Green Zone’s conspiratorial world Nighttime. Baghdad. March 19, 2003. The city bursts into light as “Shock and Awe” sweeps across the desert. Director Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum) begins his latest release, Green Zone, with a black screen as the sounds of air-raid warnings and the crescendo of American bombs slowly fills the … Read more
A global examination of church and state Taming the gods: religion and democracy on three continents, by Ian Buruma, Princeton University Press, 2010. $19.95, 132 pp. In his new book Taming the Gods, British-Dutch writer Ian Buruma recalls the outrage and death threats that greeted the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. The incident … Read more
Young evangelicals shift left, change focus. “I’m a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order.” With this declaration, Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN) summed up the philosophy with which white evangelical Christians have long identified. Yet the ordering has sometimes seemed the reverse of Pence’s. Since 1980, born-again Christians have been among the Republican … Read more
American faith-based organizations and the politics of belief In February, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded some $50 million in funds for disaster relief and long-term rebuilding efforts following the earthquake in Haiti. Although the grants themselves were uncontroversial, their recipients were less so. Eschewing the private sector, USAID chose to distribute … Read more
Muslims in America remain separated by race. Islam is the fourth-largest religion in the United States, and one of the fastest-growing. It also has a complicated history in this country. Although the number of American Muslims has increased substantially over the past few decades, the faith is divided along racial lines. The tension between African-American … Read more
Compromise, innovation, and tradition define American religion. One might assume that the divide in American Christianity is simply between liberal and conservative theologies. But such a framework would be misleading. As Christians consider social services and sexual purity, universal salvation and individual redemption, they are often forced to straddle theological and political divides. Religious pluralism … Read more
Future looks bright for those “Good Without God.” According to the American Religious Identification Survey, the percentage of Americans affiliating with no religion has climbed from 8% in 1990, to 15% to 2008. In part, this growth is no doubt due to increased organizational efforts among the religiously unaffiliated. Although factions like atheists, agnostics, and … Read more
America has long had a complex, almost schizophrenic attitude towards religion. As the popular narrative goes, the country was founded by those fleeing religious persecution in England, who sought to establish their own society free from the tyranny of state-imposed faith. But the actual history is more complex. For every Pennsylvania, where different faiths flourished … Read more
A New Heyday for American Secularism On April 10, 2009, the Harvard Secular Society took over Harvard’s Memorial Church to present Joss Whedon, the TV producer and director, with the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism. Whedon began his acceptance speech by reminding his audience of “nonbelievers” that President Obama had given them “a … Read more