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Charleston Killings: This is What a Sin Against the Holy Spirit Looks Like

By Peter Laarman

…n Church in Charleston was burned to the ground by whites following a major 1822 slave uprising when it was discovered that long-time church member and class leader (and free person of color) Denmark Vesey had been preaching insurrection there. And now, in a distinctively American drama that never ends, the historic and brave Emanuel (“God with us”) African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston has been violated yet again, almost 200 years late…

Come Let Us Reason Together: A Response to Critics of Evangelical/Progressive Initiative

By Robert P. Jones

…ts of our body together in the way that God decided is best. —I Corinthians 12: 4—6, 17—18 (CEV) Third Way’s* recently released “Come Let Us Reason Together Governing Agenda” has sparked lively discussions about the policies it puts forward, but it has also cast in bold relief some tensions and factions in the growing chorus of voices that are politically progressive and religious. The two-year initiative set out to find common ground based on sha…

I Volunteer to Root Out Christian Extremism

By Peter Laarman

…rtheless put the number at roughly 338,000. I am willing to work with this number until a better one comes along. Of this number, roughly 8,000 congregations claim upwards of 1,000 members; most are smaller, indeed most are much smaller. My concept is this: I think we can create a Christian Honor Corps (CHC) of perhaps 10,000 persons. Persons like myself who take our responsibility to monitor Christian extremist thought seriously and who are willi…

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided Explores the Dark Side of Positive Thinking

By Michelle Goldberg

…od was no longer hostile or indifferent; he was a ubiquitous, all-powerful Spirit or Mind, and since ‘man’ was really Spirit too, man was coterminous with God… The trick, for humans, was to access the boundless power of Spirit and thus exercise control over the physical world.” From there, Ehrenreich shows how positive thinking evolved into a creed of capitalist motivation, largely by way of Norman Vincent Peale. She writes of the truly terrifying…

Too Hot for Shul: Rabbis Seek Healthy Israel Dialogue After Gaza

By Sarah Posner

…estioning Zionism as central to Jewish identity. Rabbi Brant Rosen, who for 17 years led the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Illinois, recently stepped down from his pulpit, following a summer of protest against the Gaza war with the left-wing Jewish Voice for Peace, on whose Rabbinical Council he serves. (Compared to J Street’s 800-plus-member Rabbinic Cabinet, JVP’s two-year-old Rabbinic Council has just 50.) Rosen told me he…

Why I Wrote the Freedom Seder And Why It’s Still Necessary 50 Years After Dr. King’s Assassination

By Arthur Waskow

…tian radical A. J. Muste calling Moses the organizer of “Brickmakers Union Number 1” and a pacifist Russian rabbi named Tamaret—wove them all into a new Telling of the tale of freedom. In that Telling, the then ongoing, even now unfinished, struggle of Black America for freedom was interwoven with the ancient story of the Israelites’ struggle to end their slavery under Pharaoh. Where the old Haggadah had what seemed to me a silly argument about ho…

Teaching Love: Soulforce Takes it to the Quad

By Nick Street

…o was working as a bar-back in the Stonewall Inn on the day of the riots in 1969. “For our first pride parade, we had over 1,800 protesters and over 3,000 people holding a prayer vigil. This past year we had just one rabid protester. We’ve come a long way.” Loyd, a soft-spoken Vietnam vet who grew up in a rural area near Conway, credits the peace that the couple currently enjoys to their willingness to confront their would-be oppressors head on. “…

Pentecostal Prayer Gangs: New Film Documents Religion in a Brazilian Prison

By Nick Street

…each job skills and do Bible study—outnumbered Catholic volunteers by about 15 to 1. Also in the city I was in the vast majority of inmates were from the poorer parts, where there are more Pentecostals. But the main reason for the dominance of Pentecostalism was because they believe in the potential for God to radically change a person’s life. The once-I-was-lost-but-now-I’m-found narrative in Pentecostalism really resonates with inmates. That’s w…

Why Crux‘s Knights of Columbus “Partnership” is Problematic

By Kaya Oakes

…mpaigns in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington. In 2005, they printed 800,000 postcards in Canada “in a campaign that [argued] that the redefinition of marriage to include gay and lesbian couples would promote pedophilia, pornography and unsafe sex.” As Marianne Duddy-Burke of the LGBTQ Catholic organization Dignity USA commented in a press release, “The Knights are deeply invested in advancing a particular brand of Catholicism, and I am con…

A Muslim Reflects on Christian Theologian (and UCLA Coach) John Wooden

By Amir Hussain

…mportantly for the life lessons. His beloved wife Nellie had passed away in 1985 after 53 years of marriage, and my wife had died suddenly in 1992. Coach gave me a powerful model for dealing with that loss, a reminder that those we loved were always in our lives. On the 21st of each month (Nellie had passed on March 21), Coach would write a letter to Nellie, adding it to the neat pile on her side of the bed. During my development as a teacher, I c…