“This trend mobilizes the language of religious persecution to shut down political debate and critique by characterizing any position not in alignment with this politicized version of Christianity as an example of antireligious bigotry and persecution. Moreover, it routinely deploys the archetypal figure of the martyr as a source of unquestioned religious and political authority”

Read Elizabeth A. Castelli’s Persecution complexes: identity politics and the ‘War on Christians’

And you thought Jerusalem had prior claim. Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.

Family Values:

Benedict's liberal approach to immigration actually puts him to the left of both potential Democratic nominees--and it points a way for Democrats to diffuse this potentially dangerous issue

What the pope can teach Democrats about immigration

Wishful Thinking?

“At the risk of seeming optimistic, I might predict that our current romance with the irrational will subside once the year 2000 has come and gone. But that might be wishful thinking”

Read Sage Stossel’s 1999 interview with Wendy Kaminer

Humanists and Spinozists should care about tigers, too.

Caroline Alexander was chair of Classics at the illustrious Chancellor College, Kamuzu Banda's salute to Athena under the equator, an expert on the Bounty mutiny, an antagonist of shoddy thinking:

Her essay

She is the best thing that has happened to religion coverage in...ever. A prophetess out of time?

You judge:

Clarity is important in Philosophy because life is short.

The new evangelical divide? Not voting in lockstep anymore.

Or in this case, Sapere Aude (dare to know): Listen to the Jeremiah Wright's sermon The Audacity of Hope," the basis for a certain presidential hopeful's bestselling book.

A connection between literature and morality? Harry V. Jaffa liked to talk about the "inexorability of the moral order" -- the sort of thing you find in--Macbeth.

Undercover among America's secret theocrats. A 2003 article by The Revealer's Jeff Sharlet has interesting implications for Election 2008:

Read Jesus plus nothing and

Campaign U : Higher education and the 2008 candidates

“Examples of vague or slippery definitions and appeals to the authority of consensus abound in writings about evolution, especially those writings that urge
potentially skeptical people to trust the experts, rather than to examine the evidence for themselves”

Read Phillip E. Johnson’s Science by Consensus

In May 2004, the world's first stem cell bank, partly funded by the MRC, was opened in the UK. On its opening, it contained two stem cell lines, developed by teams from Newcastle and London. What's the idea behind banking different stem cell lines like this?

Fitna. The wages of sin.

Science and religion have often been at loggerheads. Now the former has decided to resolve the problem by trying to explain the existence of the latter...

Where angels no longer fear to tread

On the question of whether Jeremiah was Right. White America sniffs the problem of slavery and injustice, a bit late.

There are a bunch of reasons Hillary Clinton won't give the speech on gender that her rival just gave on race, and we'll get to those. But if she were to give that speech, what would it say?

Progress in the Church of Pope Benedict:

“...the correct name for the dance is the “backslide”—an illusion creating the impression the dancer is moving forward when he’s actually moving backward. Imagine the Pope and the curia perfecting this in the papal chambers, cassocks raised mid-calf, to the sound of the Electronic Boogaloos.”

R. Joseph Hoffmann’s Rome Town 2008

They fail to see that in practical terms - notwithstanding the differences - political Islam and USA-led militarism are two sides of one coin with the same agenda, the same vision, the same infinite capacity for violence, the same reliance on religion and reaction.

See Maryam Namzie’s comments

Need a new career? Think big.
Read The Nabi Papers

Timothy Beal asks, "Why read a Bible when you can just buy one?"
Read Adding God to Your Shopping Cart
How religious consumerism is replacing religious literacy.

“Most compelling is Grainger's insider/outsider observations... as perceptive as any I've read the relationship between religion and media, the ways in which the physical embodiments of faith reveal the nuances of a religion that from the outside may appear to be nothing more than a blunt cudgel of doctrine”
Jeff Sharlet reviews Brett Grainger's In the World but Not of It

The idea that all religions are owed respect and understanding comes readily tripping off the tongue these days. Tolerance might be mentioned, but often only in passing. Since religious doctrines conflict with one another, it is hard to see how mindless respect can be extended to all of them at once.
Read Robert Nola’s article, Religion is Owed no Respect

The brief relief from the view that America is going to heaven in an evangelical basket cannot disguise other recent findings from that bastion of attititudinal measurement, the Pew Forum. The troubling result?

"A close reading of survey data shows that while large majorities of Americans respect science and scientists, they are not always willing to accept scientific findings that squarely contradict their religious beliefs."

Science in America: Religious Belief and Public Attitudes

Based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans age 18 and older, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey finds that religious affiliation in the U.S. is both very diverse and extremely fluid.
The religious landscape of the United States, according to the Pew Forum

You’ve gotta have faith, faith, faith...or do you?

McAllister has learned that you can tell inspirational stories, grounded in social justice and tolerance and peace, without having to bring God into the picture:
An Atheist in the Pulpit

“A lot of people are afraid of Islam today in Denmark and when they are afraid of Islam it means they are afraid of me too,” says Sofian, who was born in Denmark but feels he no longer has a future there.
Cartoons reprinted, conflicts reignited in Copenhagen

Burrowing in from both sides of the political hedgerow:
David Dabscheck waxes Berlinian

Where have all the flowers gone?
Russell Jacoby laments the eclipse of the public intellectual and straight-forward prose, and the rise of the interview-ready techno-academic who loves the camera and eschews clear language.

“He may no longer appeal to the authority of “ordinary language”, but he remains suspicious of the pretensions of philosophical argument to overturn everyday opinion. This is no principled stance – Searle offers no transcendental defence of every-day thinking – but his philosophical practice is often reminiscent of G. E. Moore’s celebrated response to skepticism”
David Papineau on John Searle’s Freedom and Neurobiology

“There are probably 600 Women’s Studies programs on American campuses, which focus on the unequal treatment of women in society. We have had a very hard time locating a single class which focuses on the oppression of women under Islamic law.”
Horowitz and Spenser counter feminist response to charges of inattention to Islamic women’s issues

Stephen Pinker and others strive to answer the question: What are the limits of science?

“amidst all the excitement of the late 1960s, the poetry of Milton could not compete with the slogans coming out of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, and so a leader of the American masses emerged, even if the masses themselves didn’t notice.”
Scott Lemee left cold by NYRB’s warmth for Bob Avakian

Right back at you: Can Christianity get the left back right? Katha Pollitt reviews Jim Wallis’ latest

At least Christopher Robin still says his prayers. Otherwise, strange things are happening in the German version of the Hundred Acre Wood.

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, needs to adjust his mitre. A misguided act of largess born out of the discredited interfaith movement: the recognition of Islamic law (Sharia) is not inevitable and should be resisted. On the other hand, if this is a road to travel, why not expel a few of remaining lord bishops from the House of Lords and give a proportion to the mullahs.

         The Archbishop's comments can be read here.

         R Joseph Hoffmann asks: What would Becket do?

“So far the absolutists seem to be on the defensive. The relativists mock them for adding nothing with their big words, or disapprove of them for being insufficiently tolerant of other perspectives and points of view. And toleration is surely a Good Thing. But is the relativist view really so attractive?”
Simon Blackburn, absolutely, relatively.