Yom Kippur: A time for feasting as well as fasting
September 21, 2018
—Ted Merwin
Travel with Ted Merwin through the history of Yom Kippur into the current practice of the holiday and how Yom Kippur has been referenced in today’s pop culture.
Category: Religion
Tourism and Holocaust Remembrance
April 2, 2018
—Daniel P. Reynolds
The emergence of Holocaust tourism is one aspect of the boom in Holocaust memorialization that typically garners severe skepticism. Rather than dismiss tourism as an inauthentic, low-brow engagement with history, it is time to look more closely at the phenomenon, to appreciate its complexity, and to take more seriously the motivations and insights of its participants.
Black Lives, Black Power, and Black Catholics
November 14, 2017
—Matthew J. Cressler
All too often, in both history and historiography, “racial justice” is presumed to be equivalent to a particular mode of protest from a particular period in time; namely, Christian liberal interracial efforts to end segregation in the South. But when we turn our attention to the decade after King’s death, we find that the assassination of Martin Luther King marked the beginning rather than the end of Black Catholic freedom struggles.
America’s Relationship with the Paranormal
October 28, 2017
The 2014 Baylor Religion Survey revealed that 52% of Americans believe in the reality of at least one of six different paranormal subjects, which include alien visitations, UFOs, Big foot, mediumship, telekinesis, and hauntings. This means that statistically speaking, at least, we are living in a paranormal America.
A Climate Change Denier’s Perfect Storm
October 16, 2017
— Antony Alumkal
In the past few months, we have witnessed the devastation caused by climate change induced severe weather. Anthony Alumkal critiques the campaign of anti-environmentalism spearheaded by E. Calvin Beisner and his organization, the Cornwall Alliance, for it is one that the planet cannot afford.
Stop with the Nonsense: How should we respond to Charlottesville
August 21, 2017
—Matthew J. Cressler
How should we respond to Charlottesville? As people jump to quick conclusions there is much that history and truth have to teach us.
How the social gospel movement explains the roots of today’s religious left
July 24, 2017
—Christopher H. Evans
The idea of “social salvation” that was critical to Walter Rauschenbusch, A.J. Muste and Martin Luther King Jr. is galvanizing the activism of a new generation of religious progressives. Can the religious left achieve the public status of the religious right and become a potent political force?
An interview with Bertin M. Louis, author of My Soul Is in Haiti
June 15, 2017
In this interview, Bertin M. Louis discusses protestantism in the Haitian diaspora of the Bahamas and his role as a scholar-activist and cultural critic of American anti-black racism and white supremacy.