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A Shining City: The Occupy Movement and the American Soul

By Elizabeth Drescher

…way. Or, at least so it has usually been since the Reagan ascendency of the 1980s, with middle-class Americans curiously reorienting their dreams away from what might reasonably be attainable for pretty much everyone and toward a level of affluence available to ordinary people only through a freakish, high-stakes contortion of the economy. Now that the curtain’s been pulled back on the false wizardry of a deregulated financial system, and American…

Four Reasons Why Egypt’s Revolution Is Islamic

By Zaid Hassan

…on-Muslims to support those ideals while transcending easy stereotypes and cheap fear-mongering. We should therefore pause in our reactions and ask ourselves; perhaps an Islamic revolution in Egypt is not de facto a bad thing. Finally, I’m reminded of Karen Armstrong’s description of the historical mission Muslims are tasked with: “In Islam, Muslims have looked for God in history. Their sacred scripture, the Quran, gave them a historical missio…

Of Zionism and Anti-Zionism: The Ultra Orthodox and the Settler Movement in Israel

By Shaul Magid

…mmigration in the late 1980s brought a large group of secular Jews (and non-Jews) who, being the victims of anti-Semitism, have little or no sympathy for the Arabs; whether citizens of Arab countries, Israeli citizens, or inhabitants of the West Bank. Finally, and most interestingly, the Haredim, or Ultra Orthodox. This group, mostly descended from Eastern European Jews, were traditionally (and confusingly to outsiders) actually anti-Zionist and n…

Recovering From Rejection: The Second Coming of Ted Haggard

By Wendy Norris

…startlingly provocative description of his former compatriots as authority- and rules-fixated Pharisees—a notion that also reinforces his own disquieting personal portrayal of himself as a modern-day apostle, a notion no doubt borrowed in part from New Apostolic teachings. From Master of the Universe to Castaway While the fundamentalist helm comes unglued over the prospect of a new Haggard ministry (and a new book deal he’s currently negotiating)…

Evangelicals Clutching Pearls Over Student Debt Relief: Lord Have Mercy!

By Peter Laarman

…d in Christianity Today and elsewhere, where scholars and cranks play whack-a-mole with Bible verses having to do with debt. What I like best is the Can we proof-text this? We probably shouldn’t. But let’s try anyway! aspect of it. Not to mention the dominant focus on rival passages in the Hebrew Bible without much, if any, attention paid to how Jesus responded to debt peonage in his time and place. Stefani McDade begins her Christianity Today rou…

Despising the Holidays: When Christians Led the ‘War on Christmas’

By Ed Simon

…a boycott, apparently.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti629wLy4vU The so-called “War on Christmas” has been a staple of right-wing culture warriors for generations now, seemingly so incensed over people saying “Happy Holidays” that they can’t help but resort to hyperbole so bizarre that you can’t tell if it’s parody or not. It’s this perennially aggrieved attitude that allows a writer at Breitbart.com to claim that the decision of a massive pri…

Death in the Desert: Riding With the Samaritans

By Lauri Lebo

…ho had crossed the border. Recently she spoke with a mother looking for her 13-year-old son. The coroner had recently received the remains of a body that might be the child. The body had a missing front tooth with other teeth grown in. Rodriguez called the woman to ask for a photo of her son smiling. “Why smiling?” the woman kept asking. Rodriguez was trying not to say. Finally, she explained as delicately as she could, for dental identification t…

Religion Profs Critique PBS’ God Documentary, Call it Simplistic

By Matthew Avery Sutton

Well, it’s over. Last week the six-hour, multi-million-dollar Frontline/American Experience production God in America aired on PBS. Now the debate over its merits begins. Reviews from journalists have been mostly positive, although New York Times television critic Mike Hale was not totally impressed. The show, he wrote, was “stuffed with facts and dates and figures” and sometimes strained “to find a way to tie them together.” He also called it “a…

Churches Can No Longer Hide the Truth: Daniel Dennett on the New Transparency

By Andrew Aghapour

…. I think the problem comes when they think that they have to put their awe-inspiring myths in competition with the equally – or I would say more – awe-inspiring discoveries of science. Gods and flaming chariots are nothing, they’re cheap comic book fare, compared to what we actually have learned about stars and galaxies and the like. I think that there’s a sort of mirror image, an opposite of scientism, which has a real tin ear for the breathtaki…

“Hey You! Anti-Semite!”: A Jewish Krewe does Mardi Gras

By Barbra Barnett

…re was the Krewe du Jieux, a marching club in Krewe Delusion that uses anti-anti-Semitic comedy as its theme. Dressed up as bankers, judges, and media moguls, complete with plastic noses and blue horns, krewe members schlepped alongside a float that proclaimed a Jieux World Order. Think Borat, and then some. How did this come about, and what were they thinking? Everyone knows that Mardi Gras is about public drinking and debauchery, but the parade…