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Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

By Lisa Miller

…houris, dark-eyed women. We all know that Mohammad Atta, who flew American Airlines flight 11 into the Twin Towers on 9/11, was inspired by this promise. But among progressives, the sex promised to the righteous in the Qur’an isn’t sex as we know it, but something mysterious and sublime for which sex is a poetic stand-in. Second, what happens to our bodies in heaven? This is my favorite part of the heaven conversation. For if you believe in heaven…

Top Five (Less Sensational, But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson (1930-2023)

By Mark Hulsether

…-image as misunderstood and persecuted. Thus they can discount Robertson’s flaws within frames like “the sincere leader with feet of clay” (who, like King David, models repentance and rehabilitation) or the “truth-teller quoted out of context” (who, like Christ, will triumph in the end.) Meanwhile, beyond an NCR subculture, sensational images of Robertson as a fringe figure—an extreme loose cannon—underplay continuities between him and relatively…

Haiti and the Push for Theological Questions

By Paula M. Cooey

…nine on the Richter scale. It devastated the population. Estimates of the number of people killed range from 10,000 to 100,000. At the time the quake struck, worshipers filled the churches honoring their dead. The churches, the worshippers, and the city around them were effectively destroyed. Not long after the major quake hit, a tsunami followed that killed those who had rushed to the beaches in fear to avoid the havoc of the earthquake. The cat…

Aasif Mandvi on Islamophobia, Acting, and the Long Shadow of Jon Stewart

By Haroon Moghul

…out? Anything to make a social impact?” I had been on the Daily Show for a number of years at this point, and spoken to a lot of Islamophobes, people who had a lot of misinformation about Islam and Muslims. It was a personal thing to me, and it was an issue I thought I could lend my voice to in a satirical space. Were there any particular misconceptions or fears you wanted to address? There was a lot of stuff about Shari’ah Law, the protests again…

Another Manufactured Outrage: Rep. Ilhan Omar Did Nothing Wrong in Listing Hamas, Israel, and U.S. Together

By Joshua Shanes

…uch flak for not calling out Hamas and yet when she finally does, she gets flak for not doing it right. In any event, if one is of the opinion that she needed better differentiation and that therefore this warranted criticism, the criticism would be more effective if it were honest. And perhaps that would have lessened the number of death threats and other vile correspondences she has received. Second, others have said that she deserved the critic…

The 17th Century Roots of Roy Moore’s Refusal to Concede the Election

By Karen E. Park

…clear violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment and any number of Supreme Court cases. He was removed again last year for refusing to uphold federal law on same sex marriage, on the grounds that it was in violation of God’s law as found in the Old Testament. Like Winthrop, Moore believes that the Old Testament should order American society, whether Exodus or Leviticus. The ancient Israelites in these societies either adhered, or…

Diplomatic Suckerhood: Why Israel Is Fighting Toward its Own Demise

By Ira Chernus

…ttack on Iran; perhaps, rather than fear, it’s the tempting opportunity to flex their national muscle that moves them. Yet every muscle flexed to prove their strength only reinforces their fear that they may not be, perhaps can never be, strong enough. Whether Israel unleashes or restrains its military power, either way there is no escape from anxiety. There is a real bond between the leaders and the people on this point, according to columnist Do…

The Sacred and the Dead: Truckin’ as a New American Pilgrimage

By Varun Soni

…at detail about the spiritual foundations of the Grateful Dead universe. Reflecting upon the music and message of the 1960s, Garcia said, “For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part.” For Garcia, the Grateful Dead’s music could serve as a “signpost to a new consciousness” by challenging the listener to become “an understanding molecule in evolution, a conscious tool of the uni…

Sex and the Chosen People: Be Fruitful and Multiply, Etc.

By Mandy Van Deven

…te what happens under the wedding canopy in a way that’s egalitarian and reflective of the values of those getting married: there are egalitarian wedding contracts, new liturgies, and reinvestigations into the sources to see what kinds of untapped possibilities might be lurking in our sacred texts. It’s actually a very ripe time, now. Rachel Adler famously addressed some of this in her book Engendering Judaism, and I happen to have put in some of…

Loving Uganda to Death: The Global Reach of Far-Right Christian Hatred

By Peter Montgomery

…pastors-in-training that people have a choice to resist the desires of the flesh and she urges them not to “walk in compromise.” She is seen in the documentary saying it is right for the government to outlaw homosexuality. Getting American evangelicals to consider the impact of their words and deeds is a major goal for director Williams. In recent weeks he has screened the film at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and in New York.* At Fuller…