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Celebrate Jesus with Weird Merchandise!

By Gwynne Watkins

…tween the bunnies-and-eggs version of Easter, and the church-service version. Merchandisers are wise to define Easter by marshmallow chicks and colorful baskets, rather than bring theology into it. But there are always exceptions. One is the Oriental Trading Company. Founded to create cheap plastic toys for carnivals, OTC is now a leading supplier of cheap plastic stuff for church groups and Christian schools. Their party supply catalog always con…

“Reconciliation” With Indigenous People is Comforting For Many Canadians, But is a Christian Concept Up To The Task?

By Pamela Klassen and Joseph Wiebe

…publishing demands for a reserve in Le Metis and The Manitoban in 1871, while Cypress Hills Métis petitioned the government for their own reserve in 1878. Both claims included land that would instead be reserved for Mennonites. If Mennonites want to say that their (our) identity is bound up with buying land, then they need to reckon with the injustice of the undeserved advantages on which this identity is built. Settler colonialism doesn’t refer…

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

By Nick Street

…d respond to the betrayal with violence. You had no prior experience as a filmmaker. How did the film come together? A friend of mine from New York who was a freelance photographer was willing to come to Rio, work for well below his usually daily rate and sleep on the floor of my apartment in order to help with the project. At that point I had built trust with the inmates over about seven months, and I knew who I wanted to interview for the film a…

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

By Sarah Posner

…ermine both Kleinbaum and Brous. After reading the names of Palestinian civilians killed in this summer’s Gaza war, which led to the loss of one board member and a handful of congregants, Kleinbaum’s board stepped in to defend her against a “misleading” article, published in Tablet, that “misrepresents both CBST’s position on Israel and the tone of community within the congregation.” For Brous, the criticism came after she was critical of what she…

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

By Arthur Waskow

…House and in the Corporate Carbon Pharaohs intent on burning our Earth to pile still higher pyramids of profit, I realize that never again can the Seder freeze. Now, again, we need a new Freedom Seder. “In every generation …” Indeed. What makes time and life into a spiral, instead of a straight line or an endless circle, is setting aside time for reflection, rest, renewal. That renewal-time—Shabbat, the Sabbath; each pause to bless Creation and sa…

Teaching Love: Soulforce Takes it to the Quad

By Nick Street

…o walk on campus even it means being arrested—they need to see how far we will go and how far their school will go.” In fact, Higgins and three other riders were arrested for trespassing at Central Baptist College four days earlier, when they made their first swing through Conway, about 30 miles northwest of Little Rock. Hiding out in Seattle is not Christian Soulforce was founded a decade ago by Mel White and his partner Gary Nixon. From the 1960…

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

By Kaya Oakes

…which temporarily overturned marriage equality in California. They made similar million-dollar plus contributions to campaigns 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 comm…

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

By Amir Hussain

…er of the amazing things about him. He was approachable, answering his own phone and mail, meeting with complete nobodies like me. I thanked him for the basketball lessons that I had learned from him, but more importantly 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 we…

Hajj Journal: M & M

By Amina Wadud

…ly is important here, how you plan.) Mina is a tent city. For 4 or 5 days pilgrims will camp here. It is pretty close to what I imagine a refugee camp would be like, except we are housed in homo-social settings. Our group had more men than women, but most of the women were in some way attached to one or more of the men. This was comical because all though this, the men would hover around the tent entries, send notes, make phone calls, actually get…

Our Lady of Good Hope and Excellent Behavior: Why this Apparition and Why Now?

By Lisa Bitel

…on in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina (beginning in 1981) had begun luring millions of pilgrims from every corner of Christendom, who then returned home to find the Virgin awaiting them. Suns have been spinning over Conyers (GA), Phoenix and Scottsdale (AZ), and Cleveland (OH), among hundreds of other places in the US and Canada. Mary has also frequently manifested herself in domestic items and food products, such as window panes, closet doors, and…