|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Jonathan Schell
$24.00
 . '/' . substr('9781844674510',-6,3) . '/' . '9781844674510' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Nick Turse (Editor)
$13
|
|
|
|
|
The “Real Time” host uses the recent raid on a polygamist compound to point a finger at the Vatican, which he calls “the Bear Sterns of organized pedophilia—too big to fail.” This wasn’t one of Maher’s more applauded closing numbers, but it’s not one you should miss.
|
AP photo / Lilli Strauss
|
A Catholic Church-affiliated museum in Vienna was shaken up this week by a controversy that erupted over the display of an unconventional rendering of Jesus and his disciples sharing the Last Supper—and then some—in an exhibit called “Religion, Flesh and Power.”
|
|
What will history say about the implacable anti-imperialist and unrepentant revolutionary who has held power in Cuba for nearly 50 years? The publication of Fidel Castro’s and Ignacio Ramonet’s “My Life: A Spoken Autobiography” helps us understand the man and his myth.
|
AP photos / left: Gautam Singh / right: Uwe Lein
|
By Chris Hedges — The battle under way in America is not a battle between religion and science. It is a battle between religious and secular fundamentalists. It is a battle between two groups intoxicated with the utopian and magical belief that humankind can perfect itself and master its destiny.
|
|
By David Sirota — Since the 1960s, bigotry has undergone an aesthetic makeover. Today, the most pernicious racists do not wear pointy hoods, scream epithets and anonymously burn crosses from behind masks. They don starched suits, recite sententious bromides and stage political lynchings before television cameras.
|
thepage.time.com
|
Lost in the discussion of the Rev. Wright controversy and its impact on the Obama campaign is the fallout for the minister himself. Wright’s first public events since his sermons went YouTube, a revival in Tampa and a series of sermons in Houston, have been canceled. A third event, where he is supposed to be honored, has been downgraded to “pending.”
|
|
By Anthony Heilbut — What accounts for the strange need of some white scholars—from the plantation nostalgists of the late 1890s to the “Blues Mafia” of the 1960s—to honor African-American culture by trying to save black people from themselves?
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Let’s ask the hard question about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright: Is he as far outside the African-American mainstream as many of us would like to think?
|
wikimedia.org / Ali Mansuri
|
The House of Saud clearly takes a top-down approach to ruling. Under mounting pressure from the West to confront religious fundamentalism, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Religious Affairs plans to retrain some 40,000 imams.
|
|
By Ellen Goodman — The government spread out a nice, soft net to catch the collapsing financial firm Bear Stearns. But if you’re a little guy who gets in trouble, expect to meet up with a somewhat harder surface.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Liberals who have sung the praises of John McCain in the past confront a fascinating test of consistency, integrity and political commitment now that McCain is the virtually certain Republican nominee. It could be an amusing moment. I should know, since I’m one of them.
|
pastorandpeople.wordpress.com
|
There’s been plenty of innuendo and chatter about Barack Obama’s religious affiliation and beliefs lately, but both Obama and rival Hillary Clinton have described their faith with little room for extrapolation in recent months. Here’s what they had to say.
|
|
By Joe Conason — Whatever their true private beliefs, presidential candidates in America are constantly required to provide proofs of faith, often through their connections with various religious figures. Benedictions from the pulpit bestow an aura of righteousness—except, of course, when the pastor or minister is a disreputable kook whose endorsement should be an embarrassment.
|
|
By Ellen Goodman — Just below the text there was a Google ad inviting me to take a quiz. “Christian? Jewish? Muslim? Atheist? See which Religion is Right for You.”
|
|
A short while into this Larry King interview with Michael Moore, the filmmaker explains why his Catholicism morally prohibits him from voting for Hillary Clinton, and why religion, whether Mitt Romney’s or Tom Cruise’s, should be off-limits.
|
|
Angel Boligan, El Universal, Mexico City —
|
|
By Bill Boyarsky — As he addressed a room full of members of the Iowa Christian Alliance in the small city of Cedar Falls, the senator demonstrated how hard it is for him to find his way through the tangled forest of Christian right doctrine.
|
|
By Carla Kaplan — A new collection of letters between the fascinating Mitford sisters offers unparalleled insight into one of the 20th century’s most famous families.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Hope is an overused word and an underrated virtue. We “hope” for all kinds of things, from the trivial to the profound. But hope is both a habit and a discipline. It is an orientation toward the future based on the conviction that we live in an ultimately trustworthy universe.
|
AP photo / Steve Mitchell
|
By Chris Hedges — Mike Huckabee represents a new and potent force in American politics, and the neocons and corporate elite, who once viewed the yahoos of the Christian right as the useful idiots, are now confronted with the fact that they themselves are the ones who have been taken for a ride.
|
|
The one and only anti-war Republican presidential candidate didn’t raise his hand when asked who doesn’t believe in evolution, but it turns out he may have wanted to. In this clip, Paul responds to a question about the incident by saying that it was an “inappropriate question,” but that “I think it’s a theory—theory of evolution—and I don’t accept it.”
|
|
By Zachary Karabell — With religious passions inflaming and complicating politics worldwide, the very project of a secular future is threatened. In “The Stillborn God,” Mark Lilla reveals the roots of the age-old quest to bring political life under God’s authority. He also explores how modern Western thinkers found a way to free politics from theological power and build barriers against destructive religious fanaticism.
