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Mitt Romney, Frontrunner: Deal With It

By Joanna Brooks

…s). He even managed to joke about Sarah Palin’s bus tour antics being “the best thing that could happen” to his candidacy. Right now, Mitt Romney’s greatest problem appears to be Republican Party itself. After opportunistically handing the reins to Tea Partiers and evangelical conservatives to capitalize on unbridled rage against the nation’s first African-American president, the GOP has now cultivated a base most interested in crusading against s…

World Congress of Families Meets, Seeks a New Dark Ages

By Gillian Kane

…isolated the elderly, and fostered depopulation,” and figuring out how to best manipulate those same systems into defending their particular religious values. One concern undergirding the varied topics covered by the speakers was that the protection of individual rights (youth rights, gay rights, reproductive rights) was taking place at the expense of “fundamental” religious, cultural, and parental rights. The idea of Christian persecution, or Ch…

As U.S. Went to Hell, R.E.M. Hung in Without Cynicism

By Brian K. Pennington

…kids’ awakening to the artistry and moral challenge that rock music at its best can deliver, Nirvana will provide the soundtrack to the fading images of one friend after another lost to the heroin that hit the alternative music scene in Atlanta as Nevermind hit the charts. Could anything be further from the nihilism of Nirvana’s distorted and driving chords than R.E.M.’s qualified insistence that the articulation of meaning and the comfort of comm…

A Long History of Blaming the Jews

By Gordon Haber

…lly to a logic that treated the relative ‘Jewishness’ of a teaching as the best test of its truth or falsity.” Marcion, Tertullian, Justin, Origen and Jerome differed on crucial Christological and scriptural questions; still most identified any hint of carnality as “Jewish” and accused their opponents of “Judaizing.” Augustine took the trope even further, arguing in Against Faustus that the Jews were the living exemplar of falsity, “proof to belie…

Newsweek’s Strange Faces of the Christian Right List

By Sarah Posner

…ren’t associated with the Christian right. Ten is a pretty small number to best represent a movement Newsweek describes as “changing and growing more diffuse, even as it remains a potent force in American politics.” While some of the picks seem obvious (Marjorie Dannenfelser of the anti-choice group Susan B. Anthony List, or Jim Daly, the new head of Focus on the Family, or Robert George mastermind of the Manhattan Declaration) legal scholar Melis…

Ideology is More Than Skin Deep: Why I Can’t Get Along To Go Along

By Daniel Schultz

…t out before the public. I’m sorry that’s unpleasant, but it’s usually the best humans can do short of killing each other. To put it another way, we have ideological divides in our politics for a very simple and very good reason: ideology delineates real differences in the needs and ethics of citizens. Or again, and not to put too fine a point on it, calls for Christian unity are all well and good, but we live in a constitutional republic, not a c…

For Love or Threat: Pro-Life Prayer Includes Names, Photos of Abortion-Rights Advocates

By Alana Massey

…s. When asked about the change, Scheidler says, “We searched for the three best photographs we could find because we wanted pictures where people would see the humanity of these people.” Throughout our conversation, he returned to the Christian tenets of compassionate understanding and the belovedness of all people before God, indicating a sincerity that often goes unnoticed in a movement frequently characterized by its violent history. But it is…

History in the Making: Religion, Race and Gender in the Presidential Election

By Peter J. Paris

…doubt for quite some time. Now, I know of no black person who has sold two best-selling books describing his/her racial identity. Clearly, religion and race have been in the foreground of American history long before the beginning of this republic. The question of religion was constitutionally settled with the First Amendment in 1791, known widely for its non-establishment and free exercise clauses: Congress shall make no law respecting an establi…

Confront Death by Avoiding Fritos: The Gluten Lie, Fad Diets, & Foodie Faith

By Michael Schulson

…hings are distant enough where we are able to romanticize them. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, there’s a huge push within China to reject Traditional Chinese Medicine. This romanticization of what is outside of one’s culture, especially in order to deal with health problems, is something that is really common, and something we ought to avoid. At the same time, our culture’s eating habits seem to hurt people. Is looking outside of our own cultu…

The Convergence of Passover and Easter Can Leaven (or Unleaven) the Interfaith Family’s Holiday

By Samira K. Mehta

…Seders at their partners’ churches, many find the practice complicated at best and alienating at worst. While the power differential between Christianity and Judaism makes Jewish celebrations far less problematic, within families aspects of the holiday table can also be alienating for Christian family members. A Passover seder is a (potentially) long, ritualized meal, some (or all) of which may take place in Hebrew. There are songs that are often…