Salon.com > Religion

Salon.com > Religion http://www.salon.com Wed, 30 May 2012 06:12:34 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Atheism’s new clout http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/atheisms_new_clout/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/atheisms_new_clout/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 15:15:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12919024 Why would any organization or social change movement want to ally itself with a community that's energetic, excited about activism, highly motivated, increasingly visible, good at fundraising, good at getting into the news, increasingly populated by young people, and with a proven track record of mobilizing online in massive numbers on a moment's notice?

If you need to ask that -- maybe you shouldn't be in political activism.

And if you don't need to ask that -- if reading that paragraph is making you clutch your chest and drool like a baby -- maybe you should be paying attention to the atheist movement.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/atheisms_new_clout/feed/ 119 Religious belief: How it helps conservatives http://www.salon.com/2012/05/10/religious_belief_how_it_helps_conservatives/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/10/religious_belief_how_it_helps_conservatives/#comments Thu, 10 May 2012 18:10:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12918485 Progressives often marvel at how focused, coordinated and aggressive our conservative opposition is. They seem to fall into lockstep and march, building large organizations and executing complex strategies with an astonishing rate of success. We may be smarter, better educated and more reality-based -- but they seem to have a cohesion and a discipline that eludes us. What's going on here?

There are a lot of answers to that question. But I'd suggest that some intriguing answers might come from a close study of conservative religious paradigms, which play an essential role in giving conservatives a unique kind of emotional and social durability.

Conservative faiths -- particularly evangelical Protestantism, but orthodox Catholicism and Judaism also include similar teachings -- inculcate a worldview that equips people with extra tools to work with in face of large-scale change. The same qualities that lead non-believers to deride faith as a crutch also give believers very real psychological support in turbulent times -- the kind of sure footing that makes organizing for political and social change easier, more effective, and more gratifying for those who are operating off this sturdy base.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/10/religious_belief_how_it_helps_conservatives/feed/ 24 Obama’s faith-based failure http://www.salon.com/2012/05/04/obamas_faith_based_failure/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/04/obamas_faith_based_failure/#comments Fri, 04 May 2012 15:46:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12914406 "Compassionate conservatism" may seem a relic of the Bush era, but one of its signatures -- the so-called faith-based initiatives -- quietly persist under President Obama.

The Obama administration’s Friday night news dump of recommendations for reforming faith-based initiatives was yet another frustrating disappointment in the sad history of the president’s faith-based effort. More than a year late, the recommendations were reportedly delayed because the administration wanted to avoid further inflaming the fevered imaginations of those who claim he’s waging a “war on religion.” Insurance coverage for contraception and guaranteeing constitutional rights for Americans who receive taxpayer-funded social services from faith-based organizations are apparently two great tastes that don’t taste great together.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/04/obamas_faith_based_failure/feed/ 22 Joel Osteen worships himself http://www.salon.com/2012/05/01/joel_osteen_worships_himself/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/01/joel_osteen_worships_himself/#comments Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12912402 If history is told by the winners, then Joel Osteen — the relentlessly upbeat spiritual caretaker of the national attitude — is history’s designated chaplain. In a marathon Sunday faith rally in the heart of the nation’s capital, Osteen, who presides over America’s largest megachurch congregation, the nondenominational Lakewood Church in Houston, exhorted the tens of thousands of believers amassed in Nationals Stadium to “live in victory,” to seize their “destiny moments,” and to fulfill God’s plan for their personal, financial and emotional success.

