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With the Death of One of the Last Three Shakers, an American Religious Tradition Takes a Step Closer to Extinction

By Ed Simon

…evers in Christ’s Second Appearing,” the Shakers have never had membership numbers on their side. At their height there were dozens of communities throughout New England, the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest. Despite always being relatively small (as the rigors of their religious vocation, not to mention the imperative to celibacy was not widely attractive), the Shakers have had an outside influence on American culture. One can see it in the almost mo…

Winners and Losers in the “Visitation” of American Nuns?

By Patricia Miller

…l justice problems in the real world. The report said that “the very large numbers of religious in the 1960s was a relatively short-term phenomenon that was not typical of the experience of religious life through most of the nation’s history.” In seeking a condemnation of American nuns, conservatives were hoping for the ultimate denouement of feminism, of women leaving the home (abandoning convents for the real world), wearing whatever they wanted…

Where Is American Christian Outrage on Russia’s Treatment of Jehovah’s Witnesses?

By Rebecca Moore

…ations.” In the wake of its passage, Russia suspended foreign adoptions by Americans. (So when Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. said they were only talking about adoptions with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in their June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower, they were telling the truth, sort of, since they were discussing repercussions of the Magnitsky Act.) Under the act, dozens of Russian officials involved in documented abuses have been sanctio…

Why Taking Offense at Santorum’s “Tri-Faith” Nation is a Good Sign

By Rachel Gordan

…, explaining American religion to his son Tommy, says: “See, you can be an American and a Catholic or an American and a Protestant or an American and a Jew.” Buddhists and Muslims and others were clearly not part of this inner circle. What was less clear was how much these believers in “Tri-Faith America” were willing to acknowledge the fundamental differences between the three American religions; did accepting Judaism as part of Judeo-Christianit…

Breaking Up With Marilynne Robinson Over Her Refusal to Acknowledge the Dark Side of Puritanism

By Peter Laarman

…example. As to whether colonial New England’s role as the fons et origo of American liberty has been a neglected topic in American historiography? Here I begin to wonder whether Robinson is having us on. This is a topic that’s been exhaustively, relentlessly pursued, to the extent that many young scholars today—scholars of color in particular—insist that we pay less attention to Plymouth and more to Jamestown as an equally, if not more important,…

Ahmadi Muslim Community Doesn’t Speak For All Muslims

By Hussein Rashid

…Good Muslim/Bad Muslim dichotomy that actually ends up hurting the Muslim-American community. The Muslim-American community is represented by a wide variety of organizations that speak to various interests. Large umbrella organizations, like the Islamic Society of North America, have not had much luck in covering the community because the diversity is nearly uncontainable. Each of these groups speaks with a voice that represents its own constitue…

Good (Enough) Christians — Russell Moore in The Atlantic Illustrates the Limitations of ‘Christian Nationalism’ as Category

By Chrissy Stroop

…stian innocence” that profoundly shapes American society in ways that many Americans do not. Fully two-thirds of LGBTQ Americans are nonreligious (compared to about one-third of the general population), for what seem like obvious reasons—and yet it’s not the LGBTQ Christians who leave the religion, but rather those who reclaim it as something inclusive, who get all the media attention. There’s a peculiar sting to the form of erasure that comes fro…

The Super-Blah Billboard From American Atheists

By Alana Massey

…e target. Secondly, of all the bones they could pick with the Super Bowl, American Atheists chose praying fans as their target and presumably spent a considerable amount of their members’ money doing it? I know that their professed purpose is to protect the civil rights of atheists but couldn’t they have some harmless mission drift for the occasion and join forces with an anti-trafficking group or an activist network that calls out the rampant ho…

Swift-Boat Veterans of American Jewry Charge Anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall Street

By Jay Michaelson

…blicans. The whole organization is a ruse. It’s the Swift-Boat Veterans of American Jewry. (Oh, and incidentally: Eliot Spitzer?! Surely he was included in the ECI video not because of his non-existent leadership position, but because, like Bill Clinton, he makes some people feel that Democrats are sleazy. This confirms that the real point of the video is not to bash Occupy but to attack Obama, Pelosi, and the Democrats.) Personally, I find it na…

New Age Tragedy in Sedona: Non-Indians in the Sweat Lodge

By Johnny P. Flynn

…Age religious movement can be traced to events in the early 1970s when the American Indian Movement made headlines across the country with occupations in South Dakota, Arizona, and Wisconsin. Among the participants were many American Indian spiritual leaders who were knowledgeable in the use of the sweat as a healing ritual—and they shared the ceremony with Indians and non-Indian supporters from around the country. Like the dried head of a dandeli…