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Making Space For All on Aronofsky’s Ark

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…ope’s approval. Even the New Atheists got in on the action; whining in The New Yorker that the very existence of so many movies based on Bible stories indicates that Hollywood is actually fighting a war against atheism. But I also want to call upon Aronofsky to reconsider. The word “biblical”, according to Webster’s, just means “relating to, taken from, or found in the Bible.” Let’s take that word back. What all of these factions opposing the movi…

Gun Ownership as Sin—A Strategic, Secular Proposal for Gun Reform

By Ira Chernus

…s societies evolve they learn to watch out for new dangers, and they enact new rules to protect their members from those dangers. Once societies get big enough, they create representative government to enact the rules. And once a problem gets complicated enough (which nearly all are, by now) the government relies on experts who have studied it in depth and figured out logical ways to solve it. Logic is the key to the story. In this case, once we k…

Alex Jones, Performance Artist, and the Duelling Meanings of ‘Sincerity’ in Politics and Public Life

By Spencer Dew

…e can, certainly, perform at all hours—witness, as a famous for instance, Trump’s tweets, and the timestamps thereof. Yet such tweets exemplify another—the Right’s—understanding of sincerity, the “heroic risk” of declaring “a position, in an inherently unfixed world,” as Devji puts it: Such decisions acquire an important sacrificial character. Sincere commitment to a position, after all, inevitably exposes one to scorn if not attack. Often, these…

Lindsey Graham’s Lying “Eye-ranians”

By Haroon Moghul

…between the United States and Rome, except that he stopped too soon. (#IX: New York City subway stations are early Roman urinariums; #X: Edward Gibbon prophesied the Christian Right would be the straw poll that broke the empire’s back. Etc.) Beinart, a contributing editor for The Atlantic, has given considered attention (must-read) to a trend many Muslims have experienced for years now, and equally struggled for years to convince the rest of the w…

Don’t Believe a Word a Muslim Says

By Haroon Moghul

…ind of Third World duplicity; “their” morality is inferior to ours—we can trust white people, (certain kinds of) Christians, real Americans, etc., but we can’t trust those with brown skin or funny names. The same logic was once applied to women, who were believed to be incapable of the moral and intellectual rigor (some kinds and colors of) men were. So, for the Islamophobe, taqiyya is a means by which Muslims lie to advance their agenda (say, for…

Is Trying Really Good Enough? ‘The Good Place’ Has a C-word Problem

By Daniel Albert Joslyn

…rted global warming and the exploitation of labor on the other side of the world. Follow the money Yet, even though much of the characters’ motivations and the show’s driving argument for reform rests upon this critique of capitalism (indeed the judge of all of humankind, played by Maya Rudolph, only agrees to reform heaven after going down to earth, discovering the concept of race, and realizing how imbricated every human decision is in the explo…

The Ordinary Jesus: An Excerpt from Christ Actually: The Son of God for the Secular Age

By James Carroll

…te, the most ordinary person bringing Christ once more to life—day by day, word by word, bread by bread, cup by cup. In all of that we see divinity, which, paradoxically, is what makes Jesus one of us. Whatever sort of God Jesus is understood to be, it must be the God who is like humans, not different. If that seems impossible, then what we think of God—and of humans— must change. This is essential to the New Testament and “the very logic of Chris…

The Night of Power: Laylatul Qadri

By Amina Wadud

…s, and go right on ahead and ask for what I want. That too shows love and trust. I trust that Allah will bring some repose, or grant a favor. I also have a little bit of concern over that: “be careful what you pray for.” Sometimes the consequences of one prayer’s answer are more troubles than you were facing. So, better to be prudent. I used to have a sticker in my car that I think sums it up, “Oh Allah grant me the most benevolent outcome.” This…

Religion is Not about Belief: Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God

By Brian McGrath Davis

…Turning from its core as a religion of practice, the reformers became a garrulous bunch, a word-centered movement allergic to gratuitous ritual, a religious tradition wholly indebted to the power of language and the need to define. “Inevitably, this orgy of acrimonious doctrinal debate would affect the traditional notion of “belief,” pushing intellectual orthodoxy to the fore” where it remains today for much of Christianity. Advances in the scienc…

The “F” Word: Feminism in Islam

By Amina Wadud

…the women who straddled the divide between living Islam and living in the world today, so they challenge Islam to stay true to their realities. Then it was okay for me to let go of the cumbersome identification and have both Islam and human rights. There really never was a conflict in the first place; just a set of circumstances that caused the confusion that one had to choose between one and the other, instead of living both. Islamic Feminism So…