Sikhs don’t make much religion news. They don’t go on TV announcing their intention to burn Korans; they don’t loudly forecast apocalypse; and they have not had to defend their faith as one of them races to be president of the United States. But the Sikh community caught my attention recently with the announcement of […]
Mark Silk, a commentator on religion and politics who keeps above the fray
One of the smartest commentators on American politics and religion is someone you’ve probably never heard of. His wry and careful handling of flammable subjects is always admirable. But a recent blog post, which brought together three culture-wars figureheads — the Texas mega pastor Joel Osteen; New York Times columnist Ross Douthat; and Mitt Romney, the […]
Feminism’s final frontier? Religion.
The battle of the sexes, waged this election season with fulsome fury in the public space, is being fought in a much more painful, private sphere as well. In churches (and synagogues and mosques) across the land, women are still treated as second-class citizens. And because women of faith are increasingly breadwinners, single moms and […]
The religion and politics of division
Last week, the Christianity police, in the persons of Rick Santorum and Franklin Graham, came forward to discredit the president’s religious beliefs. First, Santorum called President Obama’s theology “phony”; then, on “Morning Joe,” Graham refused to accept Obama into his Christian band of brothers: “He has said he’s a Christian, so I just have to assume that he […]
Is Romney nicer because he’s Mormon?
Mitt Romney’s tax returns prompt this question. According to those documents, which he released recently, Romney gives at least 10 percent of his earnings of about $20 million a year to the Mormon Church. He tithes, in other words, in accordance with the expectations of his church’s leaders and the biblical command from Leviticus: “All tithes from […]
The Cost of Being Jewish
How the recession affects religion. It sounds like a Catskills-era joke with a Jewish lawyer in the punchline, but among Jewish leaders it’s deadly serious. Why does it cost so much to be Jewish? At a time when American families are tightening household budgets, does it really make sense to continue to charge thousands of […]
Saint Sarah: Is Sarah Palin the Next Jerry Falwall?
Another memoirist might prefer to keep such matters private, but Sarah Palin is not another memoirist. In Going Rogue: An American Life, Palin describes, perhaps for the first time in the history of political autobiography, a furtive trip to an out-of-state drugstore to obtain a do-it-yourself pregnancy test. This was in the fall of 2007, […]