Rap Sheet
Links on R&P from around the web
Radicalism Prompts Warnings in France
posted on October 10, 2012Maïa de la Baume reports for The New York Times about the increasing tension between French Muslims and Jews. There have been recent attacks targeting Jews and, last month, a police officer shot a Muslim man who attacked a Jewish market. Religious and political leaders in France are hoping to avoid further conflict. “Nothing will be tolerated; nothing should happen,” President François Hollande warned. “Any act, any remark will be prosecuted with the greatest firmness.”
Report: US Protestants Lose Majority Status
posted on October 10, 2012Rachel Zoll of the Associated Press reports on a recently released Pew study, which found that for the first time, the United States does not have a Protestant majority. Also, 20 percent of adults say they have no religion, showing a 5 percent increase in the last five years. “Part of what’s going on here is that the stigma associated with not being part of any religious community has declined,” says John Green, a specialist in religion and politics at the University of Akron.
GOP: Gays Out of the Party
posted on October 10, 2012At Salon, Jonathan Rauch analyzes the partisan change in the gay vote. He is surprised that “every election year since at least 1996, about a quarter of gay voters…have pulled for the Republican presidential candidate.” However, with President Obama’s support of gay marriage and Mitt Romney’s “throwback” policies, “for the first time, [there is] no spectrum of dreary grays. The colors are black and white.”
Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong
posted on October 10, 2012At Religion Dispatches, Vyckie Garrison writes about her daughter’s viewing of 2016: Obama’s America, a conservation documentary, at her Salvation Army church’s “Teen Night.” Regarding a conversation Garrison had with the pastors who decided to show the movie, she reflects “the larger point I took away from the discussion was more about my perspective as a former card-carrying member of the Christian Right, and how our different worldviews shaped our ability to see the teen movie trip as a problem. From inside the ‘hedge of protection’—a Christian ghetto undisturbed by competing viewpoints—the pastors could not fathom 2016: Obama’s America as blatant propaganda.”
What Theodor Adorno Wrought
posted on October 10, 2012Tablet‘s Liel Leibovitz writes about Berkeley professor Judith Butler, the 2012 recipient of the Adorno Prize. “Whatever her merits as a thinker and a scholar—and those should be debated not by dogmatic brawlers but by her peers and by those who take the trouble to carefully consider her work—Butler is very much an adherent of Adorno’s method,” Leibovitz writes. Butler’s most recent book, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism focuses on the idea of binationalism. “It may be that binationalism is an impossibility, but that mere fact does not suffice as a reason to be against it,” Butler writes of Jews’ relationship with Israel.
Florida Group Working to Pass Amendment Allowing Funding for Religious Programs
posted on October 10, 2012Michael Gryboski reports for The Christian Post about Amendment 8, which will appear on the ballot in Florida on Election Day. If passed, the amendment would allow for state funding of religious programs. Opponents believe the measure would erode church-state separation. But Jim Frankowiak, campaign manager for the “Say Yes on 8” group, says, “Floridians deserve the opportunity to benefit from programs with a secular purpose run by religious entities.”
Man Arrested in Plot to Blow up 48 Churches in Oklahoma
posted on October 10, 2012At CNN, Joe Sutton reports on the arrest of a man who planned to blow up 48 churches in Oklahoma. Police found documents containing a list of churches and a hand-drawn map in his hotel room. “Authorities also recovered 50 brown glass bottles with cloth wicks attached by duct tape, a funnel and a 5-gallon gasoline can,” Sutton writes.
U.S. Muslims Squarely in the Mainstream
posted on October 9, 2012Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the leader of the Cordoba Initiative, writes for the Tampa Bay Times about the integration of U.S. Muslims into American society. Rauf believes that, despite stereotypes about Muslims as violent and fundamentally anti-democratic, “in America, Muslims are creating a new form of Islam. Divisions between Shiite and Sunni that plague their home countries don’t exist among American Muslims. Freedom of expression has seeped into American Muslim mainstream thought.”
Most and Least Christian Cities in America
posted on October 9, 2012At The Huffington Post, Jahnabi Barooah analyzes the recently released 2010 U.S. Religious Census, which “provides detailed county by county information on congregations, members, adherents and attendance.” Salt Lake City was found to be the most Christian metropolitan area with a population greater than one million. “In general, cities where more than 55 percent identified as a Christian adherent were in the deep South and in the Midwest,” Barooah writes.
Archdiocese of Vienna to Undergo Radical Parish Reform
posted on October 9, 2012Christa Pongratz-Lippitt reports for National Catholic Reporter from Vienna, Austria, where that city’s archdiocese will soon undergo massive consolidations, reducing its 660 parishes to 150 over the next 10 years. Pongrantz-Lippitt writes that “the main reason for these measures were the increasing shortage of priests and the steady decline in the number of Catholics.” However, a recent poll shows that 86 percent of Austrians see this consolidation as “problematic.”
Read at The National Catholic Reporter