Theology Fail in Christian Statement on Israel, Judaism, Palestine
It its efforts to support the Palestinian cause, the Kairos USA statement cherrypicks from the Bible and winds up in some old and discomfiting territory.
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“Profound Delight in Being”: Remembering John Hick
John Hick, a celebrated theologian and philosopher who died earlier this year, was drawn to issues that transcend any particular tradition—the question of evil, the meaning of suffering, life after death, and religious diversity.
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A Neoconservative Jesus, Certified Kosher
After some perfunctory praise of the last three popes, Boteach gets down to his Glenn Beck-ish business: “The American Evangelical community has proven the most stalwart and reliable friend of Israel in the United States.” Christians and Jews are now “brothers” because “together they confront the implacable foe of Islamist terrorism.”
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Traditional Marriage: One Man, Many Women, Some Girls, Some Slaves
So, let’s see if I can total all this up. Traditional marriage is one man with multiple wives, multiple concubines, wives conquered in war and wives acquired in levirate marriage, possibly including girls under the age of ten, but definitely not including anyone of a different ethnic group, in an arranged marriage with disposition of property as its purpose. That seems very different from “one man, one woman,” does it not?
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Where the Wild Things Aren’t Just Jewish
Maurice Sendak lived in the shadow of the Holocaust, yet he refused to claim that identity and chosenness solely for the Jewish people.
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Israeli Conservative Movement Will Ordain Gay Rabbis
Six years after its American counterpart, the Conservative movement’s Israeli rabbinical school voted last week to admit gay and lesbian students. It’s one small step for LGBT people, one foot-dragging schlep for the Jews.
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Inventing Jesus: An Interview with Bart Ehrman
It’s usually clear to Bart Ehrman who loves him and who hates him. Evangelical Christians have been raking Ehrman over the coals for years for his rejection of biblical inerrancy—and atheists and humanists have embraced his writing as ammunition in the fight against the evils of organized religion. In his new book, Did Jesus Exist?, Ehrman debunks the work of so-called “mythicists”—writers who have argued that a man named Jesus who taught about the coming Kingdom of God never really existed, and that the religions created around him are nothing but fantasy.
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Call Me Pesach
In Yiddish, Jews reacted to the stories wafting out of Holy Week churches with a mixture of fear and derision. The Christian savior was regularly referred to by playful nicknames like Yoizel, Getzel, and most creatively Yoshke Pandre. The layers of meaning in this last name are astonishing: Using the diminutive suffix “–ke,” Yoshke translates as “Little Joe.”
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“Split at the Root”: Adrienne Rich and (Religious) Identity
Rich’s approach to her religious identity was of a piece with her approach to every aspect of her identity. For Rich, any identity worth achieving involved struggle and resistance—be it national identity (“a patriot is one who wrestles for the / soul of her country / as she wrestles for her own being”), gender identity (“A thinking woman sleeps with monsters. / The beak that grips her, she becomes.”), or the committed poet’s identity (“She cannot teach the end of bonds; but she can refuse to justify, accord with, ignore their existence”).
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Jeffress is Both Right and Wrong on Religion & Politics
Jeffress thinks it’s fine to interrogate candidates’ religious beliefs. Indeed there may be times when it is legitimate to ask whether a candidate’s religious positions would have a direct impact on policy. Religious Right activist David Barton has declared that the Bible is opposed to progressive taxation, capital gains taxes, collective bargaining, and the minimum wage. It’s legitimate to ask whether candidates who praise Barton’s work—such as Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich—share those opinions. Similarly, when a presidential candidate like Bachmann calls a Christian Reconstructionist thinker her “mentor,” it is not religious bigotry to ask whether she shares his views about the Constitution and the roles of religion and government in society. But questioning the authenticity or soundness of a candidate’s religious views, for example to have Barton and Glenn Beck rail against what they believe are President Obama’s religious views on the nature of salvation, seems far less appropriate—or useful.
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