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Great Moments In Bipartisanship: Bible Edition

By Daniel Schultz

…place of Jesus distract from his soteriological agenda. Hearings produce a number of shepherds willing to testify that Jesus was born in a Bethlehem-area stable, but doubters refuse to concede, pointing to a document showing a Nazareth birth three years before the founding of that city. [Luke 6:20]: Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God.” GOP leaders immediately label this socialism. [ John 2:1-12]: Jesus apologizes fo…

American Jewish Leaders Get Gaza Wrong

By Sarah Posner

…by the Al Qassam Brigades). Yousef Munayyer provides some history of the numbers from Gaza at Open Zion: For example, in 2011, the projectiles fired by the Israeli military into Gaza have been responsible for the death of 108 Palestinians, of which 15 where women or children, and the injury of 468 Palestinians, of which 143 where women or children. The methods by which these causalities were inflicted by Israeli projectiles breaks down as follow…

Blood and Politics — Christian White Nationalism in the Age of Obama

By Bill Berkowitz

…eliefs have been dissected over the years, the core religious beliefs of a number of White nationalist movement leaders has received far less attention. Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream Leonard Zeskind Farrar, Straus and Giroux May, 2009 I recently had the opportunity to talk with Zeskind, a friend and colleague, about his new book, the role these religious beliefs played in the d…

Mormonism’s “9/11 Mosque Moment”

By Joanna Brooks

…olleague Hussein Rashid pointed out in this must-read piece), Mormons, the number two most disliked religion in America, have no business contributing to public rage against the number one most disliked religion in America. Nor in trafficking in falsehoods like “Islam is an ideology, not a religion,” a line I’ve been hearing from a few Mormons in recent days. Islam is in fact a religion for which Mormon leaders from the time of George A. Smith…

The Story Behind the Catholic Church’s Stunning Contraception Reversal

By Patricia Miller

…limited to procreation; that it was acceptable to limit family size for a number of reasons; and that it was licit to use the naturally occurring sterile period to do so. Enter Catholic physician John Rock. By designing a contraceptive that used hormones already present in a woman’s body to mimic the natural infertility of a pregnant woman, he hoped the Vatican would find a theological basis to approve the method. In 1958, when the Pill was alrea…

Global LGBT Recap: Catholic Polling, Religious Violence, International Advocacy

By Peter Montgomery

…logger Blabbeando reminds us that during Brewster’s nomination process, “a number of religious leaders the Dominican Republic criticized the nomination of an openly gay man for the diplomatic post. Leading the charge was Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez who called the then-nominee a ‘faggot’ on national television.” Last month the Cardinal urged church goers to show respect for the new ambassador, but some people aren’t willing to let g…

Magic in the Air: How Intellectuals Invented the Myth of a Mythless Society

By Jason Josephson Storm

…th me about various protective talismans and ghostly premonitions. After a number of the patrons had shared such anecdotes, one Japanese man asked me, curiously, if these sorts of things didn’t go on in America. Before I could answer (and describe America’s own enchantment), a European patron jumped in, assuring everyone that Japan was much more spiritual and magical than the West. He looked to me to confirm the sentiment, which I did my best to r…

Obama’s Gay Marriage Support Shocks Black Church

By Anthea Butler

…s, stunted sexuality, homophobia, and sexual abuse are competing for issue number one in their churches; at many, they are tied at the number one slot. It is high time to for the leaders of the black church to ‘put away childish things’ and to engage in a real conversation about sexuality, same-sex marriage, and the homophobia embedded in the black church community. Pontificating and posturing props up preachers, and does little to edify congregat…

The Fourth of July Is Not America’s Birthday

By Peter Laarman

Over the past few days I’ve seen a number of references to “America’s Birthday” coming up on Friday. If a commercial advertiser wants to say this, fine (I guess). But I have spotted a couple of otherwise sober-minded writers using the “birthday” tag as well, and their ignorance is more disturbing. July 4, 1776, was in no way the birthday of anything. It was the start of a long and savage struggle against the world’s most powerful empire at the ti…

The Harlot Shall Be Burned with Fire: Biblical Literalism in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

By Sarah Sentilles

…ty, and Mass Media” students to watch one hour of television, to count the number of dead bodies they saw, and to keep track of who those bodies belonged to. On television, the dead bodies were women’s; on the evening news, they were the bodies of people from other countries, and usually they weren’t white. Judith Butler argues in Precarious Life that whose dead bodies we are allowed to see, and whose remain hidden, tell us something about which l…