Religious Communities: Welcoming the “One-Percent”

Last updated on: June 7, 2016 at 12:17 pm By Guest Contributor

By Shaun Casey. The success of refugee resettlement undoubtedly has required a “whole of society collaboration,” and it is a woefully under-told good news story. During the past few months, I’ve been privileged to have one-on-one conversations with some of the “1 percent” in the United States. To be clear, I’m not talking about the wealthiest of the approximately 318 million Americans in the United States. I’m referring to refugees resettled in cities like Des Moines, Dallas, Phoenix,... Read more

Judge Baylor: Football, Faith, and Price of Justice

Last updated on: June 7, 2016 at 12:13 pm By Guest Contributor

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By Jeffrey Scholes, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. If the scale and scope of the self-meted punishment that Baylor doles out is truly unprecedented in a good way, then one day the school can look back on this move with pride. Ken Starr, dogged prosecutor of President Clinton over the Lewinsky affair, steps down as President and later as Chancellor of Baylor University over charges that his administration ignored numerous accusations of rape proffered by female students in order... Read more

Poland’s Battle Between Theocracy and Secular Democracy

Last updated on: May 25, 2016 at 4:57 pm By Guest Contributor

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By Beth Holmgren, Duke University. In early April, the Middle Ages engaged in an unusual skirmish with the 21st century in cities across Poland. During a Sunday mass in this overwhelmingly Catholic country, priests read their congregations a letter from the Polish Episcopate calling for an unconditional ban on abortion. Scores of women then walked out in protest, their exodus filmed in famous churches such as St. Mary’s Basilica in Gdańsk and Saint Anne’s Church in Warsaw. In... Read more

Adult Clergy Abuse Is Overlooked and Misunderstood: Here’s Why

Last updated on: May 9, 2016 at 1:18 pm By Guest Contributor

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By Erin Crosby. Last week, the archbishop of Oklahoma City removed a priest from his duties after learning the priest had been investigated for sexual battery in San Diego five years ago. In this case, the victim wasn’t a child, but a young adult. As an adult victim of clergy sexual abuse myself, I am saddened but not surprised to hear the priest had been charged only of a misdemeanor and allowed to continue pastoral work. Churches of every denomination... Read more

Daniel Berrigan and Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold: Missing Voices for Human Worth

Last updated on: May 5, 2016 at 2:04 pm By Guest Contributor

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By Shalom Goldman. Embed from Getty Images April saw the passing of two very courageous American religious figures, the Rev. Daniel Berrigan and Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold. Berrigan, a Catholic priest and member of the Jesuit order, had reached the age of 94. Rabbi Gold, a Conservative rabbi, was 92. Berrigan was born in 1921 to a working-class Catholic family in the Midwest. Gold was born in Poland in 1923 and with his family was deported to Auschwitz at age 17; he was the only one of his family to survive. For... Read more

The Panama Papers and the Ritual of Confession

Last updated on: May 2, 2016 at 1:42 pm By Guest Contributor

By Devin Singh. The Panama Papers caught some of the most powerful people on the globe in the act of self-dealing. Now the public wants the guilty to come clean, step into the light, and confess their financial misdeeds. While such confession might be an important public ritual, there are reasons to believe that confession won’t make the sins disappear and they’ll likely happen again. In the early 20th century, the German social theorist Walter Benjamin described capitalism as a religion and bankers as a kind... Read more

60th Anniversary of the Red Sea Parting

Last updated on: May 2, 2016 at 1:13 pm By Guest Contributor

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By Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz and Susan Barnett. This year marks the 60th anniversary of one of the most iconic scenes in film history. In the 1956 Academy Award-winning film, The Ten Commandments, the young Charlton Heston parts the Red Sea and the Israelites make their heroic escape from ancient Egypt. During the modern Passover celebration of this Exodus, when the Jews reached the safety of the far shore and the Egyptian armies were drowning in the sea, the rabbinic... Read more

Has Science Made God Irrelevant?

Last updated on: April 20, 2016 at 3:17 pm By Guest Contributor

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By Thomas M. Doran. I once read a science fiction story about a galaxy-roving human race that had run its ancient God to ground in a garden on an abandoned planet Earth. Rather than supplanting God in wisdom and power, these men came off as aping the serpent in the ancient story: “We have outgrown you. We want to be liberated from you. We want to be like you, but on our terms.” In much of the ancient and... Read more

The Palmarian Church: New Rome or Fanatical Sect?

Last updated on: April 19, 2016 at 6:08 pm By Guest Contributor

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By Maria Hall. On a hilltop on the plains of Andalucía in Southern Spain, the huge gothic basilica of Palmar de Troya stands forever alone – a symbol of yet another sect which had distanced itself from mainstream Catholicism. An imposing wall surrounds the basilica, reminding the world of its isolation, not only religious but actual. Carmelite priests and nuns live in silence within the walls, cut off from the world, yet dedicated to praying for its conversion. No... Read more

Why I Got Arrested at the U.S. Capitol

Last updated on: April 18, 2016 at 2:07 pm By Guest Contributor

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By Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II. I was arrested today in Washington, DC, for insisting that the Federal government defend the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and protect Americans’ voting rights. As a pastor, a leader of the Forward Together Moral Movement, and state chapter President of the North Carolina NAACP, I do not take arrest lightly. Anytime we see a problem, our first response must be to understand it. Nothing is worse than being loud and wrong.... Read more