The Washington rally -- billed as "America’s Night of Hope” -- had gone a bit afoul of its own victory plan, however. It had originally been scheduled the night before, but as a persistent afternoon drizzle gave way to some spirited cloudbursts, the event’s organizers rescheduled it for the following afternoon. As I approached the centerfield box office outside Nationals Park on Saturday, the marquee overhead bore what had to be the glummest rainout announcement of the young 2012 baseball season: “Night of Hope postponed until 4 p.m. Sunday.” And since the Osteen message involves a lot of merchandising, the imposing tables hawking T-shirts and other commemorative swag seemed suddenly off-kilter. One prominent Night of Hope T-shirt was emblazoned with the inspirational divine message “I can do all things” — all things, that is, but summon the faithful to stand out in the rain.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/01/joel_osteen_worships_himself/feed/ 97 A holy war over gay marriage http://www.salon.com/2012/04/28/a_holy_war_over_gay_marriage/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/28/a_holy_war_over_gay_marriage/#comments Sat, 28 Apr 2012 14:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12911303 When North Carolina voters head to the polls on May 8, they will be asked to decide on a constitutional amendment - known as "Amendment One" - that prohibits marriages between same-sex couples. Same-sex marriage is already illegal by statute, but N.C. is the only state left in the Southeast without a constitutional ban.

So this is quite a showdown. There’s much talk of liberty, lifestyle and family -- and a whole lot of talk about God. As opponents and supporters target churches all the way from Appalachia to the Outer Banks, religious leaders are flooding the airwaves to share their views on a hot button issue that throws core values into stark relief.

Growing up, I attended a church in Raleigh that is deeply involved in the current debate. And I can tell you that the fault lines are deep – and often surprising – to folks in other parts of the country.

A Tale of Two Churches

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/28/a_holy_war_over_gay_marriage/feed/ 39 Now apparently it’s a “slam” to say Paul Ryan likes Ayn Rand http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/now_apparently_its_a_slam_to_say_paul_ryan_likes_ayn_rand/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/now_apparently_its_a_slam_to_say_paul_ryan_likes_ayn_rand/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:57:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12910614 Here's something kinda nutty. One guy said all of the following things:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/now_apparently_its_a_slam_to_say_paul_ryan_likes_ayn_rand/feed/ 58 The rise of the Mormon feminist housewife http://www.salon.com/2012/04/20/the_rise_of_the_mormon_feminist_housewife/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/20/the_rise_of_the_mormon_feminist_housewife/#comments Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:34:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12884081 When Democratic talking head Hilary Rosen remarked on CNN last week that Ann Romney hadn’t “worked a day in her life,” Aimee Hickman says her heart sank. “I thought, wow, Ann Romney is going to be on the Internet in 20 seconds – and in fact she was – because if there’s one thing that Mormon women are trained to do, they are trained to defend stay-at-home mothers.”

As McKay Coppins explained at Buzzfeed, “[F]or many Latter-day Saint women, staying at home to raise children is less a lifestyle choice than religious one — a divinely-appreciated sacrifice that brings with it blessings, empowerment, and spiritual prestige.” And yet Ann Romney’s position, for all the outrage it produced, doesn't reflect all Mormon women's realities. A growing group of young Mormon women, like Hickman -- who calls herself a stay-at-home mom, but co-edits the feminist journal Exponent II, runs a stained-glass studio and is writing an academic paper about Mormon women opening Etsy stores -- are increasingly challenging women's traditional role within the Church. Though Mormon women are still more likely to be stay-at-home moms, several Mormon women active in feminist issues said that in their wards, roughly half of women work outside the home. Even more surprisingly, rather than shunning these women, as it did as recently as the 1990s, the Church is showing some signs of a new tolerance toward them.

“In a congregation 15 years ago, anyone could have told you which women were employed outside their home and which ones weren’t,” says Kristine Haglund, editor of the liberal Mormon journal Dialogue. That’s no longer the case, she says, partly out of economic necessity, and because young women “didn’t grow up with the sense that there was something inherently wicked about women participating in public life.”

