World Religions News

The departure of the UAE from OPEC is devastating news for Arab alliances and great news for Israel.

The post The Coming of the Ishmael Accords appeared first on Jewish Journal.

The Baha’i teachings caution us against fabricating false imaginations of our Creator — and also warn us about visualizing false imaginations of death.  In the Baha’i view, a spiritual existence...

The post Dispelling Our Vain Imaginations About Death appeared first on BahaiTeachings.org.




Have you noticed how Pope Leo’s calm, fearless stance is rattling those in power? He’s not just speaking to Catholics; he’s challenging the very idea that religion should be silent in times of crisis, whether the topic is war or the treatment of immigrants.

This week, host Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush welcomes two leading American Catholic voices: religion professor Dr. Anthea Butler and best-selling author Father Jim Martin, SJ. They’ve got deep insights on the ways race, religion, and political priorities inform the furious responses from the White House and other powerful figures—and efforts to deny the moral authority of the head of one of the world’s largest religions.

Dr. Anthea Butler is Geraldine R. Segal Professor of Social Thought and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She’s the author of the book White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America.

Rev. Jim Martin is editor-at-large at the Jesuit America Magazine, consultor to the Vatican, and author of many books, including his latest—a memoir titled Work in Progress: Confessions of a Busboy, Dishwasher, Caddy, Usher, Factory Worker, Bank Teller, Corporate Tool, and Priest.

WASHINGTON (RNS) — A new government report accusing President Joe Biden’s administration of fomenting “anti-Christian bias” is being met with mixed reactions from Christian leaders, with some conservatives celebrating the study and others arguing it appears narrowly focused on the concerns of evangelical Christians and obscures President Donald Trump’s own conflicts with faith groups.

The report, which was released on Thursday, is one of the first public actions by the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, a body created by President Donald Trump in February of last year. Written by a group primarily composed of Trump’s cabinet members, the study concluded that while the Biden administration “generally tolerated religious beliefs that were privately held,” the government under the former president’s leadership nonetheless “zealously pursued actions to limit Christians’ ability to act in accordance with their faith.”

The report, which stretches for more than 500 pages, alleges the wide array of incidents it highlights represent clashes between the Biden administration and a “Christian worldview” — particularly among what the report calls “traditional Christians,” who hold conservative-leaning views on abortion, gender and sexual orientation.

Among the report’s claims are allegations that anti-Christian bias was present at various federal agencies during the Biden administration, including the Departments of Justice and Education, the latter of which is highlighted in the report for what the authors argue was an unfair focus of “enforcement actions against Christian universities.” The report argues that Christian colleges such as Liberty University and Grand Canyon University were made to pay larger fines than other schools that were scrutinized by the Biden administration.

The report also accused the Biden administration of using the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act — which bars certain behaviors directed at those seeking an abortion — as the “enforcement arm for abortion non-governmental organizations.” It pointed to the monitoring and prosecution of Christian anti-abortion demonstrators who blockaded an abortion clinic, some of whom were pardoned by Trump.

The report was celebrated by figures such as Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, a conservative group that is cited in the report. In a blog post, Perkins said the task force had “produced one of the most, if not the most, substantive works of this administration.”

Similarly, Kelly Shackelford, who leads the First Liberty Institute and sits on Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, called the report “shocking.”

“The Biden administration’s record of hostility toward Christian Americans is despicable and should serve as a warning,” Shackelford said in a statement. “We can never let this happen again.”

But the report has also garnered ample criticism. In a call with reporters on Friday, Melissa Rogers, who led the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships under Biden and former President Barack Obama, derided the report.

“It’s absurd to say that President Biden’s administration was anti-Christian,” said Rogers, who noted she is a lifelong Baptist. “He firmly believes, as I do, that we must protect religious freedom for everyone, everywhere, in equal measure.”

Rogers also referenced a series of controversial social media posts made by Trump around Easter, such as his use of profanity when referring to Iran, decrying Pope Leo as “weak on crime” and posting an image that depicted himself as a Jesus-like figure.

“It’s also worth noting that President Biden spent Easter and Orthodox Easter wishing Christians worldwide joyful resurrection Sundays, not by pretending to be Jesus, by tweeting profanities and by attacking the Pope,” Rogers said.

She was echoed by Amanda Tyler, who leads the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. Tyler said any examples of government “overreach” regarding religious freedom should be handled by “courts of law, not a partisan political report,” and accused the report’s authors of using “cherry-picked anecdotes that omit crucial context and legal basis for the policies and actions it takes issue with.”

