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RDBook: Is Nothing Secular? A Review of Jewel of Medina

By Gordon D. Newby

…for publication by Ballantine Books. The novel is now at the center of the latest round of controversy about fictionalizing the history of Islam and the lives of Muhammad and his relatives. Media reaction was minimal until the Wall Street Journal picked up the story under the head, “You Still Can’t Write About Muhammad.” The refusal of the publisher to go ahead with the publication of the book, which also involved a contract for a second book, has…

By the Way: Revolting Evangelicals

By Randall Balmer

…t: Driving is a privilege, not a right. That same principle applies to the latest stunt from the Religious Right. An organization called the Alliance Defense Fund, a coalition of right-wing evangelicals with ties to James Dobson of Focus on the Family, proposed a mass protest of sorts for Sunday, September 28. This group claims that the Internal Revenue Service ban on partisan political activity for tax-exempt organizations represents a denial of…

The Theodicy of George Carlin

By Kathryn Lofton

…igious banger among comedians during his post-Sixties ascent. Instead, his latest specials and interviews were knit with remorse. “I think the human race has squandered its gift,” he said, “and I think this country has squandered its promise. I think people in America sold out very cheaply, for sneakers and cheeseburgers.” Another time he paralleled the product with piety. “I think this species had great, great promise, with this great upper brain…

American Idol(atry): McCain-as-Jesus

By Brian Kaylor

As David Cook prepared for his victory on the latest season of American Idol, the Republican state chairwoman of Georgia was engaged in paying reverence to a different type of American idol. In a bizarre moment in the world of mixing religion and politics, Sue Everhart compared Republican presidential candidate John McCain to Jesus and America to God. Addressing McCain’s patriotism and devotion to America even while being tortured as a prisoner o…

Its the Spiritual Economy, Stupid: Why the Gay Marriage Fracas Isn’t About Either

By Nick Street

…of words—as thoroughly test-marketed as a Viagra commercial—represents the latest in a decades-long series of efforts by religious conservatives to thwart the steady advance of public acceptance of gays and lesbians into the mainstream of American life. According to an analysis of polling data published by CBS News, Americans are becoming more “gay friendly” at a rate of about one percent a year. Still, that means that only 45 percent of Californi…

Swiftboating Obama: The Brown Blob of Black Radicalism

By Jonathan L. Walton

…ed as “uppity” according to the rules of the racial lexicon. Moreover, the latest media frenzy seems to prove that Senator Obama is in a no-win situation in terms of Rev. Wright. Despite Senator Obama’s public denouncements of his former pastor, many argued that the senator’s protestations were little more than a smokescreen. But now Rev. Wright has made it clear that the pastor/parishioner relationship ends in the church vestibule. Wright even de…

Why David Brooks Doesn’t Get the Outrage Over AIG

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ng time. It is the very interest of this analysis that made David Brooks’s latest column so unsettling. Just before the election, when he was defending the Greenspan legacy, Brooks suggested that Greenspan was a gifted number cruncher but that we had entered a strange and more volatile and more challenging psychological crisis of confidence to which he could not speak. My rejoinder was that there was nothing psychological about the crisis at all;…

The Bible as Security Blanket, Blindfold, or Weapon

By Amy Benson Brown

…Suskin Ostriker (Rutgers University Press, 2009). Alicia Suskin Ostriker’s latest book of essays will make provocative reading for liberals who want to say “Yes, We Can” to taking back the Bible as it seeks to pry a few more fingers from the iron grip conservatives have had on its meaning in the American cultural imagination. This Bible is not, Ostriker wants us to see, the sole property of those who deny the links between “spirituality and sex, s…

Defending the Helpless: New Bible Highlights Poverty and Justice

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…:8-9 to be exact. The poll is in service to the American Bible Society’s latest vanity Bible — the Poverty and Justice Bible that features a cover depicting breaking chains. On the inside you’ll find more than 2,000 verses that deal with issues of poverty and justice bolded by a bright orange highlight. “The Poverty and Justice Bible seeks to challenge the notion that the Bible is outdated and proves that God — not politicians, celebrities or ev…

Harry Potter Gone Bad: Lev Grossman’s The Magicians

By Donna Freitas

…children’s literature? Bubbling up under the surface of The Magicians (the latest novel from Time magazine book critic Lev Grossman) is the stuff of these same sincere elements—the kind many readers relish when looking to escape with a good book. On first glance, he offers us not only a world filled with magic, but a school for young magicians, the adventures of aspiring young sorcerers, magical creatures and spells, fantastic landscapes galore, a…