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A Jewish Perspective on Reparations

By Moriel Rothman-Zecher

…n the context of otherwise legitimate protests against Israel’s attack on Gaza), and a number of violent incidents, there was a large public vigil in Berlin to protest anti-Semitism. Among the attendees were German President Joachim Guack, members of Germany’s parliament, leaders of both of the country’s major churches, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who declared: “Jewish life is part of our identity and culture… Whoever discriminates and os…

Along Came a Spider: What the Pope Doesn’t See

By Anthea Butler

…n movie, think again: this is the latest escapade from the Archdiocese of Miami, encapsulated in the headline from the Miami Herald “Ex-Stripper: Priest is my baby’s father—and I want him to pay.” Before I go south and start to write this whole piece with quotes from songs (“That’s Just My Baby Daddy” comes to mind) I am struck with disgust about where the Catholic church, and lately Miami’s Archdiocese in particular, finds itself in matters of ch…

The Religious Case Against Religious Discrimination in Cakeshop Case

By Patrick Hornbeck

…ses like Phillips’s. But, as survey after survey has demonstrated, substantial numbers of Catholics, and to a lesser extent evangelicals as well, are not following their denominations’ leaders down this particular road, and there is a growing number of religious institutions that have embraced marriage equality and advocated for LGBTQ+ rights in the public square. Cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop make it clear that the boundaries of a national sett…

Debunking the Myth That Democracy Is “Incompatible” With Islam

By Asma Afsaruddin

…he Arab world, there are long-term functional democracies in Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Malaysia. More recently installed democratic governments in Pakistan and Palestine further challenge old stereotypes about the links between Islamicate cultures and representative governments. Such facts on the ground clearly establish that when discussing solutions to the democracy deficit in parts of the Muslim world, “Islam”—invoked as a reified esse…

Black Churches are Burning: Is It the 1990s All Over Again?

By Katie Day

…drawn much earlier public attention to what might be a trend. No doubt social media—see the #BlackLivesMatter and #WhoIsBurningBlackChurches on Twitter and Facebook—has accelerated public awareness. So far there no concerted response by the federal government, such as re-instituting the Task Force from the 1990s, or a assembling a central faith-based organization of volunteers to rebuild the churches. But both, or similar efforts, still could hap…

A Secret History of Satan

By W. Scott Poole

…n, in some cases public policy. The book makes the case that a significant number of Americans believe in the same Devil believed in by Puritan preachers and 19th-century evangelists. This cannot be dismissed. Its essential to understand why this is so, what historical conditions gave rise to this phenomenon and what does it tell us about the United States. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? I had several groups in mind, all of…

The Gospel of Contradiction: An Interview with Mary Gordon

By Nathan Schneider

…ustworthy enough to the Jewish community that I can lead them to more familiarity with a very great text. A number of times you bring up Thomas Jefferson’s abridgement of the Gospels. He seems to be someone who, in some ways, you’re identifying with but also making very different choices from. I don’t have the luxury of just snipping out the parts of the Bible I don’t like. Whereas I greatly admire Jefferson and the Enlightenment figures for their…

Mexico moves toward national marriage equality; Greek govt announces civil partnership legislation; Pope warns against ‘secularism and relativism’; Global LGBT recap

By Peter Montgomery

…y in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, alongside his counterparts from Australia, Austria and the U.K. The U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, and other American diplomatic posts have publicly displayed rainbow flags in support of Pride month. “This is a worldwide initiative,” said Bob Satawake, husband of U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic James “Wally” Brewster during a June 2 interview with a Dominican radi…

Turkish Police Move Against Activists Who Defied Pride Ban; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Union (CDU) and its even more traditional Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). Formed out of the remnants of Weimar-era Catholic and Protestant parties (hence “unions” in an ecumenical sense), the CDU-CSU bloc defined itself as a protector of family values and traditional morals. Other parties, such as the Greens, which sprang out of the counter-culture movement of the 1970s and first entered parliament in the 1980s, shifted th…

The Quixotic Task of Debunking David Barton

By Paul Harvey

…ould be wrong, just as they were wrong when a previous generation of Christian historians (Mark Noll and others) allegedly settled the matter with their own patient refutations of Barton’s bogus empiricism. I’ve considered these questions a number of times recently in observing historians struggling to deal with the popularity of figures such as David Barton, who bowdlerize history but get the kind of attention few actual historians receive for t…