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Before Black Twitter: How the Early Black Press Shaped American Discourse Around Race and Religion

By Benjamin P. Fagan

…ean colonists, and was subsequently incorporated as a founding myth of the United States. This particular version of American chosenness has been used to justify a whole host of government policies, including the enslavement of black men, women, and children, as well as the genocidal slaughter of American Indians. But the presence of black chosenness in antebellum black newspapers teaches us that the very people that the United States worked so ha…

A Pastor Takes on BP in New Orleans

By Brentin Mock

…church’s post-Katrina resurgence wasn’t just a community, but more like a United Nations, or rather United Neighborhoods. And like many civic-minded organizations in New Orleans, they took citizen participation and equity as their bottom-line terms and conditions. Former Mayor Ray Nagin learned as much when in 2006 he opened a landfill to store Katrina debris less than two miles from Village L’est, which is shared by Vietnamese- and African-Ameri…

Does Helen Thomas Work for Israel?

By Shaul Magid

…as one of the largest Israeli diasporas in the world, only exceeded by the United States. Israel has better relations with Germany than any other country in the EU, while ultra-Orthodox Jews have been returning to Poland and Hungary and purchasing property once owned by Jews before the war. The famous Yeshivat Hokhmei Lublin, for example (which became a Nursing School during and after the Nazi occupation), is now in Jewish hands again. Head for th…

AR-15 Lapel Pins are More Than Political Provocation — They’re Symbols of the Violence at the Heart of White Christian Nationalism

By Annika Brockschmidt

…ently proclaimed his love of the AR-15: “This is a gun manufactured in the United States, creates jobs in the United States, it’s a made-in-America gun. We have national everything, why not have a national gun? It saves lives on a daily basis, and it’s not reported. And I think it’s good to have that contrast.” This, of course, is a blatant lie—AR-15s do not “save lives,” they are used to kill. After the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde,…

Using the “A” Word: Israel and Apartheid

By Shalom Goldman

…nd these of apartheid-era South Africa is an incendiary charge in both the United States and Israel. In Europe it is more commonly heard. The claim will make you a lot of enemies on the political Right, and earn you points on the international Left. Israel allied with South Africa The Unspoken Alliance is not directly concerned with the Israel-South Africa comparison, but it cannot, of course, avoid it. Rather, writer Sasha Polakow-Suransky, a sen…

A Locked and Loaded Covenant: The Religious Roots of America’s Gun Culture

By Peter Laarman

…xceptionalism. Dunbar-Ortiz, whose 2014 Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States won wide acclaim, appropriately brings her vast knowledge of white Europeans’ genocidal treatment of Native Americans to bear in this new volume. But she adds new layers of insight by treating the Europeans’ “savage wars” against the indigenes in tandem with the whites’ overwhelming need to control Black bodies in building a hugely powerful economy based almos…

Engle Supports “Principled Stand” of Ugandan Anti-Gay Bill Promoters

By Sarah Posner

…on to maintain that because homosexuality hasn’t been “restrained” in the United States, “I don’t think it’s going to be good for the nation, it sweeps into the education system, and the church is going to end up losing its privilege to have its own voice. Gender rights, will trump religious rights. I think it’s wrong, it’s not good for society. Those are the statements I came with, so frankly I was quite surprised to be thrown into this huge con…

The Sacred and the Dead: Truckin’ as a New American Pilgrimage

By Varun Soni

…the real journey is one of self-discovery. The religious landscape of the United States has profoundly changed since the genesis of the Grateful Dead 50 years ago, especially in terms of the dramatic rise of the number of Americans who are no longer affiliated with traditional religious institutions or denominations. In the absence of traditional religious affiliation, people are increasingly turning to popular culture to explore and interrogate…

The Quiet Passing of Fundamentalist Mormon Prophet Lynn A. Thompson Suggests Polygamy Recognition Remains a Distant Hope

By Cristina Rosetti

…o continued the controversial marital practice. According to the Apostolic United Brethren, they were charged with continuing the “fundamentals” of the faith—namely polygamy—after the LDS Church essentially brought an end to the practice in 1904. Over the past two years, the legal and criminal status of polygamy in the US has once again been at the center of public attention. At the start of the 2020 Utah legislative session, Senator Deidre Hender…

Religious Freedom Manifesto Calls for Compromise and Civility—What’s So Wrong With That?

By Frederick Clarkson

…ons. These denominations, the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Methodist Church, and United Church of Christ, have been leading members of the 38 member communions of the National Council of Churches. Mainline leaders recognize that Religious Freedom Institute leaders, Executive Director Kent Hill, Chairman Thomas F. Farr, and signatory neoconservative Catholic Robert P. George have all played leadership roles in the neoconserva…