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All You Had to Do Was Express Regret: Pope Benedict XVI’s Rocky Visit to Yad Vashem

By Adam Gregerman

…the perpetrators (the words “Nazi” and “German” are absent) and about the number of victims (“millions of Jews”). He was criticized for omitting any reference to his own past as a German who lived through the war and was briefly (and involuntarily) a member of the Hitler Youth. Most seriously, he made no mention of Christian responsibility for Jewish suffering. In the back of many people’s minds, and contributing to the negative response, were hi…

Is God a Delusion? A Reply to Religion’s Cultured Despisers

By Eric Reitan

…spired you to write Is God a Delusion? What sparked your interest? Back in January of 2007, a colleague gave me a photocopied page from a book and asked me to evaluate it as if it were a student paper. The page contained a summary and cursory criticism of the first three of Aquinas’ “Five Ways” (arguments for proving the existence of a transcendent being). As I looked it over, I noticed that the author got Aquinas’ arguments wrong… and then critic…

Muslims Wearing Things, Tea Party Chastised on Nazi Talk, and Politicking in Church

By Michael J. Altman

…e Christine O’Donnell says prayer had a direct role in spiking her polling numbers. Can meditation change your brain? The best response to Juan Williams’ fear of Muslims in “garb” is the new blog Muslims Wearing Things. My favorite is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in a cowboy hat. Muslims caught in the midst of a disputed mosque in Tennessee are frustrated and baffled by the misunderstandings of their faith. Some mosques are holding open houses to dispel a…

The Kids are Religious Right: Punk Rock & Pro-Life

By Justin Philpot

…ficials and politicians as allies. During the 32nd March for Life, held in January 2005, George W. Bush addressed pro-life supporters via telephone, saying: “we are working to promote a culture of life.” The president’s language is certainly in line with Rock for Life’s rhetoric, and the group’s willingness to work within the system runs counter to the militant overtones of the Pledge. Interestingly, the Pledge makes no mention of the legal proces…

Global LGBT Recap: Asylum for Victims of Homophobia Exports; Orthodox Church Sees Anti-Gay Campaign Turned Toward Itself

By Peter Montgomery

…lobe. Al-Jazeera America, for example, has recently reported on the rising number of Russians seeking asylum in the U.S. At the Capitol Hill event, activists described the many challenges facing asylum-seekers. For those who make claims when they arrive at a US border crossing, that includes detention, difficulties in accessing legal help, and violence in detention centers. Others who make it into the U.S. face challenges that include a one-year d…

Gandhi, his Grandson, Israel, and the Jews

By Shalom Goldman

…ticle, and here for Letters to the Editor in response to it. ++++ In early January, Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, posted a short essay on Newsweek/Washington Post’s “On Faith.” The response to his posting was so passionate and violent that Gandhi was forced to resign his position as director of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence at the University of Rochester. The topic of discussion on the blog that day was “the future of Jewish…

Obama’s Faith-Based Makeover

By Bill Berkowitz

…Saturday radio broadcast that again extolled the project’s virtues. In January 2001, surrounded by a broad mix of religious leaders, Bush announced an executive order bringing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives into existence. In a nod to bi-partisanship, he name John DiIulio, an academic with Democratic Party credentials to be the first faith-based czar. Bush also issued an executive order establishing Centers for…

By the Way: Fractured Religious Right Endorses McCain

By Randall Balmer

…6, when Samuel Alito was sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court, until January 3, 2007, when the new Democratic majorities took control of the Senate, the Republican-Religious Right coalition controlled all three branches of the federal government. The chief executive, the majority leader of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives all claimed to be evangelical Christians and unalterably opposed to abortion. Yet, during that…

By the Way: Fractured Religious Right Endorses McCain

By Randall Balmer

…6, when Samuel Alito was sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court, until January 3, 2007, when the new Democratic majorities took control of the Senate, the Republican-Religious Right coalition controlled all three branches of the federal government. The chief executive, the majority leader of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives all claimed to be evangelical Christians and unalterably opposed to abortion. Yet, during that…

Purpose Driven Politics: Rick Warren’s Civil Service

By Bill Berkowitz

…o take evangelicals back a century, to the 19th century,” Warren said in a January 2006 interview with Knight Ridder Newspapers. “That was a time of muscular Christianity that cared about every aspect of life.” He has stayed away from the controversies that plagued Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, Ted Haggard, Pat Robertson, and Pastor John Hagee. And while he holds conservative views—he opposes abortion, same-sex marriage…