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Clergy May Soon Find Taxes Soaring As Result of an Under-the-Radar Ruling

By Patrick Hornbeck

…best endowed financially, provide parsonages. But over time, an increasing number of clergy have made their own living arrangements. Churches found parsonages prohibitively expensive; congregants preferred to see their donations go toward services rather than clergy housing; and new religious ventures, especially the nondenominational and evangelical churches that began to flourish in the second half of the twentieth century, could not boast the h…

What’s So Troubling About Funding a Playground? How Trinity Lutheran Undermines the First Amendment

By Elizabeth Reiner Platt

…ief revisiting here. A Missouri state program offered grants for a limited number of nonprofit schools and daycares to purchase rubber playground surfaces made from recycled tires. Prospective grantees were evaluated and selected based on a number of factors, including poverty level of the surrounding area and their willingness to generate media exposure for Missouri. In 2012, Trinity Lutheran, a Missouri Synod congregation, applied for the grant…

The Progress of Christ in Commercial America: A Review of Chris Lehmann’s The Money Cult

By Peter Laarman

…ruption in our politics, and (most of all) the meek resignation with which Americans simply accept this state of affairs. The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream Chris Lehmann Melville House May 18, 2016 In my view, the greatest single virtue of Lehmann’s approach is his firm rejection of reductionism, his refusal to assume that Protestantism’s accommodation of the capitalist agenda has been purely reactive…

Islamic Intellectual Leadership at a Crossroads

By Amina Wadud

…th, for both are part of my devotion to Allah). They do have a substantial number of women included, so I would not complain on that count. But, here’s the thing: there are no women under the category of Muslim intellectuals. Apparently women don’t think. So it is even harder to adjust to the loss of these three men whose intellectual contributions helped to shape the ways we think about and in fact live Islam today; both for women and for men. I…

The Best the Largest Progressive Jewish Org Could Come Up With?

By Jay Michaelson

…ization, I thought, was to contribute something specifically Jewish to the American progressive religious scene, the American social justice movement, and so on. Closeting the organization’s Jewishness seems like a weird way to do that. I do, however, like their new video (though I worry about some of its implications): As a strong answer to a question I recently posed in The Forward – why should American Jews care about social justice? – the clip…

Christian Epistle on Islamophobia

By Haroon Moghul

…have the greatest concentration of white supremacists in America), I met a number of Christian pastors and activists. Afterwards, a conservative evangelical told me he felt that Islamophobia and Christophobia were similar (I guess it’s better than denying bigotry exists at all). I also received an e-mail from a participant in the event who came by because of RD: Dear Haroon, Thanks for your talk at WSU tonight and [for] your perspective on things….

Not a ‘Weenie-A** Lodge’: James Ray Trial Begins

By Johnny P. Flynn

…ss, and fifteen were reported to be suffering ill effects. In spite of the number of people who experienced difficulties during each of the eight fifteen-minute rounds, Ray contends he did not know that there were problems. In fact, Ray is accused of ignoring the pleas of those who wanted out; in one case an individual went out through the side of the sweat lodge to escape the heat. The prosecution played tapes of Ray before the sweat saying, “It’…

There’s Something Rotten in Ireland

By Haroon Moghul

…ring who it is being directed to and where it is apparently originating. A number of Palestinians are Christians, and that Christianity is of course traced back to the time of Jesus himself. The Palestinian weekend is Friday and Sunday. In addition to being the world’s most annoying and dissatisfying weekend schedule (there should be an award for that, or maybe financial compensation), the days reflect the primary religious affiliations of Palesti…

And What of the Non-Jewish Jews?

By Shaul Magid

…gion, those we conventionally call “Jews.” The fact that there are so many Americans who identify in some way as “Jewish” while not being Jewish is fascinating. In a world where very recently being “Jewish” was a liability and anti-semitism was palpable, the number of non-Jews today who identify as Jewish seems historically distinctive. We could, perhaps, point to the so-called “fearers of heaven,” an undocumented community of Hellenes in late ant…

False Saviors: Trump, Cruz, and the Gospel of the Quick Fix

By Marcia Pally

…ernment logic, nearly 75% of Republican caucus-goers want tax cuts for all Americans (including the wealthiest); 61% want to close the IRS; and roughly 61% want to end laws enacted after the 2008 recession to regulate the finance sector and prevent another crash. One Des Moines resident explained her politics this way: Cruz “wants to let us make choices, instead of the government being all powerful and making choices for us.” Enter Trump and Cruz,…