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Why We Must Reclaim “Religious Freedom” from Christian Conservatives

By Bill Berkowitz

…njoying refugee status in the United States is an affront to our country’s best traditions and aspirations for religious freedom and equality under the law. President Obama rightly said there should be no “religious test” in our policies on these matters. But Senator Ted Cruz, among others, has said in response to the Syrian refugee crisis that the U.S. could limit refugees to Christians. I am reminded of the Spanish Inquisition in which Jews and…

Everything You Think You Know About the Dark Ages is Wrong

By Nancy Marie Brown

…Gerbert questioned authority. He experimented. To learn which of two rules best calculated the area of an equilateral triangle, he cut out square inches of parchment and measured the triangle with them. To learn why organ pipes do not behave acoustically like strings, he built models and devised an equation. (A modern physicist who checked his result calls it ingenious, if labor-intensive.) Gerbert made sighting tubes to observe the stars and con…

Islamophobia and Racism: Civil Rights at the Breaking Point

By Erik Love

…intention is to show them the truth, no matter how unpleasant. I tried my best to deliver the truth as it was told to me by the dozens of advocates I spoke with, and as I saw it in the archival record. If I am even partially successful, then anyone who reads the book will want to learn more about what these remarkable advocates are doing. I hope some will get inspired to become more personally involved in the struggle against Islamophobia. What a…

The Revolujah! Will Be Performed: Reverend Billy’s Reality Joke

By Nathan Schneider

…on of performance and preaching. How would you characterize it? KL: At his best, Reverend Billy is the love child of Billy Graham and Allen Ginsberg. I think he, like many American activists, is invested in a sort of self-promoting iconoclasm in order to bring about greater equality. Like many American preachers, he invents a new consensus in his speech in order to develop the broadest base. And, like many in the avant-garde, he suggests his perso…

The Case for Treating Near-Death Experiences Like Acid Trips

By Andrew Aghapour

…nre of first-hand accounts of near-death journeys to a supernatural realm. Best-selling books including Proof of Heaven, The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, and Heaven Is For Real share two elements, which are both captured in this trailer for the 2014 film adaptation of Heaven Is For Real : First, these accounts of near-death experiences emphasize how close the person was to biological death. It was a “miracle” that young Colton even survived, jus…

The Trouble With Harry (Potter): Religious Conservatives Do Have Something to Fear

By Jay Michaelson

…ean here the unreconstructed monotheistic God) has no role whatsoever. The best man wins the duel—or rather, the man with the best wand. Now, one could, of course, make the same claims about comic-book sagas like Superman or Batman. Why should Harry Potter have to take any more refuge in the numinous than Kal-El or Bruce Wayne? Well, because there is something intrinsically religious about the Potter series; and I don’t just mean the rab…

The Two Faces of New Atheism

By Konstantin Petrenko

…int that the New Atheism crosses the line and undermines its own effort to promote critical thinking. The problem with an exclusively negative approach to religion is twofold. First, while it helps sell books, it risks promoting intolerance and potentially even hatred of religious people. Atheists will point out that they do not fly planes into buildings or murder doctors, as some religious fundamentalists have done. However, it takes one visit to…

“The Camp Is a Ceremony”: A Report From Standing Rock

By Marion Grau

…les, are banned. Rather, the camp is a ceremony, a call to bring forth the best in each of us, and to act accordingly. We are encouraged to live our entire lives as ceremony by one of the elders, in a mode that reminds me of the sacramental life—all of life and all of creation as a sacrament. And that means moderation in our participation of the dynamics that enable the Black Snake of Hopi prophecy. From what I could gather the Black Snake is both…

Our Last “Genius” Stephen Hawking is Gone… Cause for Worry Or Inspiration?

By Ed Simon

…that if the idea of genius evolved to preserve wonder, that we must do our best to develop new constructions and new ideas to best encapsulate wonder in whatever era we are heading into. Perhaps even more importantly, it’s to expand how we envision genius, and to see and recognize it where we find it. For example, the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is a welcome figure, not just for his deft explanations of complex phenomena, but because as an…

God and the Gay Christian: An Interview with Matthew Vines

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…e want to be loving, faithful to scripture and they are trying to do their best, so I can respect that and value where they’re coming from. When I was coming out to my dad a few years ago, as I recount in the book, he held strongly non-affirming beliefs. He did not instantly change his mind. It was a slow process. He was a good, decent, caring intelligent man before he changed his beliefs and he still is. I think that he’s now more able to faithfu…