|
dallasnews.com
|
By The Rev. Madison Shockley — In the first of a new Truthdig series on religion and politics, the Rev. Madison Shockley analyzes Mitt Romney’s recent landmark speech and finds that America’s most famous Mormon is trying to have it both ways.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — Is the thought of him as president just vaguely scary? Or have we learned enough about the man that we should be hair-on-fire alarmed at the prospect, still pretty remote, that he could actually win?
|
|
By Joe Conason — Some killers apparently were able to get out of prison by letting then-Gov. Huckabee know they had “found Jesus.” The terrible aftermath may say something important about the presidential candidate.
|
motherjones.com
|
The Huckabee campaign has refused to give the media much more than scraps of the candidate’s religious speeches, leaving his 12 years as a pastor relatively shrouded in mystery. We already know he doesn’t believe in evolution, thought at one time that AIDS patients should be quarantined and isn’t ashamed “to let you know that I believe Adam and Eve were real people,” so what is he hiding?
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Romney’s “religion speech” was touched by brilliance, but it turned off onto a wrong road. Parts of it were frustrating and transparently political, the words of a man with his eye on a prize.
|
|
Peter Montgomery —
The former Massachusetts governor must stop the advance of presidential rival and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee, but he has to tread a careful line in addressing religious issues.
|
AP photo / David J. Phillip
|
Now that rival Republican presidential hopeful (and Baptist minister) Mike Huckabee is getting traction in Iowa polls, Mitt Romney has attempted to pull a JFK by giving a speech Thursday targeting voters concerned about his Mormonism. Romney pledged that church authorities wouldn’t influence his presidential decisions, while also declaring that he endeavors to “live by” his faith and be “true to” his beliefs.
|
|
Sen. Orrin Hatch, the nation’s other big-shot Mormon Republican, has publicly urged Mitt Romney to give a speech putting the issue of his faith to bed. Romney’s advisers, on the other hand, have cautioned him to keep quiet, though they may change their tune in light of a poll indicating that roughly a quarter of Republicans have some reluctance to back a Mormon.
|
|
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveals why he kept a lid on his “profound” religious faith while in office: “You talk about [faith] in our system and, frankly, people do think you’re a nutter.”
|
usafa.af.mil
|
By David Antoon — Retired Air Force Col. David Antoon investigates the evangelical Christian takeover of the military, where proselytizing has become institutionalized and religious ideology threatens to supersede the values of the Constitution.
|
|
The Onion targets religious hypocrisy with this satirical interview with the head of a mock Christian charity that provides relief to heterosexual Africans: “As long as you’re not gay, we welcome you with open arms.”
Posted on Nov 1, 2007
READ MORE 
|
|
By Ellen Goodman — Those who went to the Values Voter Summit left without a candidate to call their own. But the lack of a golden boy isn’t their only problem: There are signs of ideological rigor mortis among the old guard.
|
AP photo / Charles Dharapak
|
By Scott Ritter — The former intelligence officer and weapons inspector argues that the president’s recent World War III comment offers some rare insight into the highly secretive world of George W. Bush’s White House, where the leader of the free world gets advice from reckless neoconservatives, “war criminal” Dick Cheney and “God.”
|
boingboing.net
|
Is having a religious experience a matter of stimulating a particular area of the brain? The God-o-thalamus, perhaps? (Er, sorry.) Neuroscientists at the University of Montreal are studying functional MRI (fMRI) scans to see if they can locate such an area and then, perhaps, artificially induce a heavenly state of mind.
|
democrats.georgetown.edu
|
John McCain’s campaign is in dire straits, which may be why he told Beliefnet that he would prefer a Christian president who would “carry on in the Judeo-Christian principled tradition,” and that “the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.”
|
|
The “Real Time” host argues that it’s about time for the growing “rationalist” minority to challenge the ubiquity of religion in politics.
|
|
By Chris Hedges — In his book “Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia,” John Gray warns that as the era of liberal intervention in international affairs wanes, it is being replaced with “primitive versions of religion” that will be used to fuel apocalyptic violence.
|
|
The “Real Time” host compares the arrogance of missionaries to that of the president, who claims certainty as a virtue: “And the message you hear from Bush apologists these days is, ‘Oh, sure, short-term Bush may have f—ked everything up, but he’s thinking long-term—hundred years into the future.’ Well, thank you George W. Nostradamus, America’s first science-fiction president.”
|
|
KSLA News of Shreveport, La., is standing by its report on “Clergy Response Teams,” trained by the federal government to pacify an angry citizenry in the event of martial law. The idea being, as far as we can tell, that religious leaders are ideally suited to the task of explaining to people why they should give up their freedom for the “better good.”
|
news.bbc.co.uk
|
Turkey’s Abdullah Gul says he will once again run for the presidency, which could lead to a crisis in the politically and religiously complex nation. Turkey’s avowedly secular military has already announced its willingness to intervene should Gul win the post, because of his Islamist background.
Posted on Aug 14, 2007
READ MORE 
|
rawstory.com
|
In an interview with a Christian Broadcasting Network blog, Barack Obama stood by his assessment that conservative Christian leaders have “hijacked” religion. The candidate went even further, declaring that America is not exclusively a Christian nation.
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Global Capital and the Nation State
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
