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By Paul Johnson
$14.97
By Shlomo Sand
$23.07
$40
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YouTube
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John Boehner’s keen instincts have compelled him to zero in on the highly charged—and politically advantageous—dispute about religious organizations and contraception coverage that’s currently reaching the boiling point on Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, the House speaker made a special speech devoted to the topic on the floor of Congress.
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White House / Pete Souza
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It’s an election year, so it’s time to play wedge issue roulette. Which culture war favorite is it going to be this time? Gay marriage? The Obama administration’s recent and contested decision to require Catholic organizations to provide birth control coverage to employees? Updated
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Flickr / Nate Grigg (CC-BY)
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Health care, religion and contraception commingled in last weekend’s Sunday services at Catholic churches around the country after new health insurance rules from the Obama administration struck some church leaders as anathema to their beliefs and a threat to their religious freedom.
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photosteve101 (CC-BY-SA)
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — On contraception, Obama threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus, strengthened the very forces inside the church that sought to derail the health care law, and created unnecessary problems for himself in the 2012 election.
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AP / Mary Ann Chastain
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By Deanne Stillman — California may be a blue state in terms of voting patterns, but it’s very involved in red state politics, if you consider the role of evangelical voters.
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AP / Amr Nabil
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By Lauren Unger-Geoffroy — Some Egyptian women have an answer for vigilantes armed with walking sticks: welts and words that are far from submissive.
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supremecourtus.gov
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In a rare show of unity within our nation’s top judicial body, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the American government should steer clear of interfering in the employment practices and policies of religious organizations.
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Mr. Fish
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By Mr. Fish — It said DOG on his food bowl, and because he showed no signs that he’d ever learn how to read or write, she decided that he must be dyslexic. So she called him GOD.
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Mr. Fish
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By Chris Hedges — The true power of the Christian gospel is its unambiguous call for liberation from forces of oppression and for a fierce and uncompromising condemnation of all who oppress.
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Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey (CC-BY)
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This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Bill Boyarsky complicates the conventional wisdom on Mitt Romney; the Rev. Madison Shockley has a beef with the Catholic Church; a judge wants to ban Mexican-American education in Arizona; Mr. Fish applies his skeptical wit to the political process, and Robert Scheer on Iowa.
Posted on Jan 6, 2012
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This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Bill Boyarsky complicates the conventional wisdom on Mitt Romney; the Rev. Madison Shockley has a beef with the Catholic Church; a judge wants to ban Mexican-American education in Arizona; Mr. Fish applies his skeptical wit to the political process, and Robert Scheer on Iowa.
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By Richard Reeves — It would seem that the United States has a five-party system right now. What was done in Iowa last Tuesday could unravel in New Hampshire, but whatever happens next, the United States is more politically fractured than it has been in decades.
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Abe Novy (CC-BY)
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He fought a war against Hitler, gave us some of the best television ever and founded People for the American Way, so Norman Lear knows something about getting the job done. In this stirring editorial, the producer challenges us to get on board the Occupy train and fight for the American dream.
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Clay Junell (CC-BY-SA)
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By William Pfaff — There are only three valid reasons why the Middle East, the focus of international attention as 2012 begins, is important to the United States and the European nations.
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AP / Dan Balilty
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Attempts by ultraconservative Jews to impose their religious views on others in the town of Beit Shemesh have given rise to protests and a national debate about the character of what is, nobody denies, a religious state.
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Kevin Dooley (CC-BY)
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By David Sirota — It’s a holiday tradition. Every December, with media charlatans turning the key, the fake outrage machine rumbles back to life.
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In this excerpt from “The Cross and the Lynching Tree,” James H. Cone writes that the gospel is found wherever the wronged struggle for justice.
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barnesandnoble.com
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When Paris became a Nazi stronghold in World War II, an Iranian diplomat by the name of Abdol-Hossein Sardari used his influence to help more than 2,000 Iranian Jews by making a creative case for their exemption from racial persecution and by issuing hundreds of passports, according to a new book.
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Though he gives credit to Christopher Hitchens’ exceptional talent, Chris Hedges remembers the newly departed writer differently from the way others might in this clip from CBC Radio. In an unflinching appraisal, Hedges recalls what Hitchens got wrong about religion, his biggest intellectual failing and what it was like to engage him in a debate.
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AP / Jae C. Hong
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By Bill Boyarsky — Newt Gingrich might drag us into a war with Iran on the side of Israel. Rick Perry seems to envision the United States as a conservative Christian theocracy. No pledge is too extreme in the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
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AP / Winslow Townson
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By Robert Scheer — Newt Gingrich’s hypocrisy concerning economic matters will prove more troubling than his sexual affairs as his chances of becoming president increase.
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Illustration by Mr. Fish
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By Chris Hedges — The Occupy movement is the force that will revitalize traditional Christianity in the United States or signal its moral, social and political irrelevance.
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Gage Skidmore (CC-BY-SA)
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The contest for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination has been described as a reality show and a circus. But what’s happening inside the GOP is quite rational and easily explained.
