Though founded by a pacifist, Christianity has justified some of the most brutal slaughters in human history, from the wars of the late Roman Empire to the Crusades to the Inquisition to world wars to genocides against “heathens,” Muslims and Jews. Yet, Gary G. Kohls says the essence of Christianity can still be reclaimed.
Despite the growing power of right-wing extremists, some Israelis are speaking out against legislation and attitudes that target both Arabs and the core principles of democracy. They represent a movement of conscience seeking to salvage Jewish ideals of justice, as Lawrence Davidson reports.
Many Christian fundamentalists impose a literal interpretation on Biblical myth, thus missing the larger moral messages and rejecting later scientific discoveries, a mistake most apparent in their reading of the Genesis creation story, as the Rev. Howard Bess explains.
Republicans are fond of throwing the charge “class warfare” at anyone who seeks to reverse the rapid division of modern society into haves and have-nots. But the ancient story of Cain and Abel is a cautionary tale about the violence that class stratification inevitably brings, writes Rev. Howard Bess.
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Another element of the “go-to-war-with-Iran hysteria” is a “default judgment” by a U.S. court linking Iran to 9/11. However, Iran had no legal representation in the case, allowing dubious and bogus allegations to go unchallenged, as Gareth Porter noted in this article for Truthout.
In the old days, companies responded to complaints with the saying “the customer is always right.” Not so much anymore, except it seems when a right-wing group gets angry that a TV show presents Muslims as real people, as Michael Winship notes.
Catholic bishops are pressuring the Obama administration to retreat on issues of women’s reproductive rights – and with the election year looming, they appear to be making progress, as NOW President Terry O’Neill described in an interview with Dennis Bernstein.
From the Archive: It’s Christmastime again, so just as families pull their tree ornaments and lawn decorations out of storage, Fox News and other right-wing media outlets dust off their annual outrage over the so-called “war on Christmas,” which is just as phony now as it was when Robert Parry addressed the topic in 2005.
Three months into the Occupy Wall Street movement, protesters took their message uptown in a march that surprised the police and many Christmas shoppers, but helped explain what the economic crisis means to average people, writes Danny Schechter.
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