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In Repudiation of its Devastating Doctrine of Discovery, Vatican Masks the History and Responsibility of Catholic Church

By Elisha Chi

…of the Doctrine of Discovery authorized Alfonso V of Portugal to: “invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens [Muslims] and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed… to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profi…

If Music is Haram, then Allah Made a Mistake

By Amina Wadud

…ghter played another rendition of this song by the Fou Fous and it sent me searching YouTube for k.d. lang’s version again, either at the Olympics or elsewhere. I found a concert that had been watched more than 4 million times! It was awesome. It made me think about the mixed opinion regarding music in Islam. In my Salafi days I bought completely into the idea that music is haram. For a little while, that is. I had that morbid idea of Islam as som…

Arcade Fire and the Suburban Soul

By Paul Harvey

…er exerts its authority—cops show up, shine their lights on the reflectors of our bikes, and call down curfew. When they ask the kids where they live, the answer is telling: Well sir, if you only knew What the answer is worth Been searching every corner Of the earth Arcade Fire’s records continue that search, never quite making it home. The suburb has its comforts, they admit, but ultimately it is eerie and unsettled; the antithesis of the dreams…

Make no Mistake, if There’s a War Between Russia and Ukraine, it Will be a Religious War

By Katherine Kelaidis

…for modern European colonialism, as a depleted Catholic Church went out in search of new converts (a la the Spanish conquistadors) and self-assured Calvinists (a la the Pilgrims of Plymouth) went looking for land on which to build their New Jerusalem, ensuring that lots of non-Western Europeans suffered and died as a consequence of this internal conflict. Similarly, the tensions that motivated the terrorists in New York, Paris, and London, were la…

Bad Magic: Voodoo According to Disney

By Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado

…plated their comments I questioned my decision to combine mommy-time and research and the implications for my sons’ impressions of Vodou. Many commentaries will come out in the next few weeks centering on race given that Tiana is Disney’s first black princess. Yet I want to focus on the film’s depiction of Voodoo. Set in New Orleans, the film is a twist on the classic tale of the Princess and the Frog, with Voodoo supplying the magic. Bewitching P…

RDGenerations: Youth and Liberal Religion

By Lucia Hulsether

…hat have you been up to? Lucia: My summer was busy! Mostly I worked as a research assistant to a group of sociologists who are working on a project called “Latin American Immigrants in the New South” [Ed. note: see also our latest Dispatches from the Borderlands]. But in the gaps around this job, I did three week-long stints with entirely different kinds of organizations. First I spent a week working with an activist group on the US-Mexico border,…

Report From Paris: Who Is Naomi Klein, Religiously?

By Donna Schaper

…t about magic, God is not coming to fix it and neither is Mommy.” I’m on a search to find out who she is religiously. I know she is Jewish. I know she is a red diaper baby. I know her grandparents were passionately atheist and communist. I know her mother had a stroke when Klein was 17 and that she got over being embarrassed at her mother’s passionate feminism. She honored the caretaking her family did of their mother. I know her father was a doct…

All the Lonely People: Holiday Blues and the Epidemic of Isolation

By Peter Laarman

…odriguez, a fine op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times, spotted this research paper and wrote about it, which in turn got me to thinking. Isolation and loneliness are bad for the isolated and lonely, obviously, but as Robert Putnam and many others have observed, they are also bad news for the democratic experiment. Human beings need to interact frequently in order to test and correct their own thinking about matters both personal and public. T…

Jesus Died For This?

By Becky Garrison

What inspired you to write Jesus Died for This?: A Satirist’s Search for the Risen Christ ? When Zondervan expressed an interest in working with me in the Spring of 2008, I had just come off of a very negative experience with a Christian (read “evangelical”) publishing machine, and was very reluctant to play in this pool ever again. However, they did publish the work of my mentor, the late Mike Yaconelli, and were taking some risks with some writ…

Media Hit Hard On Trump’s White Supremacist Appointee, But Which “Media”?

By Carmen Celestini

…opics to their faith. Organizations such as CNSNews, a division of Media Research Center, “Seeks to bring you the news the leftist media won’t cover.” They have an audience of over 100,000. Brent Bozell, Founder and President of Media Research Center, released a statement on the election and mainstream press: This was a massive repudiation of the press. Our message –‘Don’t Believe the Liberal Media’ succeeded, and in the next few days we will be u…