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Has This Anti-Muslim Extremist Reformed… Or Just Gotten Less Extreme?

By Nathan Lean

…s no longer with the group, people will listen to him. Heck, they may even buy his “I was once an anti-Muslim extremist” book (which happens to fit well into the growing niche of the “I was once a Muslim extremist” category). Two serious questions remain for Robinson and for Quilliam, which facilitated his departure. First, will Robinson’s message really change? Just because he’s no longer with the EDL and claims to reject the increasingly violent…

Silver Bells and Atheist Billboards

By Steve A. Wiggins

…Christmas cascading laundry list here, or this essay will never end.) The numbers tell the story. The academic study of religion has become an industry. So has the church. No matter how badly clergy want their lives to be “a calling,” they are actually jobs for which they are paid and receive medical coverage, retirement plans, and financial security (more or less). It is the way of the market. Why are they playing “Silver Bells” when I step into…

GOP isn’t Pro-Life After All

By Patricia Miller

…e plan who gets pregnant and can’t come up with the $5,000 that it took to buy a pregnancy “rider” before the ACA reforms, should either abort the baby or go old school and give birth by herself in a field somewhere without the benefit of prenatal care or a doctor. More moderate Republicans have begun to realize the indefensibility of this position. Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, who is a doctor, acknowledged, albeit imperfectly, that jettisoning…

The Nation of Islam at the End of the Apocalyptic Age?

By Anna Clark

…beyond its membership base. “What people don’t understand is that how many numbers of people in the Nation is beside the point in terms of the Nation’s influence,” said Walters. Walters remembers Farrakhan speaking at a Washington DC convention center to a packed house. A Washington Post reporter was taken aback that Farrakhan had come to town without the newspaper knowing about it, and that without any mainstream media coverage, the speech attrac…

Daschle Is Gone—But the Stench of Insider Corruption Lingers

By Peter Laarman

…aschle may be, he’s not stupid. Same with Timothy Geithner. Let’s just not buy the idea that their tax delinquency amounts to silly mistakes made by busy public servants. What this is about is the arrogance of the overprivileged; it reflects a Washington culture (completely bipartisan) that in its own cosseted way mirrors the Wall Street culture that Washington now rails against (at least temporarily—until the heat dies down). The great and the go…

Christian Nationalist Legislator Introduces Anti-Trans ‘Millstone Act’ Suggesting Biblical Retribution

By Andrew L. Seidel

…gue Annika Brockschmidt discussed recently, victims of these hucksters can buy a possibly harmful appliance and then flock to social media to proudly display their allegiance to a mob that has nothing to offer beyond this insular membership. When not demonizing or distracting, Christian nationalists like Bullard will engage the machinery of the state to promote their disinformation. For years he has worked to inject Christian nationalist myths and…

Sex, the Body, the World: It’s R. Crumb’s Bible Now

By Naomi Seidman

…minted biblical pedigree. But there were some hipsters standing in line to buy a copy ($60 for the autographed version) who looked as if they had never set foot in a JCC before, and who were only reading the Bible now that Crumb had, so to speak, recommended it. Among that group was Crumb’s elegant onstage interlocutor, Françoise Mouly, the art director of The New Yorker, who began by confessing, “You know, Bob, I never actually read the Bible bef…

Politicized Religion Fuels Christian-Muslim Violence In Nigeria

By Elizabeth Dickinson

…e will wither away without lawyer or trial or light of day. A rich man can buy his freedom, though he’d likely never be arrested in the first place. He can shame the (usually poor) policemen into admitting that their guns have no bullets and their threats have no depth compared with his pockets. When a poor man steals bread, he is taken to the run-down concrete police station, stripped of his clothes, and marched through the street in shame for hi…

Ian Buruma on the Political Excesses of Religion

By Lisa Webster

…lay a part in the real estate bust. People went to church and were told to buy things they couldn’t afford. I’m not surprised. Underlying that, of course, is a Protestant notion that is also there in Europe, which is that to accumulate wealth shows that you’re blessed by God. That does seem to have remained a through-line in American theological culture. But that was true for [European] Calvinists as well. That’s one of the reasons Holland in the…

Yes, Virginia: There IS a War on Christmas: Its Revolutionary Meaning is Inverted in the Winner-Take-All Era

By Peter Laarman

…ion that rightfully belongs to them at Christmas. Whereas the affluent can buy all of these things. The affluent can readily access spaces of stillness and beauty; they can purchase a Shaker-like simplicity. There are alpine resorts and meditation centers that will guarantee the whitest of Christmases (in more ways than one). And there are particular churches that are more or less reserved for the comfort and consolation of the upper middle class;…