Rap Sheet
Links on R&P from around the web
Apocalypse Not: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Worry About End Times
posted on August 21, 2012Writing for Wired, Matt Ridley reviews end-of-the-world claims seen in the past 50 years. Noting that “[r]eligious zealots hardly have a monopoly on apocalyptic thinking,” Ridley examines the variety of apocalyptic claims, including those asserting that chemicals or diseases will end humanity. “No matter how often apocalyptic predictions fail to come true, another one soon arrives.”
Conservatives See Family Research Council Attack as More Evidence of What They Call War on Religion
posted on August 21, 2012After a gunman shot a security guard at the Family Research Council last week, conservative Christians are calling the attack another incident in the “war on religion,” Dan Gilgoff reports for CNN. The American Family Associated states, “The left’s war on religion and Christianity has now gone from symbolic to literal.” In response, the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way says, “Religious Right groups have long equated any criticism of their positions or tactics as attacks on their freedom of speech and religion.”
No Jewish People Without Israel
posted on August 21, 2012At Tablet, Daniel Gordis writes on the decline of Zionism in young American Jews, taken from his upcoming book, The Promise of Israel: Why Its Seemingly Greatest Weakness Is Actually Its Greatest Strength. According to Gordis, “Young Jews today, discouraged by Israeli policies that they cannot abide, either explicitly or tacitly join those who condemn the Jewish State.” Gordis asks, “Without Israel, what would remain to make Jewishness anything more than some anemic form of ethnic memory long since eroded?”
Why Race Is Still a Problem for Mormons
posted on August 20, 2012At The New York Times, John Turner takes on racism in the history of Mormonism. Until a 1978 revelation reversed the policy, for most of the LDS Church’s history, people of African descent were excluded from full church membership. Turner writes, “a fuller confrontation with the past would serve the church’s interests. Journalists frequently ask prominent Mormons like Mr. Romney and … [congressional candidate, and black Mormon Mia] Love about the priesthood ban … Statements by prior church presidents and apostles provide fodder for those Latter-day Saints—if small in number—who adhere to racist notions.”
Sikhs Deserve the Dignity of Being a Statistic
posted on August 20, 2012“[A]s the White House, U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation express their commitment to protecting Sikh Americans in response to the massacre [at Oak Creek], there is one glaring problem with how the federal government monitors hate crimes against Sikhs in America: It doesn’t,” writes Valarie Kaur for The Washington Post. Kaur notes that the FBI does not track hate crimes specifically targeted against Sikhs “because it assumes that all hate crimes against Sikhs are motivated by anti-Muslim bias.”
Syria’s Assad Makes Rare Public Appearance
posted on August 20, 2012Zeina Karam reports for the Associated Press that embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad made a rare public appearance on Sunday. At a Damascus mosque, Assad attended prayer services marking the start of “Eid al-Fitr, the three-day holiday that ends the holy fasting month of Ramadan.” “Ramadan in Syria was particularly deadly this year as the civil war reached the two largest cities, Damascus and Aleppo,” writes Karam.
Hank Williams Jr: ‘We’ve got a Muslim president who … hates the U.S.’
posted on August 20, 2012“Are you ready for some political commentary?” asks The Des Moines Register’s Joe Lawler. During a performance at the Iowa State Fair, Hank Williams Jr. told a crowd of some 8,500, “We’ve got a Muslim president who hates farming, hates the military, hates the U.S. and we hate him!” Lawler notes, “Criticism of President Barack Obama last year led to ESPN dropping Williams’ ‘Monday Night Football’ theme song after 22 years.”
Read at The Des Moines Register
An American Tragedy
posted on August 20, 2012At The New Yorker, Naunihal Singh writes, “The media has treated the shootings in Oak Creek very differently from those that happened just two weeks earlier in Aurora.” Singh notes that while American television and print media provided extensive coverage of the shootings in Colorado, the massacre at a Sikh house of worship outside of Milwaukee drew far less attention. “As a result, the massacre in Oak Creek is treated as a tragedy for Sikhs in America rather than a tragedy for all Americans,” Singh writes.
Man Charged in Shooting at Family Research Council HQ
posted on August 20, 2012“A man who volunteered at a gay community center had a backpack full of Chick-fil-A sandwiches and a box of ammunition when he said ‘I don’t like your politics’ and shot a security guard at the headquarters” of the Family Research Council (FRC), reports Eric Tucker and Ben Nuckols for the Associated Press. FRC’s president, Tony Perkins said that Floyd Lee Corkins II, who has been charged in the shooting of the guard at the conservative Christian lobbying organization’s offices, “was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center that have been reckless in labeling organization hate groups because they disagree with them on public policy.”
I Miss the Old Left at Prayer
posted on August 20, 2012The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher praises “the Religious Left we used to have in this country, not the gaggle of twee narcissists we too often have now.” Dreher’s chief example of today’s narcissistic Religious Left is the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an organization that Dreher believes “is not an organization that is interested in honest self-examination, much less following Jesus Christ in the Catholic faith.” “The tragedy of the LCWR is also the tragedy of religious liberalism,” writes Dreher, “which, having severed itself from a creative but genuine commitment to the Bible and the Christian tradition, finds itself dissipating into nothingness.”
Read at The American Conservative