Though Mormon feminists first began organizing in the the 1970s in more liberal congregations – most prominently in Mitt Romney’s own Belmont, Mass., ward, a movement Ann Romney sat out – the backlash was severe. The 1987 sermon by Mormon prophet Ezra Taft Benson that counseled Mormon women to quit their jobs and affirmed childbearing and rearing as women’s primary role was “devastating,” says Tresa Edmunds, co-founder of the Mormon feminist group WAVE (Women Advocating for Voice and Equality). “Women quit their jobs at great financial sacrifice. Some were heartbroken to do so.” Five years later, the high-profile excommunication of six Mormon intellectuals, mostly feminists, chilled internal debate for the following decade. Haglund, 42, calls it a “missing generation” of women who felt forced to choose between feminism and Mormonism, and often left the church as a result.

Recently, however, the Church has been much more hands-off with women who don't fit the mold of stay-at-home-mom. Its new ad campaign, a response to negative perceptions reflected in polls, “I’m a Mormon,” includes several female professionals outside of the “housewife” mold, a sign the church at least wants to present such women to the world as Mormons.

When Lisa Butterworth started Feminist Mormon Housewives in 2004, writing under her own name to debate often-taboo questions, she worried about being called into a church court. It never happened, even as the site grew to a dozen regular bloggers. “I know personally most of the people that were excommunicated in the '90s and I’ve read the things they wrote,” she told Salon. “Pretty much everything that got them excommunicated has been said on the Internet 50 times and not a soul has been excommunicated.”

“There’s the sense that they can’t control it anymore, that the Internet makes it impossible to round everyone up,” Haglund says.

Economic possibilities on the Internet -- those Etsy stores and monetizing the now-famous Mormon craft, fashion and food blogging -- have also helped blur the line between “stay-at-home mom” and “working mom.” And since Mormon congregations are organized by region rather than by affinity or ideology, the Internet has filled the vacuum for liberals, including feminists, to grapple with their faith and gender roles – while, in many cases, staying within the church. Hickman suggested that the church is aware of high rates of departure, including among young women, though official numbers are kept private. Many Mormon feminists interviewed said their views were tolerated, if not warmly embraced, within their real-life communities.

Work-life issues aren’t the only ones Mormon feminists care about – they’re also rallying for acceptance of gay and lesbian Mormons, and trying to change the way female modesty and sexuality are discussed. And they still come up against the expectation, formal and informal, that Mormon women fully devote themselves to their children. When Hickman worked two days a week outside the home, her church’s nursery school leader told her husband that she thought their son’s behavioral issues were attributable to his mother’s absence. When her husband pointed out that those were the days he was with their son, she replied that it was contrary to the “natural order.” And while there is no official policy on the books, it’s widely understood that the Church and its affiliates won’t employ women with young children.

The Church has pointed out in its defense that women do hold some prominent positions in the religious structure, but critics counter that only ones that are subordinate to men. Mitt Romney, who was active in church leadership, would have been no exception -- and for him, says Haglund, that held true outside the church as well. “[Romney] has never been in a position either in his work life or his church life where he had to defer to the opinion of a woman, ever,” she says.

Like many feminists in faith communities, Mormon feminists are sensitive to any suggestion from their secular counterparts that they're brainwashed or that they should just leave the Church. They see plenty of room for women within their religious doctrines, if not in current institutional practice. “Some of the quirky aspects, like our 'weird underwear' and 'becoming gods,' are thrown out in the press,” says Emily Clyde Curtis, co-editor with Hickman of Exponent II. “But there are very feminist aspects of our theology that other Christian denominations don’t have ... the very powerful history of Mormon women that showed that this is a group that has not been submissive is lost. Utah was one of the first states to grant women suffrage. That’s from the Mormons.” She added that polygamist women of the 19th century were often trained in obstetrics and midwifery – partly because their sister wives provided “free, accessible childcare.” Other women point to the focus on personal revelation and free agency, and especially to the concept of a heavenly mother alongside the heavenly father.

Some Mormon feminists say they've gotten involved in mainstream feminist causes -- like the recent attempt to revive the Equal Rights Amendment -- though there are still major issues, like abortion, on which even the most liberal Mormon feminists tend to be more conservative. (Though the LDS church opposes abortion in most cases, it does make exceptions for the health and life of the mother or if the fetus is non-viable.)

