Culture

Questions of Masculinity in Force Majeure

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Force Majeure forces us to face an uncomfortable set of questions. Can desire be reconfigured so that we can have sex and domesticity with equal partners in the home? Can women demand equality and masculinity, which so many self-identified feminists seems to command without recognizing serious tensions? A full feminist agenda must find a way to defuse common libidinal impulses if the vision of sex equality is going to be rendered friendly to marriage and domestic life.

Environment

The Politics of Extinction: An Introduction to the Most Beautiful Animal You’ll Never See

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Local information buttressed Robichaud’s sense of the creature’s almost unearthly serenity. A Buddhist monk from a nearby temple told him that people in the area had dubbed the creature “sat souphap,” which translates roughly as “the polite animal.” Today, no one knows if the clock of extinction for the species stands at two minutes before midnight or two minutes after.

Humanism

Religious Humanism: What Was Old is New Again

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The wholesale abandonment of organized religions by Millennials does not mean that the generation has abandoned social commitments. As many as seven in ten consider themselves social activists. Not merely socially aware—social activists. They are a generation that puts their values into action.

Culture

Al Rosen Banged Homers and Battled Anti-Semitism

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Al Rosen, a slugging Jewish third baseman for the Cleveland Indians and winner of the American League’s Most Valuable Player award in 1953, died Saturday at age 91. Rosen was an outstanding player and executive and a source of pride for many postwar Jews enthralled by our national pastime at a time when they still faced hostility and barriers in American society.

Politics & Society

How Our Church Freed Its Members from Predatory Lending

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Today’s society is filled with greed, predatory lenders, exorbitant interest rates, low wages, poor job security, and unfair tax burdens. But the Holy Scriptures show that God’s community was a community of compassion, sharing and forgiving. It is in this spirit that the Jubilee Assistance Fund started at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church, helping dozens of in-need families with affordable microloans.

Empathy

Wielding Truth and Nonviolence in the Fight of Our Lives

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The fact that the conservative (so-called) narrative is dead wrong matters not a bit if there is no alternative. Some would have us believe that there simply is no coherent progressive narrative: we’re just on the wrong side of reality. Though this may be true, the fact is that this implicit foundation story of our civilization is dead wrong, and does not admit of progressive reasoning, or progressive values.

Gender and Sexuality

Farmworker Women Speaking Up on Domestic Violence

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Unresolved childhood trauma is commonly found among women who later experience domestic violence as adults, says Aurora Silva, a marriage and family therapist who has been working with victims and offenders in the Coachella Valley for 27 years. “Women in the fields have usually been treated as less than or unworthy since childhood, and have difficulty believing they have rights or that they are worthy,” she says.