She also expressed frustration with what she said was the report’s suggestion that Christianity and the U.S. government have long had a close relationship.

“The Baptist contribution to our nation’s founding is in the advocacy for the separation of religion from government,” she said.

Tyler was one of several speakers on the call who also argued that the report seems to focus on what authors of the report call “traditional Christians.” She noted that Christian beliefs and practices have long been a source of debate throughout Christian history.

“What they talk about as ‘traditional Christianity’ … they’re really just going to focus on conflicts around abortion, gender ideology and sexual orientation,” Tyler said. “They’ve narrowed, in the report, Christian theology to those three topics.”

Robert Jones, head of the Public Religion Research Institute, noted that on all three of those issues, polling from his group shows as many or even most Christians holding more liberal positions. A slim plurality of Christians overall support the right to an abortion in all or most cases (50% versus 48%), he said, and majorities support the right to allow gay and lesbian people to marry (56%). In addition, roughly two-thirds said they favor laws that would protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people against discrimination.

The recurring outlier, he said, is white evangelicals, who often take a different view.

“The idea that there’s a broad anti-Christian — writ large — bias and that Trump is on the side of all Christians really just doesn’t hold up when you look at the data,” Jones said, adding a majority of Christians (54%) also have an unfavorable view of the president.

The report does acknowledge a spectrum of Christian belief. In one section, after citing a series of Bible passages, the report notes that “some Christians argue that these verses should be understood in a manner different than traditional Christians,” but adds that “only the latter” were “subjected to hostility by the Biden administration.”

Even so, the study also draws from conservative Christian sources when defining Christianity itself. A section devoted to outlining “Christian beliefs” uses some broader sources, such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church and statements from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, but it also initially cites G.K. Chesterton, a Catholic Christian apologist popular in conservative Catholic circles. The section and another immediately following then cite a series of prominent evangelical Christian voices, such as the late pastor Timothy Keller, theologian John Piper, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler and commentator Allie Beth Stuckey. The report’s authors also quote Scripture exclusively using the English Standard Version of the Bible, a translation first published in 2001 and created by “more than 100 leading evangelical scholars and pastors,” according to the translation’s website.

White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers did not directly respond to questions about the criticisms of the report, instead reaffirming the authors’ overall conclusions.

“The Biden Administration weaponized the full weight of the federal government against people of faith, specifically Christians — this is the second report that reinforces that with real examples,” the spokesperson said. “There has never been a bigger champion for Christians than President Trump, and his track record proves it: he has proudly defended and expanded our religious rights, pardoned pro-life activists, stopped the chemical mutilation of our nation’s children, and protected parents’ rights.”

But on the press call, Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons of Interfaith Alliance, which is also suing the administration over the makeup of the president’s religious liberty commission, noted that a growing number of Christian groups and other religious organizations, as well as individual faith leaders, have accused the Trump administration of violating their rights. Dozens of religious groups — including entire Christian denominations — have signed on to four separate lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s decision to rescind an internal policy that discouraged immigration raids at houses of worship. And clergy in Illinois and California have filed legal complaints after federal agents were filmed shooting faith leaders with pepper balls and pepper rounds as they were protesting Trump’s immigration policies.

In addition, priests, nuns and faith groups have filed two separate lawsuits demanding the administration allow clergy to have more access to detainees; more than a hundred faith leaders have been arrested protesting Trump’s policies since he was inaugurated; and the president has repeatedly sparred with Catholic leaders who have been critical of him — including Pope Leo.

“The greatest threat to Christians exercising our religious liberty in the United States today is the Trump administration itself,” Graves-Fitzsimmons said.

The task force is slated to produce another report in 2027.

(RNS) — I had weird reading habits when I was a kid.

For one thing, no one ever told me that there were certain books that boys should read, and certain books that girls should read, and that there was a mechitza (a barrier in a traditional synagogue that separates the sexes) between the two of them.

What did I know? That was how I came to devour the entire “Harriet the Spy” series.

Because, well, I liked spies.

And then, there was Judy Blume, born Judith Sussman, in 1938.

Judy Blume is one of the most important Jewish writers of the 20th century.

Judy Blume? The lady who wrote about training bras and embarrassing gym classes?