Family planning is generally a complex topic: There is no doctrinal prohibition on birth control in Mormonism, but the cultural pressure to have many children remains, and non-medically indicated contraception isn’t covered under the insurance plan offered to employees of the LDS church and educational arms like Brigham Young University. As Romney took the standard Republican line on the campaign trail that mandating contraceptive overage was a violation of religious freedom, Mormons stayed out of the fray. But many were philosophically sympathetic to the idea of religious conscience and government regulation -- because of the formal hostility to gay marriage.

“Contraception isn’t a big deal for the church, but they’ve jumped onto the religious freedom bandwagon in anticipation of a battle over gay marriage,” says Haglund. She was among several Mormon feminists who questioned the lack of birth control coverage, which may change under the new Obama guidelines, depending on whether the church applies for a religious exemption.

Ordaining women as priests remains one of the deepest fault lines -- for example, WAVE does not officially advocate for women to be recognized as priests, which Edmunds refers to as an "electric fence." Haglund says, “‘We’re not arguing for women’s ordination, but ...’ is the Mormon equivalent of 'I’m not a feminist, but ...'”

For now, feminists continue to press their case from within, seeing limited but real causes for optimism. Says Edmunds, “I feel personally called to do this. We have every reason, including historical precedent, to believe that further changes will come when God deems us ready for them, or when leaders are ready for them. Who knows what the mix will be?”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/20/the_rise_of_the_mormon_feminist_housewife/feed/ 59 America’s Christian hypocrisy http://www.salon.com/2012/04/20/americas_christian_hypocrisy/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/20/americas_christian_hypocrisy/#comments Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12891961 Here’s a newspaper headline that might induce a disbelieving double take: “Christians ‘More Likely to Be Leftwing’ and Have Liberal Views on Immigration and Equality.” Sounds too hard to believe, right? Well, it’s true -- only not here in America, but in the United Kingdom.

That headline, from London’s Daily Mail, summed up the two-tiered conclusion of a new report from the British think tank Demos, which found that in England 1) “religious people are more active citizens (who) volunteer more, donate more to charity and are more likely to campaign on political issues,” and 2) “religious people are more likely to be politically progressive (people who) put a greater value on equality than the non-religious, are more likely to be welcoming of immigrants as neighbors (and) more likely to put themselves on the left of the political spectrum.”

These findings are important to America for two reasons.

First, they tell us that, contrary to evidence in the United States, the intersection of religion and politics doesn’t have to be fraught with hypocrisy. Britain is a Christian-dominated country, and the Christian Bible is filled with liberal economic sentiment. It makes perfect sense, then, that the more devoutly loyal to that Bible one is, the more progressive one would be on economics.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/20/americas_christian_hypocrisy/feed/ 268 The sound of sin http://www.salon.com/2012/04/19/the_sound_of_sin/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/19/the_sound_of_sin/#comments Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12880221 When I first brought home our sleek, silver, double-deck, Panasonic stereo cassette player during the summer of 1993, my then-wife, Gitty, frowned.

"It has a radio," she said with an accusing glare.

The device, fresh out of the box, lay on the chintzy oilcloth on our kitchen table, and she stuck her index finger at a spot on the top, near the volume control. Tape, AM, FM, printed in tiny white letters along the ridge of the circular switch. There was no denying it. And in our all-Hasidic village in Rockland County, N.Y., radio -- along with TV, movies, newspapers and other sources of secular influence -- was verboten.

"We'll do what everyone does," I said, slightly annoyed at the suggestion of impiety. Many of my friends had cassette players, and when the device came with a built-in radio tuner, there was a standard procedure for it: Krazy Glue the switch into the tape-playing position, paste a strip of masking tape over the channel indicators, and put the antenna out with the next day's trash. As Talmud students, we were nothing if not resourceful; loopholes and work-arounds were our forte.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/19/the_sound_of_sin/feed/ 93 When Mormons were socialists http://www.salon.com/2012/04/15/when_mormons_were_socialists/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/15/when_mormons_were_socialists/#comments Sun, 15 Apr 2012 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12864821 “You are cursed because of your riches!”

