Rap Sheet
Links on R&P from around the web
Politics on the Pulpit
posted on October 23, 2012Yair Rosenberg writes for Tablet about American rabbis’ differing views on the relationship between politics and the rabbinic pulpit. Some rabbis, including Rabbi Andy Bachman of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, say “politics definitely has a place in the pulpit … one can draw a connection in Torah to the living wage, to gaps between rich and poor.” Other rabbis, including Asher Lopatin, rabbi of a modern orthodox synagogue in Chicago, says “the pulpit is a very holy place and should really be used to get people to think and to grow, not to push a particular agenda.”
The Tampa Bay Tribune: Mitt Romney For President
posted on October 23, 2012The Tampa Bay Tribune has endorsed Mitt Romney for President because, the editors writes, he “understands that the nation’s prosperity is driven by free enterprise, not government” while Barack Obama has “pushed America toward a European-style social democracy.” The Tribune references Romney’s successful rescue of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and his bipartisan efforts in Massachusetts as to show that Americans can expect that “Romney would come to office ready to put the country on the course to more freedom and prosperity.”
The Salt Lake Tribune: Too Many Mitts
posted on October 23, 2012The Salt Lake Tribune has endorsed Barack Obama for president. “[A]gainst tough odds, [President Obama] has guided the country through catastrophe and set a course that, while rocky, is pointing toward a brighter day,” writes The Tribune’s editorial board. Mitt Romney, who helped rescue the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics from scandal, tends to be popular in heavily Mormon, Republican, and business-friendly Utah. However, The Tribune asserts that Romney has attempted to appeal to “vastly diverse audiences with words, any words, they would trade their votes to hear.”
Read at The Salt Lake City Tribune
George S. McGovern, 1972 Presidential Candidate, Dies at 90
posted on October 22, 2012At The Boston Globe, Mark Feeney describes former Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, who died Sunday, as a champion of liberal Democratic causes, remembered especially for his opposition to America’s involvement in Vietnam. Yet Feeney writes, “the son of a Methodist minister … McGovern’s leftism is easily exaggerated.” After all, Feeney notes, “[t]he most popular Democrat of the past 40 years, President Bill Clinton, helped run the McGovern presidential campaign in Texas.”
To Some, Obama Is the ‘Wrong’ Kind of Christian
posted on October 22, 2012CNN’s John Blake reports on President Obama’s role in changing Americans’ understanding of the racial and religious identity of the American presidency. “Historians may remember Obama as the nation’s first black president, but he’s also a religious pioneer,” Blake writes. “He’s not only changed people’s perception of who can be president, some scholars and pastors say, but he’s also expanding the definition of who can be a Christian by challenging the religious right’s domination of the national stage.”
Laughing in His Private jet: The Pastor Accused of Exploiting British Worshippers
posted on October 22, 2012At The Daily Mail Online, George Arbuthnot reports about the growing list of accusations that David Oyedepo, the Nigerian-born leader of the Winners’ Chapel Movement, has financially exploited and physically abused members of his rapidly expanding religious community in Britain. “Dubbed ‘The Pastorpreneur,’ he was accused earlier this year of slapping the face of a young woman he said was a witch,” writes Arbuthnot. “The assault case was struck out but is being appealed.”
The 10 Most Islamophobic Moments in the 2012 Elections
posted on October 22, 2012At Salon, Jillian Rayfield and Alex Seitz-Wald highlight moments during this election season when they believe leaders on the political right exploited anti-Islamic sentiments in America. “According to the right-wing fringe, racism is dead—but long live Islamophobia, for there is jihad in every mosque and we must be vigilant,” write Rayfield and Seitz-Wald.
Pope Canonizes Seven Saints
posted on October 22, 2012Rachel Donadio reports for The New York Times that Pope Benedict XVI has canonized seven new saints, including the Catholic Church’s first Native American saint. The elevation of Kateri Tekewitha, known to many as the “Lily of the Mohawks,” is not without controversy. Some have called the act “an implicit offense to Native American traditions,” writes Donadio. But Eleanor Smith, who has both Choctaw and Navajo heritage, believes that Kateri represents “a combination of your Catholic and your native traditions blending together.”
How Iran Plays the U.S.
posted on October 22, 2012At Commentary Sohrab Ahmari writes that the Obama administration’s reconciliatory efforts toward the Iranian people, but not necessarily the Iranian government, is based on the “faith in the power of the president’s words to transcend the limits not only of blood and ideology, but also of history.” Yet Ahmari writes, “what looks to the president and his supporters like the sloughing off of a cumbersome past is viewed by the theocrats of Tehran as little more than the latest chapter in a three-decade-long, bipartisan sequence of American capitulation.”
For President, a Complex Calculus of Race and Politics
posted on October 22, 2012The New York Times’ Jodi Kantor analyzes President Obama’s balancing act between reaching out to a key part of his political base–African Americans–and not being seen simply as America’s first black president. Kantor writes that Obama seems to accomplish this feat with ease, yet “[this] ease belies the anxiety and emotion that advisers say he brings to his historic position: pride in what he has accomplished, determination to acquit himself well and intense frustration. Mr. Obama is balancing two deeply held impulses: a belief in universal politics not based on race and an embrace of black life and its challenges.”