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Pulitzer-Prize Winning Historian’s Latest Reveals the Problem with Today’s ‘Religious Freedom’

…ng shows, without openly proclaiming, that this nuance is sadly lacking in today’s conversations and Supreme Court opinions. Some scholars, in an era of rising Christian Nationalism, are trying to downplay the influence of Rakove’s guides, Jefferson and Madison, on the American government’s relationship with religion in an effort to argue that America is a Christian nation. Rakove euthanizes such attempts with that award-winning prose: “It is enti…

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

…La Follette. Jacoby writes correctly that there is no establishment figure today who would dare to say, as Ingersoll said loudly and often, that the glory of America’s founding generation lies precisely in the fact that they consciously did not establish a Christian nation. There is no establishment figure today (Bill Maher does not count) who would dare to have huge public fun at the expense of the pious in the Ingersoll manner—and thus also make…

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The Surprisingly Short History of Popular Yoga

…social justice is alive and well among many practitioners of postural yoga today. In the popular imagination, we tend to imagine yoga as a luxury activity primarily embraced by white suburbanites. Yoga has become a part of popular culture and brand-name yoga commodities are easily accessible among privileged communities across the world. And for a large number of yoga advocates, the claim to possess knowledge of yoga is closely related to the ques…

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Billy Graham and the Gospel of American Nationalistic Christianity

…ationist, hegemonic WASP politics that son Franklin Graham and many others promote today. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Franklin Graham simply represents a more strident version of 1950s Billy Graham. It’s not surprising then, that Billy Graham will finish his race in the United States Capitol next week. House Speaker Paul Ryan has indicated that Billy Graham will lie in state in the Capitol from February 28 to March 1st. For the most…

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On Religion, Abortion, and Politics: Dr. George Tiller’s Christian Ethics

…ization that it has been, and continues to be, primarily a political issue promoted by religious groups with a far larger agenda than simply abortion—and driven by an energy that goes far deeper into the racial history of the country than most Americans want to admit. After the Civil War in the 1860s, the white South was able to keep former black slaves from full participation in society for another 100 years. Only in the 1960s were African Americ…

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January 6 protester holds giant image of White Jesus in a Make America Great Again cap.

America Appears to be Heading for a Religious Civil War

…uses of civil war. We see this same dynamic unfolding in the United States today, the greatest threat stemming from an ideology widely known as “Christian nationalism.” While identity has, of course, always been central to U.S. politics—particularly on the Right—what’s different today is not only the sharp decline in the White Christian majority, but the widespread belief among those who remain that they are persecuted and that their entire way of…

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No, Sunni and Shia Muslims Have Not Been Fighting Forever

…m minorities in India after the British left (and the Caliphate Movement): today Pakistan has been scarred by vicious sectarian violence, but the mostly Sunni country was founded by an Ismaili Shia leader. Two, in fact. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s ‘Great Leader’ and kind of its George Washington, was born into a minority sect within what was already a Shia minority. The Pakistan Movement also received significant funding from the head of the I…

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Militias, Trump, Guns, and ISIS: Too much Masculinity?

…ve, regardless of what it is. One way to describe what’s happening is that today there is a surplus of masculine purpose. Purposive energy exceeds the capacity to imagine what good purposes to put it to. This might help explain how men today might be drawn to causes that promise opportunities to express purpose. That is what ISIS offers. It is what vigilante occupation of government property offers. It is what “stand your ground” laws offer. It is…

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Religion in Tension on World AIDS Day

…ch. We are the Church.” While a single example, this statement reminds us, today, on World AIDS Day 2008, that throughout its history, AIDS/HIV has been entangled with religion—for good and ill. As we move into the second quarter-century of the pandemic, this entanglement continues. Twenty-first century religion has been shaped by and has shaped the AIDS/HIV crisis; they continue to influence one another. Today, we often hear about this entangleme…

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Escalating Afghanistan: What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy?

…is the complete insulation from the consequences of bad policy enjoyed by today’s jeunesse doree. Not only do they not have to go to the burning deserts of Iraq or to the chilly forbidding heights of Afghanistan: they don’t even have to know anything about the lives of those who are going. The idea that they might experience any Fallows-like guilt or have any second thoughts about their degree of insulation is simply not an issue today. This extr…

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