Evangelicals remain one of the principal obstacles to the full acceptance of gay Americans as people deserving equal rights and equal respect. But even in those religious circles, pressure from more tolerant Evangelicals especially the young is breaking down the…
Category: Religion
Waking Up to Iran’s Real History
Americans have a deeply distorted understanding of Iran and what has driven that country’s political change over the past six decades. This false history has become the backdrop for a possible new war, as David Swanson notes in reviewing a…
Jesus’s Provocative Political Protest
Christians celebrate Jesus’s birth and the immediate events around his crucifixion, but less attention is given to the clearest sign of his political activism, his overturning of the money-changing tables at the Temple in Jerusalem, the likeliest reason for his…
Israel’s Persecution of Haneen Zoabi
Like apartheid South Africa, Zionist-ruled Israel must face the contradiction between being a modern democracy respecting equal rights for all and a state favoring one group over others. The logic of the second route is ever-increasing repression, as the case of Haneen…
The History of the Advent Season
Some Christian churches observe a near-month-long preparation for Christmas known as the Advent season, but its origins are not Bible-based and not well understood. Advent traces back to the Middle Ages when some Christians thought Jesus’s return was imminent, explains…
Libyan Women Losing Rights
When rebels challenged Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the West and its media adopted a “good-guy/bad-guy” dichotomy, hyping dubious claims about Gaddafi and ignoring troubling extremism among the rebels. Now, the new Libya is clamping down on women’s rights, says Lawrence Davidson.
Worshipping Materialism at Christmas
The prevailing view on Fox News is that everyone in America, regardless of his or her religious beliefs, must join in the lavish and lengthy celebration of the birth of Jesus or be accused of warring on Christmas. But the…
Explaining the Unexplainable
Since World War II, the common reaction to the horrendous crimes of the Nazis has been to wonder how such extreme behavior was possible. But the more important point is how the process of killing could be made so mundane, a…
Biblical Economics
An irony of modern politics is that many conservative Americans view themselves as devout believers in the Bible yet they ascribe to right-wing, dog-eat-dog economic theories that Jesus and other Biblical figures would condemn. The contradiction has pushed Biblical economics…
Israeli Scholar Disputes Founding Myth
From the Archive: As Israel again “mows the grass” in Gaza taking revenge on Palestinians for firing crude missiles into Israeli territory the myth upon which the Jewish government stakes its claim to the land is front and center. But the myth…