeSite op-ed that the Obama administration would rather see Chen disappear. Like many anti-abortion activists, Hoffman maintains that the Obama administrati…