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Books to Give this Holiday Season to Help Understand the World We’ve Found Ourselves in (and to Help Reimagine a Better One)

By Becky Garrison

…cist (One World) by Ibrahim Kendi Hand this book to your well-heeled Episcopalian aunt in Portland who sports a Black Lives Matter sign on the front lawn while paying her Latinx housekeeper minimum wage. Then read it yourself and learn how we all can work toward genuine racial equality. Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators (Little, Brown and Company)by Ronan Farrow Gift this to your creepy Tom Clancy-loving uncle. He’…

America, the Mythical: “Mother of Exiles” or Denier of Safe Haven?

By Ed Simon

…gorically profound story about America as “Mother of Exiles,” a universal space that encompases all ethnicities, cultures, and religions precisely because of its universality. Arguments about the significance of the pilgrims began scarcely before the surf could erase the fresh footprints of the settlers on the beach at Cape Cod. The Puritans of New England were arguably among the most educated people in the history of the western world. Drawn from…

Ban on Female Genital Cutting in Somaliland is Progress, But Success Relies on Working with Religious Leaders

By Chelsea Garbell

…n Hargeisa is training midwives to advocate for change. Youth education campaigns, including the UNFPA-affiliated Somaliland Youth Peer Education Network, targets health students at universities across the country and shares information via social media about the complications associated with FGC. These programs are vital, and they lead the way, but they target only one set of actors. Whole communities, and not just health workers, need to be invo…

No End in Sight: White Evangelicals Stick with Trump’s White Nationalist GOP

By Peter Laarman

…y changing and how younger white evangelicals will yet rise up to save the Republic. Exit polls thus far show more of the same, with white evangelicals overwhelmingly supporting House Republicans over Democrats, 75 percent to 22 percent. I spend a lot of time absorbed in 19th century U.S. history, and (yes) I do experience a slight sectarian thrill whenever I read of instances of Bible-thumping white Christians standing up boldly against race and…

Is Cardinal Dolan’s Pro-Life Piece More Evidence of Pro-Catholic Bias from RNS Publisher?

By Evan Derkacz

…ets on it. “Staffers tell me that [Tom] Gallagher’s behavior was part of a pattern, with Gallagher repeatedly attempting to influence the site’s coverage of Catholicism,” wrote Sarah Jones, in her April 27 report in the New Republic on the “Implosion of Religion News Service.” According to the reporting of both Jones and the Columbia Journalism Review’s Stephanie Russell-Kraft, some of the more egregious instances of Gallagher’s editorial meddling…

“Project Blitz” Seeks to Do for Christian Nationalism What ALEC Does for Big Business

By Frederick Clarkson

…s. Clergy Protection Act: Allows clergy and religious organizations not to participate in marriage of which they disapprove. Licensed Professional Civil Rights Act: “An act prohibiting discrimination by any individual or organization against an applicant for, or a holder of, an occupational license, due to the professional’s or potential professional’s sincerely held religious beliefs.” Would provide religious exemptions for such professionals as…

MLK Monument That Never Was, is a Reminder of the King Too Often Ignored

By Ed Simon

…between Yixin’s final design and Savage’s thought experiment is a helpful parable about the ways in which this nation has commemorated King compared to the actual radical legacy the martyred preacher represented. From one perspective, the final choice could be seen as indicative that the United States was giving final due respect to the legacy of one of our most important human rights activists, a theologian instrumental in not just adapting his…

Billy Graham Was More Like White America’s Surrogate Savior Than “America’s Pastor”

By Peter Laarman

…h whom Graham had the closest relationship)? For that matter, would a good pastor reinforce a parishioner’s Jew-hatred, as Graham clearly did vis-a-vis Nixon (although he later claimed that he forgot saying these appalling things)? So ixnay on “America’s Pastor.” I don’t even want to give Graham credit for being “America’s Preacher.” Calling him that would be an insult to earlier figures who really knew how to use a pulpit: Charles Grandison Finne…

Religious Freedom Historian John Ragosta on “Religious Freedom”

By Frederick Clarkson

…igion, even all Christian religions, it also had the authority to attack a particular religion or all religions. They realized that complete separation of church and state was the best way to promote true religion. Our original national motto speaks to the way that our religious, ethnic and racial diversity is a source of greatness: E Pluribus Unum–out of many, one. This is nowhere more true than in religion. Jefferson once explained that the norm…

The Year in Religion: A Ray of Hope Amid the Usual Fecklessness

By Peter Laarman

…g a show of their ethical colors, liberal faith leaders have organized and participated in routinized rituals of personal purification that do absolutely nothing to make the slightest dent in structural oppression. Not all, of course: to say that would be unfair. But far too many figures in what I will persist in calling the Religion-Industrial Complex have set the bar for “prophetic resistance” at an embarrassingly low level. To be sure, scads of…