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LDS Church Brings Religious Pressure to Zoning Fight

By Joanna Brooks

…f unblinking loyalty to the interests of big institutional backers in both business and religious life, as well as by what the Wall Street Journal recently described as the exceptional “insular[ity]” of his campaign and Romney’s own refusal to accept unscripted questions from the press corps. Add to it the ever-louder Obama campaign drumbeat over Romney’s offshore bank accounts, and the net effect is a characterization of Romney (and with him, Mor…

Presbyterians Make Right Choice on Israel Divestment

By Jay Michaelson

…s by the international community. Symbolic acts are fine, and exactly the business of a religious denomination. But this message is so strong, and so disproportionate, that it does, indeed, make many Jews feel like Israel is being unfairly targeted. There’s no secondary boycott of companies selling goods to China, for example, despite its occupation of Tibet. More importantly, however, the strong and unequivocal message of divestment is inappropr…

A Journalist in Church, Hiding in Plain Sight

By Andre Tartar

…ld Church of God’s Power, proclaims himself), I momentarily implored God for a miracle for my mother, who six months ago survived the latest in a harrowing series of medical ordeals. With that little bit of prayerful business out of the way, I turned from the ecstatic mob of Santiago-rushing crentes and walked down the darkened block, gripping my scuffed iPhone and returning to my real life, a reality somehow made newer….

Is Change Possible? Shifting the Ex-Gay Question

By Lynne Gerber

…the nation’s largest ex-gay organization no longer considers itself in the business of changing sexual orientation. Chambers acknowledged that most Exodus members are single and remain so, that those who are married are trying to salvage an existing marriage rather than starting new, straight ones, and that homosexual desire stays homosexual desire. “In the past,” he said, “we’ve been aligned with organizations that believe feelings can completely…

The Redemptive Power of Jewish Self-Hatred

By Gordon Haber

…is twin sister. The Blood of the Walsungs is a nasty, fascinating piece of business. (I’d put it in the same category as T.S. Eliot’s “Burbank with a Beidecker, Bleistein with a Cigar”—masterworks of hateful snobbery.) But in its time, Mann’s theme was not so unusual. For German-speaking intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century, the self-lacerating tendencies of assimilated Jews (real or imagined) was a serious topic of discussion,…

Which One Has the Religion Problem, Gingrich or Romney?

By Sarah Posner

…Carolinians. “I’d like to believe that’s not the issue,” Huckabee told Fox Business host Neil Cavuto. “Four years ago, I was accused of making it an issue. It wasn’t for me then, it isn’t for me now. I would no more not vote for someone because they were Mormon than I would vote for somebody like Al Gore because he’s a Baptist, for heaven’s sake. I think that’s a ridiculous reason to vote or not vote for someone, unless they’ve done something that…

Is Romney Tax Matter a Religion Dog Whistle?

By Joanna Brooks

…ey to release undisclosed pre-2010 returns. And this comes on the heels of Businessweek’s attention-grabbing article that described the opacity of LDS Church finances and Church-owned business dealings, which have not been available to the public since the 1960s. It’s unfortunate that both stories conjure up one of the most unfriendly characterizations that has followed Mormons in American public life—that of secrecy and duplicity. It was this cha…

Missing the Forest for the Witches

By Joseph Laycock

…e on Paganism. By banning the categories into which minority religions are classified, the library’s policy appears to violate the Constitution’s establishment clause. By extension, it would be unconstitutional for any government agency to use Netsweeper to censor public access to “occult” sites. However, Netsweeper is a global corporation and thus not particularly concerned with the United States Constitution. In fact, much of their business come…

Irony of the Iranian Women’s Burqa Ban

By Shabana Mir

…we the cool heads who bloody well leave each other alone and mind our own business? If you don’t want them taking away your guns or your porn, you’d better not call them out to take away our hijabs. There are voices calling for wisdom: leave the hijabis and the burqa-wearers alone; perhaps, in time, they will raise bare-headed daughters. Perhaps they will get tired of being rabble-rousers (because surely, a woman in a burqini is only trying to th…

How Breivik’s “Cultural Analysis” is Drawn from the “Christian Worldview”

By Sarah Posner

…the government raise their children, environmentalists are out to destroy business, and that “the homosexual movement” would “extinguish” our “heritage of religion and morality.” His film includes interviews with conservative luminaries like Phyllis Schlafly, Edwin Meese, American Family Association president Tim Wildmon, and Rep. Steve King (R-IA). It claims to link ACORN, Obama, George Soros, Saul Alinsky, anti-poverty scholars Richard Andrew C…