In the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, there was confusion and bewilderment about who the perpetrators were and what motivated them to kill innocent people. Speculation swirled amid the sorrow and grief as investigators examined daunting amounts of data and pursued leads. Local, state, and federal officials worked night and day and soon had photographs of two suspects. They released the photos to the public, hoping that someone would identify the two young men in sweatshirts and baseball... Read more

In their works titled “Women in the Muslim Unconscious” and “Quran and the Woman” Fatna Sabbah and Amina Wadud respectively present contrasting opinions on the roles and depiction of women in Islam. They use the key source of information, the Quran, to validate their arguments. Sabbah suggests that women become ‘objects of religious discourse’ as the bulk of Quranic scripture is addressed to men, forming a power structure in which men regulate and enforce divine law over women. This results... Read more

In the wake of the Boston Bombings, Eboo Patel, public intellectual and director of the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), has proposed, in a recent article on HuffPo, that this explosive violence resulted partly from a failure of interfaith dialogue. With the caveat that “interfaith programs are not a miracle solution,” he offers three ways that this work can help: First, “interfaith helps harmonize people’s identities.” Patel goes on:  “In America, just about everyone is some sort of hyphenated hybrid of race, religion... Read more

I’ve experienced some strange extremes lately. First, I attended – and spoke at – the Subverting the Norm conference in Springfield, MO, where we took some time to consider how, if at all, so-called “radical theology” could exist within today’s religious systems. Then I got home and found my latest TIME Magazine, with a cover story titled “The Latino Reformation,” which reveals what most within Protestantism have known for some time, which is that formerly Catholic Latino Christians are dramatically reshaping the... Read more

Everybody knows that religious fundamentalists are part of the Middle East’s problem. Everybody knows that Muslim and Jewish extremists make a hard situation harder, delaying the day Palestinians and Israelis find a way to live in peace. Everybody knows that the great Israeli writer Amos Oz is right when he says that so long as the conflict is “a battle over real estate” it can be solved, but once it becomes a holy war only catastrophe beckons. But what if that conventional... Read more

There’s no question — our country is divided. Tension hangs in the air over every conversation about the budget, gay marriage, immigration, and gun control. Of course, difference of opinion is nothing new in the U.S. This is a democracy after all. With the celebrated First Amendment as the cornerstone to our rights as Americans, we can freely shout our differing views from the rooftops — though in this day in age, shouting exists rarely on rooftops, but on the... Read more

The curse of Ham,” an old-time Biblical (mis) interpretation used to vilify black people and justify slavery and laws against racial intermarriage, is still alive and spreading bigotry in the United States. The Appleby Baptist Church in Nacogdoches, Texas, is among this country’s scattered, independent fundamentalist churches still openly promoting the idea that the Biblical Noah pronounced a curse on descendants of his son, Ham. Ham had sexually molested Noah as he slept in a drunken stupor, and Noah realized... Read more

Black clergy have launched a new coalition to fight gun violence, saying they are undeterred by the recent failure of legislation on Capitol Hill and all too aware of the problem of gun violence. At meetings held Tuesday (April 23) in Washington and Los Angeles, supporters of the African-American Church Gun Control Coalition called gun violence “both a sin and a public health crisis” and committed to a three-year action plan of advocacy, education and legislative responses. “As people of God and... Read more

In his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, war correspondent Chris Hedges tries to explain why he became so addicted to war that he could not live without being in a war. War had quite simply captured his imagination, making it impossible for him to live “normally.” “I learned early on that war forms its own culture. The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I ingested for many... Read more

Not long after I earned my doctorate in the history of Christianity, someone asked me, “What do you think will be the future of faith?” I replied, echoing Dr. McCoy from the original Star Trek, “I don’t know. I’m a historian, not a soothsayer.” Strangely enough, people think that historians know the future and believe that past holds some insight to where we might be heading. Last year, I finally gave in to the pressure of prognostication and tackled the question... Read more