Religion Dispatches
…r on a realistic understanding of the complex make-up and nature of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state—including its many internal challenges. What I found most fascinating, however, were the categories “People of Jewish background” and “People with a Jewish affinity.” The first includes those “who have a Jewish parent or were raised Jewish but identify with a religion other than Judaism.” In contrast, “People with a Jewish affinity” are thos…
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…s voters in Iowa, Bloomberg News reports, Trump is considered stronger on managing the economy, illegal immigration, and the deficit while Cruz is stronger on leadership and persuasiveness to conservative evangelicals. But their common savior appeal tells us a great deal about the state of the nation. Regardless of the final choice of candidate, that savior-hungry state is what the next president and congress face. It’s tells us where America is h…
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…eed, the so-called ghar wapsi (“homecoming or conversion”) effort has rung alarm bells among observers, stoking fears that the right-of-center government of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi (a self-described Hindu nationalist), are seeking to undermine post-independence India’s secular ideals. It has drawn so much attention, in fact, that it prompted President Obama to issue a not-so-subtle rebuke to Modi’s government fo…
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…titution that allies itself too closely with any given political party, a hazard that’s pronounced in the age of Trump, as the raw racial animus at his core becomes impossible to ignore for even those who were determined to avert their gaze. But that danger is especially acute for religious institutions, which face a special moral hazard in becoming too closely identified with a specific party. And, as political scientist Timothy Byrnes writes in…
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…Every so often, economist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz crunches Google search data for the New York Times and comes up with some fun statistics about, say, the anxieties of pregnant women (“can pregnant women eat shrimp?” is a popular search query in the US) or the ratio of heart-related to penis-related searches (67:100 for those keeping score). This Sunday, Stephens-Davidowitz turned his attention to God. Some of the patterns he documents are predic…
Read More…onth, the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, Jordanian Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, described the global movement for LGBT equality as a “constant struggle.” The British Journal of Sociology has published “Muslim gay men: identity conflict and politics in a Muslim majority nation.” The abstract: While a number of investigations have examined how gay Muslim men view homosexuality in relation to religious Western homophobia, this research co…
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…n North America—the other being the world-famous Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. The declaration from the Diocese of Green Bay comes at a difficult time for US Catholics. Many are frustrated beyond repair with continuing sex abuse scandals. A growing financial crisis in the Church has led to the closing of both schools and parish churches; tough choices for religious leaders grappling to maintain their credibility with parishioners. B…
Read More…ars ago by neoconservative-friendly American Muslim leader, Shaykh Hisham Kabbani. In honor of this magic number and the hearings King will hold next month in order to address the “creeping threat of Sharia law,” RD presents the first edition of Life Imitates Satire Imitates Life. In this clip, from the Manchurian Candidate a Joseph McCarthy stand-in uses his own investigative tool to determine how many crypto-commies there really are… Rep. Pete…
Read More…inish the sweat. The trial finished its first week on Friday in Arizona’s Yavapai County. Ray is facing three counts of manslaughter and more than thirty years in prison for allegedly causing the deaths of Kirby Brown, James Shore, and Liz Neuman in an October 2009 “Spiritual Warrior Retreat” near Sedona, Arizona. Participants in the retreat paid more than ten thousand dollars each to fast, sweat, listen to lectures and watch films under Ray’s gui…
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…d former CIA director James Woolsey; the American Enterprise Institute’s Ayaan Hirsi Ali; and the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy—a leading proponent of the conspiracy theory that shari’ah poses a threat to America and that the left, and President Obama in particular, are part of a fifth column that promote, or at the very least, enable it. (Both McCarthy and Woolsey are also affiliated with the FDOD.) Gaffney’s efforts have proven to be quite l…
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