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The Myth of ‘Voodoo’: A Caribbean American Response to Representations of Haiti

By Dianne M. Stewart

…d’s good nature is reflected in the slave trade, what was the Devil up to? American ignorance of Vodou beliefs and practices aside, I am befuddled by Robertson’s lack of reflection on what his tall tale of Haiti’s unpaved road to hell inevitably registers about the nature of the Christian God. Where was the almighty Christian God when Haiti’s founding patriots and defenders of human liberty allegedly “swore a pact to the devil?” There is something…

American Christmas (Shopping) and the Protestant Reformation

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…iness. So, Roman Catholics leave the Baby Jesus out of the manger, whereas American Protestants seem especially obsessed with that symbol of primal innocence. And American Protestants leave the Crucified Christ off of the Cross, which must mean something too… Consider what constituted the real heart of the religious reforms central to the Protestant Reformation. No holy water, no incense, no painting, no statues, no saints, no relics, no monasteri…

Is Torture Utilitarian?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ms. And that leads to some very bizarre moral reasoning. Utilitarianism is number-crunching, but of a very peculiar kind; in its crudest forms, it seems to imply that you can measure pleasure and pain, and that by maximizing the pleasure of the greatest number of people, you may be able to justify the infliction of pain on a select few. We see that strange logic at work in these memoranda. First, the CIA justified waterboarding with the “ticking t…

Creeping Shari’ah… Ahem, Excuse Me… Biblical Law

By Julie Ingersoll

…he 4300 inmates already held within faith based programs by increasing the number of programs from four to six. While inmates in these facilitates choose the faith based programs over other options, it’s not, as proponents like to argue, fair to say that they choose to be there. Opponents of the plans argue that inmates in faith based programs enjoy a number of perks and better facilities than other inmates. But whatever the case, Scott’s plan wou…

Republicans “Evangelizing” Catholic Voters

By Patricia Miller

…Catholicism, is in many ways the most traditional Catholic of the sizeable number of Catholics jostling for the GOP nod. Bobby Jindal has labeled himself a “Catholic Evangelical” and even hosted “The Response,” a prayer extravaganza that amounts to a full-out paean to Christian nationalism. Rick Santorum has long courted the Christian right with his anti-abortion rhetoric and was once named by Time magazine as one of the nation’s “25 Most Influent…

Awakening, Counter-Awakening, and the End of Church

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ere’s a reason for the phrase, ‘It’s darkest before the dawn.’ So often in American history the greatest movements toward social justice and greater democracy and new religious institutions only happened in the wake of the very dark chapters in history that preceded them. In American history you get, at the very same time, the unfolding of the progressive movement and the strongest expression of the Ku Klux Klan at the beginning of the 20th centur…

Some Thoughts on Richard Dawkins’ Terrible Tweet

By Haroon Moghul

…Go to any university in America and you’ll come across a disproportionate number of Muslims. Before Dawkins can cry, ‘You succeed in the West but not the non-West!’—and thereby claim the superiority of the West he and I are both happily a part of—note that American Muslims have, on the whole, done much better than Western European Muslims. Whose fault is that? Why are Muslims succeeding culturally, creatively, and scientifically, in America, but…

Catholic Church Bans Gay Film: This Week’s Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…perous Justice Party (PKS), a conservative Islamist party that has a small number of seats in the National Assembly. Reuters’ Alisa Tang reported on Tuesday on the climate of fear that has been created: LGBT activists, facing a barrage of homophobia and hate speech by Indonesian authorities, are setting up hotlines and safehouses, while “unfriending” people on social media and deleting website directories that could expose them to violence.” The i…

More than Half of Mississippi GOP Primary Voters Believe the President is Muslim

By Sarah Posner

…ondents believe interracial marriage should be illegal; 24% of evangelicals did. Sixty-six percent of respondents in Mississippi do not believe in evolution; among evangelicals that number jumped to 74%. Of all the respondents, 29% believe interracial marriage should be illegal; among evangelicals that number was 33%….

For Buddhism, Science is Not a Killer of Religion

By Paul Wallace

…if one wants to find water one should dig a single deep well instead of a number of shallow ones. So it embarrasses me somewhat to admit that although my language is Christian, my stories are Christian, my Scriptures are Christian and my baptism is Christian, in truth I live in the hinterlands of Christianity, just a short distance away from Buddhism’s border. I’m a Christian all right, but I can see Buddhaland from my house. It is my proximity t…