It was a bummer message that nobody wanted to hear. Samuel the Lamanite stood alone atop the great wall of the city of Zarahemla to warn the inhabitants of their pending destruction.

Now you have probably never heard of this Samuel, nor the capital city that was once the center of the Nephite nation. But Mitt Romney certainly has. In 6 BC, as the story goes, somewhere on the American continent, the inhabitants of this mythic city had grown decadent. There were extreme class divisions. Politicians were corrupt. The government disregarded the sick and poor.

Sound familiar?

God had called Samuel to essentially Occupy Zarahemla, to stand up and speak out against corporate greed and wealth accumulation. For his trouble, he was promptly thrown out the front gates. Undeterred, he bravely scaled the city’s exterior wall, evading a barrage of arrows and stones to stand defiant. He offered Zarahemla a choice: repent or be destroyed by God. Like any of us who have ever witnessed the ranting of a doomsday prophet, the Nephites couldn’t be bothered. Four hundred years later, Samuel’s prophecy would sorely come to pass. After decades of perpetual wars and extreme environmental upheavals, the inhabitants of Zarahemla were wiped completely off the continent and out of history.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/15/when_mormons_were_socialists/feed/ 182 Our awkward talks about God http://www.salon.com/2012/04/14/our_awkward_talks_about_god/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/14/our_awkward_talks_about_god/#comments Sat, 14 Apr 2012 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12863521 “I’ll make a peanut butter and matzoh sandwich since I can’t have bread,” Lizzie said, grabbing a knife from the drawer. My daughter, at 13, has decided she’s a little Jewish. Her ancestors, Irish Catholics, are as Jewish as I am, but the only dad she’s ever really known, who came into our lives when she was 4, is a nonreligious Jew. And, as an agnostic ex-Catholic married to him, I don’t mind at all that Lizzie is experimenting with religion. But I do hope it's non habit-forming.

Lizzie has been trying on bits and pieces of religions for years now, discarding each after a little wear. A few years ago, as we read the decidedly secular Nancy Drew together one night, she asked out of the blue if I believed in God. As she snuggled into the crook of my arm, chewing on a strand of dark blond hair, she waited for an answer.

“Well, some people believe in God,” I answered, carefully putting on the same serious but accessible voice I’d used to answer previous uncomfortable questions about where babies come from and why there are Republicans.

“Do you believe?” Lizzie said, stressing the you so I could almost see the italics flying out of her mouth. There was no getting around it. I had to answer.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/14/our_awkward_talks_about_god/feed/ 152 Paul Ryan’s biblical bilge http://www.salon.com/2012/04/12/paul_ryans_biblical_bilge/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/12/paul_ryans_biblical_bilge/#comments Thu, 12 Apr 2012 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12857761 Rep. Paul Ryan R-Wis., the mastermind of what New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calls an “inconceivably cruel” budget, has once again tried to claim that Jesus would approve of it. Speaking to David Brody of Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network this week, Ryan described how his Catholic faith, particularly the tradition of subsidiarity, is reflected in his scheme to cut the deficit by slashing programs like Medicaid, Pell Grants, food stamps and job training.

Subsidiarity, Ryan contends, is nothing more than the theological justification for shrinking the federal government down to a size that will fit in Grover Norquist’s bathtub. If I were a cartoonist, I’d draw Ryan dreamily doodling Jesus’ name on the Federalist Society masthead.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/12/paul_ryans_biblical_bilge/feed/ 32 The coming war on Mormon jokes http://www.salon.com/2012/04/09/the_coming_war_on_mormon_jokes/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/09/the_coming_war_on_mormon_jokes/#comments Mon, 09 Apr 2012 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12815991 Once Mitt Romney has the the nomination completely sewn up, a conservative movement that has been skeptical of him will quickly close ranks behind him and do their damnedest to get him elected president. Whatever lack of enthusiasm the movement's activists and opinion leaders suffer from will not be at all apparent in their defenses of Romney's record and credentials.

