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

By Nathan Schneider

…rbiage and ritual action denote. Could it be that the first preachers were really “just” performers? KL: This question inevitably arises when we see people who are not professional actors do something in a theatrical way. People like preachers or politicians—if we see them behaving in a way that exceeds a tone of quiet seriousness, we say they are really just performing. This remark—it’s just performance—tells us that we think performance itself i…

Tribal Trouble: The Changing Nature of American Jews’ Relationship to Israel and the Question of Jewish Unity

By Shaul Magid

…ated. She argues that when American Jews talk about intermarriage they are really talking about assimilation. This notion of “cultural shorthand,” talking about one thing while really talking about something else (and knowing the reader can fill in the blank space in-between) is a common way communities struggle to come to terms with things they have less control over by talking about things that they ostensibly have more control over. The fear of…

Could a Real Life Jurassic Park Help with Climate Change?

By Michael Schulson

…hings, including that which we don’t fully understand. That’s the fantasy, really, that underlies so many of our visions of simpler times. “With the earliest attempts at domestication of gray wolves in Europe some 30,000 years ago,” she writes, “our species began manipulating the genetics of other organisms to our advantage.” We have always been manipulating. We always will be. In that sense, at least, the future really is a reflection of the past…

Fight the Power: How to Read, and Re-Read, the Book of Revelation

By Wil Gafney

…it is alright because the gods don’t exist and we know that, so it doesn’t really matter if you eat it or not. You don’t want to offend your brother or sister, but unless somebody else thinks you are doing something really wrong there is no problem eating that meat.” And then people asked, “Well what about marrying someone outside of the group?” Paul thought marriages between believers in Christ and unbelievers were quite all right. But John’s con…

National Review’s Kevin Williamson Comes Out Against Daughters, Misunderstands Science

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…r convinced that it means they’re low-status males; There is a non-trivial number of human beings who are unrepentant daughters and/or fallopian tube havers and/or cardigan wearers; There was a Republican president in recent memory who had two daughters; There are social conservatives in other quarters trying to be seen as the ones who care about the value of daughters. One can only assume that NRO folks ran these scenarios and determined none of…

New Poll Reveals Jews May Be Open to Change in Israel Policy

By Benjamin Weiner

…, has been best described by observers as “enigmatic”? How well will these numbers hold up if Israel’s “most favored nation” status is truly challenged by an American administration? Despite some American Jewish alienation from Israeli policy, backing for a bold new direction in the peace process is not entirely solid, a fact reflected in the same survey. 40% of respondents continue to support West Bank settlements, which, no matter how J Street c…

5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Overthink the New Pew Data’s Impact on Politics

By Sarah Posner

…, called the pace of the continued growth of the religiously unaffiliated “really remarkable.” The number of Americans identifying with no religion grew by 19 million from 2007 to 2014, and now the religiously unaffiliated are “more numerous,” said Smith, than either mainline Protestants or Catholics. Much of the rise of the “nones” is attributable to religious switching, mainly from Catholicism and mainline Protestantism. One-fifth of Americans r…

Unprecedented Anti-LGBTQ Statement By Orthodox Church in America Should Be Christian Nationalist Warning Sign to US Orthodoxy

By Katherine Kelaidis

…hurch in America (OCA). Both are, unsurprisingly, characterized by a large number of American converts in their ranks. Nearly 70% of those in the AOA are converts, while the OCA is about evenly split, 50-50. Similarly, the GOA, arguably the most progressive Orthodox body in America—“progressive” being a relative term—remains almost exclusively composed of ethnic Greeks. Focused on their own ethnic political concerns, including the position of the…

“I Speak to God in Public”: Are Young Black Millennials Reclaiming a Theology of Resistance?

By Joshua L. Lazard

…om 24 to 20 percent among historically black Protestant denominations. The number of 18-29 year olds among Catholics and evangelical Protestants ticked up 1 percent respectively, and among mainline Protestants it saw a 9 percent increase. In the interest of equity, blacks make up 9 percent of those who are unaffiliated with any religious tradition (“nones”), and of that, the numbers trended upwards among 18-29 year olds. Many news outlets covered…

Why We Must Reclaim “Religious Freedom” from Christian Conservatives

By Bill Berkowitz

…reciated aspect of the wider trend is something called “religification.” A number of Christian right legal agencies have produced manuals for churches and related institutions, to rewrite such things as job descriptions to extend the legal definition of “ministry” in order to seek exemption from labor standards and civil rights laws, and to inoculate themselves against discrimination lawsuits. Much of this is based on the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court r…