Yes, that Judy Blume. OK, she’s not Philip Roth or Saul Bellow or Cynthia Ozick. And, yes, the “serious” literary establishment never really invited her into their club.

They might have been wrong.

Mark Oppenheimer has just published the definitive biography of Blume: “Judy Blume: A Life.” As I read the biography, and as I reflected on my podcast interview with Mark, I kept thinking: Someone needs to make the Jewish case for Judy Blume.

That would be me. 

Consider “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”

That book first appeared in 1970, and it did something quietly revolutionary. It went into areas that the literature of my teen years would never have entered (and certainly not for boys): Margaret worries about puberty, friendships and popularity. More than 50 years after its publication, it’s one of the most controversial and beloved young adult novels ever written. 

On one level, the book is about a young girl going through puberty. But it is also about the complexities of Jewish identity. Margaret Simon is a child of an interfaith marriage — Jewish father, Christian mother — who must navigate the landscape of religious identity.

But go back to the title of the book. I’m a sucker for anyone calling out to God.

Margaret embodies the way that Jews speak to God — direct, demanding, intimate and not a little bit combative — the style of the Psalmist, Job, Hasidic rabbis and Tevye.

That is Jewish spirituality in its most ancient form.

And, in fact, Judy Blume wrote about Margaret at a significant historical moment. This was 1970 — exactly 20 years after Jewish families had started moving to the suburbs, creating and joining synagogues and living in an Eisenhower-induced spiritual hibernation. By 1970, that was starting to change. It was precisely when American Jews were beginning to ask the same questions as Margaret: Who are we? What do we believe?

So, yes: sociology giving way to theology.

But, here is something else that was deeply, profoundly Jewish about Judy Blume.

Judaism believes that one of God’s names is emet — truth. Emet — which consists of aleph, the first letter; mem, the middle letter; and tav, the last letter — an all-compassing truth.

Judy Blume — no less than Philip Roth, but in her own way — told the truth: about bodies, divorce, the desperate longing to be normal and to fit in.

And yes, she told the truth — and in her way, no less profoundly than some of the great theologians of our time — about the God who is simultaneously absent and present.

And because of all that, Judy Blume did what any serious author might long to do: to help the reader not only to love the book, and to love literature, but to find themselves in its words. That is what distinguishes a classic: You don’t read that book; that book reads you.

And, the third big Jewish thing about Judy Blume.

For centuries, Jews lived under the watchful eyes of censors. Sometimes, they were our enemies, who looked at our sacred literature, and sometimes, as with the Talmud in the Middle Ages, consigned our words to the flames. Sometimes, Jews themselves were the censors: angry at that which deviated from the truth, as they knew it, or fearful that Jewish words would provoke persecution, or worse.

Which brings us to American children’s literature, circa mid 1900s. If you were an author, you lived under the gaze of publishers who wanted to sanitize your prose; school boards who wanted to censor your prose; and anxious parents who worried about your prose. Everyone would have preferred to promote a cheerful unreality.

That is how Judy Blume came to be a candidate for the prize to be the most-banned author in America. A secular Jewish woman from New Jersey became a “Joan of Arc” of the First Amendment. She became a great defender of intellectual freedom in a country that keeps trying to decide what its children should and should not be allowed to know. She worked tirelessly with the National Coalition Against Censorship, fighting on behalf of teachers and librarians who hold the line against those who would rather children remain “innocent.” Margaret came with a warning sticker — that parents might “wish to read it before your child does.”

Her book “Forever” appeared in 1975. It was, pointedly, a book for adults. But, it talked openly about teenage sexuality. Libraries banned it, schools removed it and parents protested. Judy understood that the pushback was rooted in fear. She became one of the leading defenders of intellectual freedom and the right of young people to read honestly about their own lives.

This was profoundly Jewish. We are the people who democratized learning and literacy precisely because we believed that ignorance, not knowledge, was dangerous. Judy Blume understood this not because she was a Jewish activist, but because she was a Jewish writer.

Even more than she might have even realized.

Margaret Simon is still out there asking her questions. She’s asking them in schools where books are being pulled from shelves. She’s asking them in families where religion has become a battleground and identity a burden. She’s asking them in the hearts of young people who feel like nobody — not their parents, not their teachers, not their rabbis — will tell them the truth about what it means to be alive in this messy, complicated, beautiful world.

People are still asking, and they will forever ask: “Are you there, God? It’s me (fill in your own name here).”

For as long as people ask that question, Judy Blume will be there.