A vital early job for the party is setting the boundaries of what is and isn't "fair game" for political attacks. While most negative rhetoric is sort of cheerfully accepted by the objective press and "Village" elders as part of the wonderful game of politics, some lines of attack -- like stuff involving children and families and oftentimes health -- are considered beyond the pale. The line is informally negotiated early on. In 2008, the right largely failed to make it seem improper to go after John McCain's age. Liberals (though right-wingers will disagree) failed to make Barack Obama's church membership off-limits.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/09/the_coming_war_on_mormon_jokes/feed/ 248 Reformation of an evangelical http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/reformation_of_an_evangelical/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/reformation_of_an_evangelical/#comments Sun, 08 Apr 2012 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12808501 Not long ago, presidential candidate Rick Santorum complained that he was discriminated against at the University of Pennsylvania because he was more conservative than his professors. I don't know what his situation was. But I found that standing up for my faith was a positive experience -- once I learned how to do it without being a jerk.

When I entered college, I was a bright-eyed evangelical, ready to take on the world for Jesus. Just getting to college was something of a triumph for me. To say I was a mediocre high school student would insult all the other mediocre students out there. I was on my way to dropping out when I had a religious conversion experience. The most important part of that epiphany was a new focus to my life. Once, I was just drifting. Now, I searched for meaning.

The most meaningful thing I could think to do was to tell the rest of the world how good Jesus was for me, and get them to believe as I did. So I went to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, got involved in the campus Christian fellowship group, joined a small group Bible study, and took my first religion class -- Old Testament history.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/reformation_of_an_evangelical/feed/ 79 The language of “terrorism” http://www.salon.com/2012/03/30/the_language_of_terrorism/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/30/the_language_of_terrorism/#comments Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:10:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12763871 Police in Southern California have insisted that the brutal beating death of Shaima Alawadi is an isolated incident, and not a crime motivated by hate. Alawadi was killed after a brutal beating last week in El Cajon, Calif. and the attack has sent shockwaves across the country.

At a memorial service this week for the 32-year-old wife and mother of five, Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said it would be irresponsible to jump to conclusions cautioning, “We don’t know if it was a hate crime. We don’t know if it wasn’t a hate crime.” What we do know is that Alawadi 17-year-old daughter Fatima, found a note next to her slain mother’s body that read, “This is my country. Go back to yours, terrorist.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/30/the_language_of_terrorism/feed/ 134 Where are the normal Christians? http://www.salon.com/2012/03/28/where_are_the_normal_christians/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/28/where_are_the_normal_christians/#comments Wed, 28 Mar 2012 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12736171 You see them on the news every night. Extremists. Hate groups. The lunatic fringe. And you cringe every time some new radical or abusive psychopath makes the papers again, because you know that strangers and even friends are going to be wary of you now. You suspect they're afraid you're like that too. You feel caught in the crossfire between the frightening, hateful fanatics who call themselves by the same name you do, and the bigots who tar you all with the same brush. You're a Christian.