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Composite: Wikimedia Commons / Flickr / _PaulS_ (CC-BY-SA)
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By The Rev. Madison Shockley — We in the Christian community are asking how the Occupy Wall Street movement’s message coheres with our theological precepts. Should the church be for or against OWS?
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Mr. Fish
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By Mr. Fish — The voice on the other end of the telephone needed to make sure that I was 21. I wasn’t. “I’m 22,” I said, lying, figuring that 19 might as well be 22 and, anyway, this was a comedy club that I was scheduling an audition for, not the Moonlite Bunny Ranch or the FBI.
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By William Pfaff — The most dramatic contemporary event from which one can attempt to extrapolate future world change is the political and social uprising of the Arab peoples of the Mediterranean basin.
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Wikimedia Commons / Daniel Schwen (CC-BY-SA)
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We really don’t want to be flip or culturally insensitive, but any story that opens with the phrase “renegade Amish group” immediately grabs our full attention. And that’s just for starters—the leader of this outlaw gang of Amish hair-cutting bandits goes by the highly pertinent name of Sam Mullet.
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Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune —
Posted on Nov 13, 2011
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Wikimedia Commons / Nina (CC-BY-SA)
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Superstitious beliefs about the portentous date of 11/11/11 were bound to cause some trouble somewhere around the globe, so it might as well have happened at the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. On Friday, the ancient monument was shuttered ... (more)
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White House / Pete Souza
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — We have embarked on yet another presidential campaign in which religion will play an important role without any agreement over what the ground rules for that engagement should be.
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Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey
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Last week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: The Rev. Madison Shockley made a pilgrimage to Liberty Square, Dr. Marcia Dawkins traveled to the Holy Land, Reese Erlich reported from recently bombed Turkey and we compared Obama’s jobs bill to the WPA.
Posted on Oct 24, 2011
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Last week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: The Rev. Madison Shockley made a pilgrimage to Liberty Square, Dr. Marcia Dawkins traveled to the Holy Land, Reese Erlich reported from recently bombed Turkey and we compared Obama’s jobs bill to the WPA.
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Gage Skidmore (CC-BY-SA)
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By Joe Conason — What does the career of the former Massachusetts governor tell us about the ideology of the LDS church—and what his personal beliefs may portend if he becomes the first Mormon in the Oval Office?
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AP / Charles Dharapak
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By The Rev. Madison Shockley — A candidate’s faith does in fact matter, especially when the religious institution to which he or she belongs is involved in explicit political campaigns that affect millions of lives. Such issues as civil rights for women, immigrants and the LGBT community come immediately to mind.
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AP / Khalil Hamra
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By Lauren Unger-Geoffroy — How can the people who made this revolution of unity have been so betrayed?
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bbc.co.uk
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What started as a peaceful demonstration in downtown Cairo took a violent turn later Sunday when Coptic Christians protesting last week’s attack on one of their churches clashed with military forces and other civilians. (more)
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Illustration by Mr. Fish
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By Chris Hedges — Wright says Barack Obama came to him in 2008 and asked, “ ‘You know what your problem is?’ I said, ‘What is that?’ He said, ‘You have to tell the truth.’ ”
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hobvias sudoneighm (CC-BY)
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By William Pfaff — It now seems a necessary qualification for the Republican nomination, at least at the present primaries stage, to be a born-again fundamentalist Protestant. Yet in the United States the majority of the electorate is not fundamentalist, evangelical or Protestant.
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Michele Bachmann’s press secretary said the candidate was obviously speaking in jest when she attributed the recent earthquake and storm afflicting the East to an angry God. Well, as long as she was only joking about events that killed at least 35 people. ....
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Facebook.com / BrightonRockMovie
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By Richard Schickel — The original “Brighton Rock” is so good—in its dank and sometimes almost unwatchable way—that it obviates a remake. But that never stopped anyone, did it?
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AP / Hussein Malla
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By Robert Fisk — It all depends, I think, on whether criminals are our friends (Stalin at the time) or our enemies (Hitler and his fellow Nazis), whether they have their future uses (the Japanese emperor) or whether we’ll get their wealth more easily if they are out of the way (Saddam and Gadhafi).
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By David Sirota — Today, many reject the fact that black people typically face bigger obstacles to economic and political success than whites. Instead, they insist that whites are oppressed.
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This week on Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK: Texan populist Jim Hightower and Robert Scheer discuss Rick Perry’s entry into the presidential race while Texas Observer Editor David Mann tells us about Perry’s “army of God.” Update: Full transcript.
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Mr. Fish
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By Mr. Fish — There was just me and my big brother, Jeff, and the rain outside our open-air cabin at Camp Consecration Revival Retreat in upstate New York was pouring down through the trees like applause cheering on the foulness of our moods.
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AP / Ben Curtis
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By Lauren Unger-Geoffroy — Ramadan Kareem, my friends. This year’s month of fasting and purification, healing, reflection and prayer has fallen in the hottest month, August, and comes amid unprecedented earthly distractions in Egypt, the ongoing tragic massacre in Syria and crazily careening instability around the globe.
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