Why America’s Whitewashed Thanksgiving Needs to Go: A Short Study in the Power of White Christian Mythmaking
Readers of RD don’t need to be told that the image of “The First Thanksgiving”…
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‘Only Christopher They Acknowledge is Columbus’: The ‘Biblical’ Reason why Replacing Columbus Day is an Uphill Battle
Note: For readers directed here by the newsletter, we apologize for the incorrect link. Read…
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What is Juneteenth to America? It Has to Be More Than ‘Black 4th of July’ if It’s to Be Truly Meaningful
There’s never been a time in American history when this nation hasn’t been anti-black. This…
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What We Actually Mean By ‘Sacrifice’ During the Pandemic Makes All the Difference
In the wake of COVID-19 and its continuing casualties, we’re inundated with references to human…
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Churchgoers, Stay Home—It’s The American Way
Across the nation, stay-at-home orders have quieted downtowns, schools, theaters, and stadiums. But one kind…
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Thanksgiving Reveals More About Us Than About 17th Century Events
A reluctant Indian militant, a Jew with Christmas envy, and a feminist in search of an alternative Thanksgiving are among the scholars and writers who have weighed in over the years on our secular religious national holiday of Thanksgiving.
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What Does the Catholic Church’s Patriarchal Structure Have to Do with the Failure of the Amazon Synod?
Feminist liberationists have long claimed that discrimination against women is the model for favoring the power of elites over the rest with negative consequences worldwide. The Amazonian Synod only reinforced the claim. The mistakes were breathtakingly obvious and relatively easy to fix.
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SCOTUS’ Bladensburg Cross Ruling Is a Church-State Mess
Alito’s majority opinion is bereft of both principle and reason. He could have been more concise and lost little nuance by simply writing: ‘The 40ft tall Christian cross is really old and people will get upset if we remove it, so it stays.’
Read MoreAmerica, the Mythical: “Mother of Exiles” or Denier of Safe Haven?
Thanksgiving has been marshaled in the battle over what is the proper interpretation of the idea of America. With thousands of refugees looking for amnesty in that “last, best hope of earth,” will the better angels of our nature find room for them at the table?
Read MoreHow “Gratitude” Underwrites Inequality, Power, and Exclusion
Gratitude operates like resentment. When we find ourselves in a position of owing—and people in a democratic society always owe something to other people—we may become vulnerable to control.
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