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The Landmark 85-Year-Old Report Absent From Debates Over Missionary’s Death

By Amy Fallas

…ve” justifies the means. As a scholar of missionary history, I’ve seen how American missionaries have assisted those in need. During World War I, American missionaries across the Middle East were key protagonists in forming the Near East Relief, which administered aid to millions displaced by war and conflict. Into the mid-twentieth century, missionaries and faith-based organizations were at the forefront of addressing global refugee crises follow…

What Passover Taught Me About Being Black

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…happened, I converted to rabbinic Judaism under the guidance of an African-American rabbi and within the context of a primarily African-American congregation. Observing the Passover seder communally with my congregation was exciting. As time progressed, however, Passover became further removed from my annual celebration of freedom from Egyptian slavery and the hope for the end of American bondage to debates over whether, as a non-Ashkenazi Jew, I…

Atheist Monument: Proof of Unintelligent Design

By Gordon Haber

…a successful monument makes it hard to imagine its setting without it. The American Atheists monument fails on both counts. When granted the opportunity to memorialize atheism in a public place, American Atheists decided to install a bench. In one sense, this is a clever idea, in that it reflects the utilitarian impulse of American atheism. But a bench is also something that you put your butt on. And this particular bench is an eyesore. About five…

The War On Terror Is Over

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…. So the support for Israel has had a direct effect in increasing the anti-American sentiment in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Conversely, American support for Palestinian autonomy and a renewed effort by the U.S. to become engaged in the peace process would be seen as an attempt by America to be a problem solver rather than a problem maker in the region. It is disconcerting that during the recent Israeli attacks on Hamas in Gaza there ha…

Amway, Religious Right Pyramid Scheme, Returns to the Motherland

By Bill Berkowitz

…rprise, Amway leaders have made billions by selling a phony version of the American Dream, while bilking thousands of ordinary American dreamers out of their hard-earned life savings. The wealth of the founders has supported the nearly 30+ year conservative makeover of American society through millions of dollars in donations to the creation and development of right-wing institutions and causes. ++++++++++ Rethinking Redemption: The Case of Charle…

Gay-Hating Church Burns “Idols”: A Report

By Rebecca Barrett-Fox

…ued that acts such as the burning of the Qur’an, while legal, provoke anti-American sentiment and endanger American troops, Westboro’s Tim Phelps argues that it’s the invasion of Muslim nations and the killing of countless civilians that has inspired violence by Muslims. The media, he says, ignores these civilian deaths, “as if their lives did not matter at all,” instead calling down wrath on religious believers exercising their rights to free spe…

Show Me the Way of the Hebrews: The Making of an African American Rabbi

By J. Lester Feder

…oom. It quickly grew, its ranks swelling with the large numbers of African Americans then pouring into Philadelphia from the South. In 1951, the group formally declared itself the Bethel Holy Commandment Church. As the name makes obvious, they were not yet a synagogue. Dailey’s daughter, Debra Bowen, became leader of Bethel after her mother’s death in 2001, and she is the official keeper of her legend. Bowen confessed in a rare moment of candor du…

Sacred&Profane: American Martyrdom

By Gary Laderman

…a democracy: the sacrifice of freedoms in the fight for freedom; economic ruin in the name of ever-expanding military power; the deterioration of governmental checks and balances in the interest of presidential authority. Ironically, the most openly religious American President of all time has inflicted the worst kinds of sacrilege on the body politic, and utterly underestimated the spiritual demands of growing numbers of Americans who are beginni…

A Head Full of Monsters: American History as Horror Show

By W. Scott Poole

…ructions that take place at the intersection of religion, politics and the American way of violence. The America that has sold, lynched and bombed human beings has had a head full of monsters. So let’s be done with the language of symbolism. It’s weak tea. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? Two audiences. Educated readers of history interested in exploring the darkest parts of the American forest. Second, horror fans like myse…

American Infidel: Robert Ingersoll Was the “Great Agnostic” of the (Last) Gilded Age

By Peter Laarman

…ink of humans as the crown of creation (they rattled Darwin’s own nerves), Americans in Ingersoll’s time were on the whole less anti-scientific than those of our own time, when just under half of adult Americans tell pollsters they do not accept evolutionary theory. Ingersoll was brilliantly able to allay lingering anxieties about the indignity of human kinship with other species. In his lectures he deftly showed that the idea of an ascending huma…