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A Moral Movement Where Everyone Is in For the Long Haul

By Maxine Phillips

…the day-to-day work of ministering to society’s outcasts. And many secular leftists mistrust religion so much that they ignore their natural allies. On the secular side, too many activists become discouraged when their efforts don’t bring immediate change. They “tried” activism, and it didn’t “work.” In the land of quick fixes, who will stay for the long game? People of faith know a lot about the long game. The secular left knows a lot about conne…

Paul Weyrich, “Godfather” of Modern Conservative Movement, Dead at 66

By Bill Berkowitz

…arry S. Truman’s name always comes up. That is interesting because when he left office in 1953 he had even lower approval ratings than President Bush now has… How will history judge Mr. Bush? Many of us won’t be alive when the first verdict is in.” His last open column, dated Thursday at the Free Congress Foundation, the organization he founded and was CEO of was titled: “The Next Conservatism, A Serious Agenda for the Future.” Weyrich wrote: “It…

Mormon Leaks: Boring Meetings with Interesting Implications

By Mary Barker

…eft their families for years on end to serve missions abroad. Mothers also left their children to pursue professional degrees back East. Neither was there a deeper discussion about the meanings of contested concepts like “religious freedom,” apart from the concern was expressed for Christians being required to offer their professional services to gay customers. However, there is precedent in the Mormon community for putting aside religious convict…

Country Music Minus the Culture Wars: A Lesson from a Legend

By Paul Harvey

…hits a vein of Southern religious populist imagery that neither the folkie-left from days of yore nor the jingoistic right of much pop country has ever fully grasped. It was not that early country could never be politicized, or topical; natural disasters, epochal events, and moral admonitions were the stock in trade of country and blues musicians and songwriters alike. But the more recent culture wars tie between country, religious fundamentalism,…

The Polite Islamophobia of the Intellectual

By Bruce B. Lawrence

…fies ‘with the liberal left.’” If Berman inhabits and projects the liberal left, then the conservative right has lost its claim to being at the forefront of Islamophobia. The huge mistake of the Times (and almost every outlet of mainstream media reporting) is to assume that Berman is a public intellectual who can speak about Islam, that his is an authoritative voice to be heeded, his insights accepted and thus, perhaps most importantly, his warnin…

A Debate Rages in India Over Conversion, Secularism, and “Spiritual Violence”

By Murali Balaji

…of religion in societies, religious politics in India isn’t necessarily a left-right proposition. Hindu nationalist parties often mimic the socialist rhetoric of India’s left-of-center political establishment, while in states such as Karnataka, Kerala, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu, political alliances between Marxists and religious minority parties (including ones funded by conservative Christian U.S. groups) are quite common. Even the BJP recentl…

20 Years for Giving Water to Migrants? A Religious Freedom Case of Little Interest to ‘Religious Freedom’ Industry

By Miguel A. De La Torre

…nstead willfully contributes to their excruciating demise by dumping water left on the trails by humanitarian organizations or vandalizing the water jugs. Water is life! Of the 31,500 gallons of water No More Deaths left at about 140 station on the trails between 2012 to 2015, we know about 86 percent were used, and we recovered about 3,500 destroyed gallons. I myself have seen some of these empty jugs slashed by Border Patrol agents’ knives. At t…

The Sacred and the Dead: How an Iranian-Jewish Angeleno Discovered Her Tribe

By Saba Soomekh

…d and immediately left. We knew we had to leave as soon as we could, so we left everything behind: our home, our business, our land, clothing—everything. We arrived with nothing more than our suitcases and memories. Like most Iranian Jews, my family settled in Los Angeles. My sister and I immediately were placed in a Jewish day school, and it was in this little family-oriented cocoon of a school that I prospered and lived my everyday life until hi…

Kirk Cameron’s Monumental Reveals Subtle Influence of Christian Reconstructionism

By Julie Ingersoll

…Times” Theology Kirk Cameron, with his starring role in the post-rapture Left Behind movies and his efforts to support creationism, was once in the center of mainstream conservative evangelicalism. And, while in the past few years he had become involved in the Christian homeschooling movement, as well as Doug Phillips’ Vision Forum and the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival (SAICFF), it was unclear whether he was promoting their vie…

A Devil’s Dozen of the Best ‘New Religion Journalism’ Books of the Decade

By Ed Simon

…has become more common, as the American Jewish community, pressed between left and right, asks itself how safe this country actually is. A few months after Weisman’s book was published the largest pogrom in U.S. history took place at a synagogue in the neighborhood in which I grew up. Go to top Interior States: Essays Meghan O’Gieblyn Anchor 2018 Interior States: Essays by Meghan O’Gieblyn (2018) – One of several talented and important writers wo…