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‘Christian Warriors’: Who Are The Hutaree Militia And Where Did They Come From?

…S. Boyer, author of When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture, suggests that religious views about biblical prophecy in the United States have “always had an enormous, if indirect and underrecognized, role [in] shaping public policy.” If the message of apocalyptic demonization is not clear, try reading one of the novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins in their Left Behind series of Christian apocalyptic novels whic…

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In Qur’an Burning We’re All Losers

…Hindu” by Prema Kurien. Yet the aftermath of 9/11 has made the process of Americanization different for American Muslims. What, months ago, Sarah called the utter ordinariness of demeaning Islam has turned into full-blown, ugly bigotry (and that includes both Qur’an burnings as well as efforts around the country to prohibit the building of mosques). Today my friend and colleague Parvez Ahmed, who has, himself, been attacked by anti-Muslim activis…

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Keep Jews Interesting: It’s Time to Stop Being Defined by Anti-Semitism

…have the chance to create something different. The final word goes to the American scholar of Judaica Jacob Neusner. In his 1981 book Stranger at Home: The Holocaust, Zionism, and American Judaism, Neusner argued that an obsession with the Holocaust or anti-Semitism, painting the Jew as a victim—the foundation of American Jews’ civil religion—is essentially an act of Jewish self-hatred because it perpetuates derogatory Jewish stereotypes. The sol…

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An End to the “Gentleman’s Agreement” on Israel?

…pped even more spectacularly than their many previous ones, Israel and its American friends have tended to focus on practicalities: money, boundaries, resources… and settlements. American maps may show the Golan as part of Syria, but every year, more Israeli-owned vineyards are planted. To suddenly focus on symbolism is good for fundraising letters, but bad for actual policy. In this case, at least, symbolism has prevailed. Because it is only a bu…

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Op-Ed: A Few Things I Wish Barack Obama Had Said

…cus on the profound similarity. Both are based on the firm belief that the American electorate regards its suffrage as a thing for sale. Both are based on that time-honored American political tradition of buying votes. You know, people have tried to accuse me of having messianic pretensions. But here is the proof that I am not “the one you’re waiting for.” The true messiah of American politics will be the candidate who is willing to say that enjoy…

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David Becomes Christian at Values Voter Summit

…ifficult to see how this applies to the conservative religious view of the American story: The golden age begins with a founding agreement between the Christian God and the American people. When the people fall away from the covenant, God punishes them by withdrawing his blessings and unleashing his wrath. To win back God’s grace, the people must return to the covenant. In fact, the CART narrative is all over American history: The trope is old and…

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Crossing the Rubicon? Mar-a-Lago Raid Enflames Right Wing Fantasies of Christian Caesarism

…ere somehow, and if these guys don’t have a better plan… The Caesarism the American Right dreams of is neo-fascism. What they’re after, of course, is not a real Caesar—this is nostalgia for a Rome that never existed, a mythical Constantine at best. What they’re after is a new Mussolini; an American one. A Christofascist dictator with stars and stripes behind him, Bible in hand—a Caesar in the White House. The idea that all that’s needed for the US…

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Sit Down and Shut Up: Pulling Mindfulness Up By Its (Buddhist) Roots

…rtant to keep in mind that this conversation is unfolding within a divided American Buddhist community. Specific numbers are hard to pin down, and estimates vary widely, but roughly three-quarters of American Buddhists are Asian. The remainder are predominantly white converts. Practitioners in the Asian diaspora typically join communities that are aligned with sects popular in their origin countries. Convert Buddhists, on the other hand, tend to c…

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I Want a Perfect Body

…godliness.  The idea that “fit bodies… signify fitter souls” permeates the American consciousness with anxiety about the body while shaping beliefs about beauty. Today, as Zed Nelson wants to show in his work, the forces of globalization have propelled the American conception of the perfect body into the world at large, where it has merged with and inflected traditional Western ideals of beauty. Nelson writes, “The promise of bodily improvement is…

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Putin Theo-Propaganda Minister Kirill Invokes 600 Years of History to Lay Claim to Ukraine — Here’s What it Means

…Abraham Lincoln. This is also, to be clear, a religious question. For many American Christians, particularly some American evangelicals and members of the Latter-day Saint movement, American history is as sacred and theologically charged as medieval and early modern Eastern Mediterranean and Eastern European history is for Orthodox Christians. If you believe in a God of History, you inevitably also believe your own history is divinely-mandated and…

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