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An End to the “Gentleman’s Agreement” on Israel?

By Jay Michaelson

…pped even more spectacularly than their many previous ones, Israel and its American friends have tended to focus on practicalities: money, boundaries, resources… and settlements. American maps may show the Golan as part of Syria, but every year, more Israeli-owned vineyards are planted. To suddenly focus on symbolism is good for fundraising letters, but bad for actual policy. In this case, at least, symbolism has prevailed. Because it is only a bu…

The Sacred and the Dead: How an Iranian-Jewish Angeleno Discovered Her Tribe

By Saba Soomekh

…but is not tangible to me in any way any more. Recently I was listening to American Beauty again, as I revisited all of my old albums in preparation for the Santa Clara shows, and for the first time, a new song spoke to me: “Attics of My Life.” With some of the most iconic Dead songs coming from that American Beauty, “Attics of My Life” somehow got lost in the shuffle for me. But as I listened to it again for the first time in a long time, I reali…

Rising Influence of New Apostolic Reformation Teachings is Ominous Sign For the US — Especially For LGBTQ Students

By Jonathon Sawyer

…of government via policies that would drastically change the landscape of American governance and, as the document says, “bend or break the bureaucracy to the President’s will.” Calling for the abolishment of the Department of Education, Project 2025 would roll back (if not eliminate) civil rights protections for LGBTQ students in publicly funded schools. While the language may be different, this massive shift away from federal regulation aligns…

Crossing the Rubicon? Mar-a-Lago Raid Enflames Right Wing Fantasies of Christian Caesarism

By Annika Brockschmidt & Thomas Lecaque

…ere somehow, and if these guys don’t have a better plan… The Caesarism the American Right dreams of is neo-fascism. What they’re after, of course, is not a real Caesar—this is nostalgia for a Rome that never existed, a mythical Constantine at best. What they’re after is a new Mussolini; an American one. A Christofascist dictator with stars and stripes behind him, Bible in hand—a Caesar in the White House. The idea that all that’s needed for the US…

Putin Theo-Propaganda Minister Kirill Invokes 600 Years of History to Lay Claim to Ukraine — Here’s What it Means

By Katherine Kelaidis

…Abraham Lincoln. This is also, to be clear, a religious question. For many American Christians, particularly some American evangelicals and members of the Latter-day Saint movement, American history is as sacred and theologically charged as medieval and early modern Eastern Mediterranean and Eastern European history is for Orthodox Christians. If you believe in a God of History, you inevitably also believe your own history is divinely-mandated and…

If the Media Are Reluctant to Properly Label the GOP’s Racist, Christian Nationalist Ideologies, We’ll Have Trouble Hanging on to Democracy

By Annika Brockschmidt

…le to be independent.” The statement that mainly focusing on the threat to American democracy as a news organization would make it “partisan” is bizarre—and a result of the media’s fetishization of “bipartisanship,” long after it has ceased to exist, because Republicans have refused to engage in regular politics within the bounds of democracy. If being “partisan” when it comes to the existence of democracy is a problem for news organizations, they…

Loving Uganda to Death: The Global Reach of Far-Right Christian Hatred

By Peter Montgomery

…biggest megachurch in Uganda, the high-living pastor is quite frank that “American money helped us build this church,” adding, “whatever you see here is the fruit of American labor.” In another clip, a pastor marvels that aid from U.S. evangelicals increased threefold when they started attacking homosexuality. Churches’ financial success brings added clout to anti-gay pastors like Martin Ssempa—who drives his congregation into a frenzy by showing…

Even After an Obama Victory Reports of the Death of the Religious Right are Greatly Exaggerated

By Bill Berkowitz

…uing a host of Obama missteps including complaints about the reversal of a number of Bush administration executive orders. Conservative evangelical leaders will engage in a spirited and steadfast attempt to rebuild and reinvigorate a wounded movement, leading to the US Postal Service and direct-mail companies experiencing a surge in business as urgent fundraising appeals pepper the mailboxes and inboxes of religious right supporters. At its worst—…

What Do You Think?: “Padre Oprah” Scandal Has Many Asking Whether Priests Should Be Allowed to Marry

By Frances Kissling

…from sex. Celibacy remained mandatory. God went relatively silent and the number of men hearing the call to the priesthood declined. Only 480 new priests were ordained in 2008. The number of graduate level seminarians declined from 8,325 in 1965 to 3,286 in 2008. There is little cachet in the Catholic family these days in having a son become a priest. While no figures are available, anecdotal reports and expressed Vatican concern indicates that G…

Crisis in Sudan: ‘If the World Stands Idly By This Time, They Will Bring Genocide’

By Frederick Clarkson

…up through South Carolina to Washington DC. ______________________ RD: A number of American human rights experts have said that the killing and forced displacement of the Ngok Dinka people from Abyei in May, and their replacement by the Arab, northern-aligned Misseriya, constitutes “ethnic cleansing.” Is ethnic cleansing part of what is happening in Kadugli? Since 1983, many Nuba people have been killed in Lubba Village—men, women, even children…