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A Third Reconstruction? Rev. William Barber Lifts the Trumpet

By Peter Laarman

…We had more political power after the Voting Rights Act in 1965 than we do today after Shelby. Unless we face the fact that America’s first two Reconstructions were undermined by the monied elites of plantation capitalism, we can’t even name the challenge we face today. In seeking a higher moral ground, we must break out of dead-end racialized framing. We must intentionally challenge the ahistorical and amoral tendencies that many public intellect…

Religion is Not about Belief: Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God

By Brian McGrath Davis

…for most of Western history “belief” has meant nothing like what it means today. Today, when someone asks me if I believe in God, for example, they are asking if I assent to the proposed verity or the factual existence of God—and usually it is in reference to a very specific understanding of that God. Similarly, if I’m asked if I have “faith in Christ”, the question is whether I agree with the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth was divine, died o…

Don’t Laugh at Rick Scott’s ‘Plan to Rescue America’ or Be Fooled by Reports of a ‘Backlash’ — His Only Mistake Was Revealing the Truth of Today’s GOP

By Annika Brockschmidt

…alism is central to its ideology. Scott would also eliminate anything that promotes diversity in government and public life—a drastic, devastating way of enacting the rhetoric of “colorblindness” into what it actually means: ensuring white, Christian dominance in all matters cultural and political. Immigrants, Scott’s document claims, will only be allowed into the country if they “assimilate,” and they shouldn’t seek to “change” America, only to b…

Obama Foes Misrepresent Islam with “Apostate” Tactic

By Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`im

…in the pre-colonial era, as if they are the legal system of nation states today. Apostasy is only a crime in the penal codes of four or five out of the 40 Muslim-majority countries today. Dr. Luttwak claims that “another provision of Muslim law… prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing.” This claim implies that there is something called “Muslim law,” which is either the…

Christianity Today counsels “patience” on Uganda’s anti-gay law

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

Christianity Today has put its two cents in on the “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda, telling gays and lesbians to unwad their knickers over the law and instead exercise “patience as Ugandan leaders sort out among themselves the best way to preserve their culture’s sexual mores.” Instead of strongly condemning this legislation, which President Barack Obama has called “odious,” CT tells us we need to understand the culture and give the Ugandans a fai…

Sex and Civilization: The Body as Battleground

By Jay Michaelson

…asure and marks the subservience of man to divine (or human) authority. We today are Abraham’s heirs, and re-enactors, of countless acts of circumscription. Today, as 2500 years ago, our own bodies are the instruments of authority, power, and control. Religious and political institutions of authority, usually backed up by violence, inscribe themselves on our genitals, our hairstyles, the ways in which we express our sexuality. We learn how to obey…

Putting the “Protest” Back in Protestant: Reclaiming the Spirit of Resistance

By Peter Laarman

…ord to resist government direction in matters of faith and public justice, today’s faux Protestants (DC division) appear only too happy to serve as the king’s errand boys and check their prophetic critique at the door. I am calling the self-willed domestication of what should be a fearless Protestant voice “Areopagitica in reverse” because Milton, in his 1644 anti-censorship polemic, was insisting on the necessity of the free interplay of ideas fo…

Gun Ownership as Sin—A Strategic, Secular Proposal for Gun Reform

By Ira Chernus

…espond to God’s love by loving our neighbors. The same call is still heard today in the push to control guns. But the power of religion to shape social values and government legislation was already waning even at the height of the Progressive era. The Social Gospel movement back then, despite its undeniable influence, was generally an adjunct to successful progressive programs, not their spearhead (with the notable exceptions of alcohol prohibitio…

Did Scientologists Take Over the Today Show?

By Becky Garrison

…em to at least separate the fluff from the facts. On Wednesday morning The Today Show ran a piece celebrating the work of Scientology’s Volunteer Ministers without addressing the concerns raised this organization’s “services,” which are designed by science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard. This story mentions that these counselors are providing “touch assists” without bothering to bring in a representative from the National Mental Health Association…

I Want a Perfect Body

By Jeremy Biles

…gelical devotional diet movements that first cropped up in the late 1950s. Promoting the belief that inner goodness was apparent in one’s outer aspect, this vein of devotion was built on the doctrine that “fat was sin.” A thin, firm, beautiful body, it was believed, was the visible reflection of goodness and godliness. The idea that “fit bodies… signify fitter souls” permeates the American consciousness with anxiety about the body while shaping b…