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A Rabbi And An Imam Write Together About Israel and Gaza

By Sarah Posner

…Virginia Hebrew Congregation in Reston, Virginia. They write: The current military operations in Israel and the Gaza strip should disturb all people of faith. The only moral path to a solution between Israelis and Palestinians (Israeli Jewish/Muslim/Christian and Palestinian Muslim/Christian) will be dialogue and negotiation. This is a long and arduous path, but the faith that grounds our traditions can sustain the slow evolution of history. The…

As Gays More Accepted, Religious Opponents More Vocal

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…eight points from 38 percent in 2003 to 46 percent in 2008. Allowing open military service has been favored by a 52 percent majority since 1994 and has risen nine points to 61 percent this year. Dr. Clyde Wilcox, professor of government at Georgetown University, during a press conference to release the report, called this trend a “tidal wave of change” especially in religious communities. “There are very few things that have changed in American p…

Broadcast Officials in China Censor Gay TV Characters

By Peter Montgomery

…y LGBTQ faith-based organization in the region. It works primarily in Anglophone countries but has plans to expand further in Africa, with additional focus on Francophone regions. There is no group or organization in the region that addresses the needs of LGBTQ and MSM Muslims. Mambaonline.com published an interview this week with a lesbian couple whose marriage in December generated media coverage that led to both positive and negative responses,…

Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, Cry For the Catholic Church

By Mary E. Hunt

…ll the while the Roman Catholic Church had a dubious relationship with the military government. It was fairly common among upper class Argentine families to have one son who was a general and one who was a bishop or cardinal, so the lines were thin between church and state.* The Apostolic Nuncio to Argentina at the time, Archbishop Pio Laghi, was rumored to play tennis with the generals who ruled the country, including Admiral Emilio Eduardo Masse…

The Tragedy of Religious Freedom

By Patrick Hornbeck

…n a part of the U.S. landscape. The Continental Congress waived compulsory military service for pacifists; churches have been exempted from paying federal income taxes as long as the IRS has existed; and Catholic and many mainline Protestant churches administer communion wine containing alcohol to those who are underage. But in other circumstances, religious people and groups have not been allowed exemptions. Thoroughgoing pacifists may be freed f…

The Missing Element in the Conversation on Christian Nationalism and Freedom: Whiteness

By Peter Laarman

…pal Indian killer. To this day their descendants occupy a disproportionate number of senior positions in the US military. What we now call counterinsurgency warfare is directly descended from their Indian-killing efficiency along the frontier. In our time, it’s white Christians belonging to this same “old settler” stock who remain especially prominent among the camo-clad ranks showing up at anti-mask rallies and at violent white power mobilization…

Vainglory Days: A Foremost Expert on Religious Violence Offers Clues to How QAnon Might End

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…ng of militant Sikhs in India’s Punjab in the 1990s came from a barrage of military and police repression. Although many of the former militants in the movement told me that the movement had already self-destructed from within, they admitted that the presence of the police had a chilling effect on the movement’s control of the countryside. When the police or military respond too strongly they can send the signal that the image of warfare that many…

This Veterans Day, the Centennial of the Unknown Soldier, Skip the Platitudes and Talk to a Veteran

By Sara Jaye Hart

…erence from those who “answer the sacred call” to perform their “elaborate military ballet” on these “hallowed grounds.” (Visitors are encouraged to join the trolley tours, for about the price of a movie ticket.) Ideals may profane the real, may draw hearts and minds away from the work to be done and toward a future of dreams, and in so doing they may accustom the suffering to an unjust world. Such has been the secularist critique of a faraway and…

Hanukkah Marks the Complexities of Assimilation and Syncretism Faced by American Jews

By Yehuda Kurtzer

…as been true since its beginnings, as it celebrates victory in internecine military conflict and a triumph over assimilation. Even so, the majority of the 15 million Jews in the world will celebrate the festival of lights this week and next, which makes it strange that we’ll likely hear reflections in the largest public venues from those who are most ambivalent about it and don’t even identify as Jewish. Sometimes it seems that America is a deeply…

Electability of Biden is More ‘Conventional’—and Less ‘Wisdom’

By Branko Marcetic

…es into a new war, a remarkable fact even as he’s deepened pre-existing US military involvement in the Middle East. Biden, by contrast, was not only a key ally to the Bush administration in selling the Iraq War—something he continues to lie about when challenged—he’s supported military action in countries as far afield as the former Yugoslavia and Sudan, and was part of the administration that fought the disastrous war in Libya. A social conservat…