"The bad news is that we're all part of the same body," says Amy Laura Hall, an associate professor at Duke and the creator of Profligategrace.com. "The bad news is that somebody like George W. Bush and I are part of the Methodist church, and he's condoning what I and many in the community say is torture. But the good news," she continues, "is we're part of the same body. Therefore we have a responsibility to keep engaging in political discourse, and conversation with people on all opposing sides." Not that it doesn't get exhausting, battling the scorn from both within and without.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/28/where_are_the_normal_christians/feed/ 310 Multiculturalism works http://www.salon.com/2012/03/17/multiculturalism_can_be_saved/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/17/multiculturalism_can_be_saved/#comments Sat, 17 Mar 2012 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12672711 “Multiculturalism” has become a loaded term over the last several years. Across the Western world, politicians have recently begun to attack the once widely admired concept, as mainstream conservative figures -- ranging from French President Nicolas Sarkozy to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Australian ex-Prime Minister John Howard and British Prime Minister David Cameron have all argued that the project of multiculturalism is a failure. It is, of course, difficult to bring people together while respecting their differences. In many countries, the tension between a national identity and individual cultures and beliefs can dangerously invite assimilation on the one hand, constant conflict on the other. But as the new book "Pax Ethnica: Where and How Diversity Succeeds" points out, it is, indeed, possible to make multiculturalism work.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/17/multiculturalism_can_be_saved/feed/ 232 Escape from Hasidism http://www.salon.com/2012/03/03/escape_from_hasidism/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/03/escape_from_hasidism/#comments Sat, 03 Mar 2012 17:01:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12471141 Today Deborah Feldman is a model of modern, independent young womanhood: the 25-year-old single mother of a 6-year-old boy, Yitzy, a recent graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, and a new author, with one memoir, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots,” just published and a second memoir and a novel on the way.

But as a child and teenager, she lived the kind of life that would not have been out of place for a girl born a century before. Williamsburg, Brooklyn at the turn of the millennium was, for some, the epicenter of the post-punk revival, artists lofts, angular haircuts and hipster culture. But Williamsburg is also the long-time home of the Satmar community, a sect of Hasidic Jews that formed two large settlements in Brooklyn and upstate New York shortly after the end of World War II.

Feldman grew up in her grandparents’ brownstone -- her father was mentally ill; her mother was estranged for reasons that don’t become clear until the end of her memoir -- watched over by her grandmother, Bubby, a Holocaust survivor, and her frequently interfering aunt. In her home, there were no secular newspapers, no radios, no television. She saw her first forbidden movie at 17.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/03/escape_from_hasidism/feed/ 106 Why women’s rights are under siege http://www.salon.com/2012/02/29/why_womens_rights_are_under_siege/ http://www.salon.com/2012/02/29/why_womens_rights_are_under_siege/#comments Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:15:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12456871 Twenty years ago, I spent part of election night in 1992 at the Washington headquarters of the National Organization for Women. The mood was ecstatic, ebullient and — dare I say it? — full of hope. The election of Bill Clinton was a victory for women, a new chapter after four years of George H.W. Bush, the Anita Hill hearings and the retrograde agenda of the Moral Majority.

Twenty years later, it’s hard for me to look back on that night as auguring a new era of women’s influence in American politics. On women’s sexual autonomy, we’re going backward, and until Democrats, their strategists and major women’s groups get a grip on how to respond to the demands of religion in our politics, I fear that backward trend will continue.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/02/29/why_womens_rights_are_under_siege/feed/ 76 The religious zealots we visit on vacation http://www.salon.com/2012/02/28/the_religious_zealots_we_visit_on_vacation/ http://www.salon.com/2012/02/28/the_religious_zealots_we_visit_on_vacation/#comments Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12440151 How do Americans deal with religious zealots?

In the case of the Amish, many take bus tours through their compounds, buy their goods, take snapshots of their kids from afar and make a weekend trip out of watching their spiritual direction.

There are 250,000 Amish in America in hundreds of different communities, the beautifully made and instructive film “The Amish” points out, in its Tuesday premiere on PBS’ “American Experience.” But they are visited by nearly 20 million Americans annually.

Some of the Amish wonder if this is particularly good idea, since they have to rub shoulders so much with “the English” -- as they call the outside world -- with their excess weight, leisure time and unusual questions.

Surrounded by the supercharged evils of modern America, they live in rural settings of hard work and simplicity that must not be so different from life 200 years ago. But it's different enough to make some striking images: Bands of one-room school-bound kids in bonnets and straw hats but carrying matching new red mini-coolers lunchboxes; a scene of potato pickers at dawn that seems right out of a Corot painting; kids playing outdoors in their old-fashioned clothes but on a new-fangled trampoline.

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