Rap Sheet
Links on R&P from around the web
Brothers Get a Second Chance
posted on May 29, 2012At Commentary, Alana Goodman writes a moving Memorial Day post chronicling the sacrifices that many American soldiers who survive war continue to make long after leaving the battlefields. Goodman tells the story of two brothers, Army Specialists John and James Thorne, whom she met at a wounded warriors event in Las Vegas. After stepping on an IED during a foot patrol in Kandahar, Afghanistan, James ended up in an Army hospital in Germany. John visited his brother there. But given only a 35 percent chance of living, James, who lost his leg and was suffering from a mild traumatic brain injury, wasn’t expected to make it home. James did survive and was awarded a Purple Heart. “But his brother, John, was appalled by the medal,” writes Goodman. “’For me, he deserves so much more than a Purple Heart,’ he said. ‘I started looking at it, and I thought, man, this isn’t worth it.’”
A Campaign Pitch Rekindles the Question: Just What Is Liberation Theology?
posted on May 29, 2012At The New York Times, Religion & Politics contributor, Mark Oppenheimer writes that four years after the sermons of Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah A. Wright, became an issue in the 2008 presidential campaign, “conservatives are still ridiculing liberation theology.” Glenn Beck has recently said that the black liberation theology that Wright preached is a “theological tradition based in hate, intolerance and racial black nationalism.” And just last week, Texas billionaire, Joe Ricketts, was reportedly considering financing an advertising campaign to attack Obama for his relationship with Wright. Yet according to Oppenheimer, conservatives like Beck and Ricketts, along “with clueless pundits and incurious journalists,” fail to understand the basic message of liberation theology. “Contrary to the simplifications of the past four years,” writes Oppenheimer, “liberation theology, which has become hugely influential, teaches not hate, nor anti-Americanism, but a renewed focus on the poor and the suffering, as embodied by Jesus.”
N.J. AG: NYPD Did No Wrong in Secretly Surveilling N.J. Muslims
posted on May 29, 2012Religion News Service’s Ted Sherman reports on New Jersey Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa’s announcement last week that his office had found that the New York Police Department did not violate the state’s civil or criminal laws when it secretly surveilled Muslim businesses and mosques in New Jersey. Sherman writes that leaders in New Jersey’s Muslim community, on hand in Trenton for a public briefing on the three-month long probe, “reacted to the findings with anger and disappointment. ‘We thought the AG was on our side,’ said Aref Assaf, president of the American Arab Forum, who called the revelations at the meeting ‘stunning and offensive. … I was ready to walk out.'”
Just Doing His Job Is Catholic Official’s Defense
posted on May 29, 2012NPR’s Barbara Bradley Hagerty reports on the unprecedented clergy sex-abuse trial taking place in Philadelphia. A Catholic priest, James Brennan, stands accused of attempting to rape a minor. But it is the trial’s second defendant, Monsignor William Lynn, who has garnered the most attention. Hagerty writes that Lynn is the “first high-level Catholic official to be criminally prosecuted—not for abusing minors himself, but for failing to protect children from predator priests.”
Egyptian Election Results Present ‘Nightmare Scenario’
posted on May 29, 2012At The Guardian (UK), Ian Black writes that following the results of the first round of its landmark presidential elections, Egypt “looks set for weeks of tension and uncertainty.” Since no candidate received a majority of the votes, the two top vote-getters, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, and Ahmed Shafiq, Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister, will square off in a second round, set for June 16 and 17. Many participants in last year’s Egyptian revolution, which led to the overthrow of the Mubarak regime, are disappointed in the results. One called the outcome “a disaster.” He continued, “Shafiq will try to restore the Mubarak regime. And my trust of the Brotherhood is minus zero.”
What Tony Blair Can Teach Mitt Romney About Faith in Politics
posted on May 25, 2012Commentators have been clamoring for Mitt Romney to openly discuss his faith, a topic Romney has successfully avoided in “all but the most general terms,” writes Yair Rosenberg at The Atlantic. Yet Rosenberg lifts up another political example where keeping silent about faith worked: Tony Blair. A deeply devout man, Blair “never told the whole truth to the electorate about his personal convictions—for reasons of political expediency.” Being Catholic in a place with a “precarious position of Catholicism,” Blair’s silence on his own faith proved invaluable. Drawing parallels between the two, Rosenberg implores Romney to emulate Tony Blair.
Why Americans Are Becoming More Pro-life
posted on May 25, 2012Writing for The Washington Post, Ashley McGuire, editor-in-chief of AltCatholicah, reports, “Gallup is now recording the lowest level of self-described pro-choicers in its history of tracking the abortion issue.” McGuire asserts the pro-life position is no longer “an issue that riled up religious zealots in the Bible Belt,” but a position people defend “not just for religious reasons.” She concludes: “But we are winning. And our cause is life.
“Whom Shall I Fear?” The Incomparable Testimony of Civil Rights Icon Rep. John Lewis
posted on May 25, 2012Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, senior religion editor at The Huffington Post, interviews Congressman John Lewis, “one of the last living leader[s] of the civil rights movement,” on his new book Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change. Lewis reflects on his time during the civil rights movement and “the powerful role that faith, nonviolence and reconciliation played.” Lewis just hopes to “point people towards another way of doing things.”
Arizona’s Savvy Israel Ally
posted on May 25, 2012Backed by many veteran Democrats, Andrei Cherny stands poised to win “Arizona’s brand-new 9th Congressional District,” which was formed during redistricting from the 2010 census. Marc Tracy at Tablet calls Cherny “the 21st-century version of all-American,” a man who went to Harvard and “grew up in that ultimate suburbia of the modern American imagination, the San Fernando Valley.” In a congressional primary race where he and his competitors are nearly identical on policy positions, Cherny distinguishes himself on the issue of Israel. Cherny states that “Israel’s security and America’s security are inextricably lined,” a view he hopes will propel him to victory in the primary.
GOP Finds a Frontwoman
posted on May 25, 2012At Salon, Irin Carmon profiles Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers, “a mild-mannered congresswoman from eastern Washington.” Carmon sees McMorris Rodgers’ rise to prominence in the G.O.P. as a gambit to solve their “struggle to find a feminine voice.” McMorris Rodgers, writes Carmon, is the “apparent aspirant to be [Romney’s] running mate” and a new “defender on women’s issues” for Republicans.