Speaking to Jennifer Herszman Capraru in Toronto, Canada, it is impossible not to be warmed by her passion for the work she does and the people it brings her close to. Born in Montréal, Québec, Capraru is the daughter of a mother who was a child survivor of the Holocaust, and a Romanian father, both of whom emphasized the importance of human rights and provided Capraru with the gift of creativity that she exercises with such love and intelligence today.

As an adult, Capraru received an MA in Theatre Studies from York University and also trained as a director in Germany; it has been through the medium of theatre and directing that she has always seen the opportunity to create a whole world – a world where real change could transpire. In her role as Artistic Director of the award-winning Theatre Asylum in Toronto, Capraru premieres thought-provoking plays by and about women and humanist issues. In 2006, Capraru was asked to be 2nd Script Supervisor on the Canadian feature film Shake Hands with the Devil about the experiences of Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire during his tenure as UN Force Commander during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. As Capraru explains, she went to Rwanda at the last minute, and without expectations, but following her work on the film, she found herself prompted to accept an invitation to give script development workshops for the Rwanda Cinema Centre. One connection led to another, and Capraru tumbled into directing for the National University of Rwanda, UNICEF, Kivu Writers and Mashirika arts. In Rwanda, years after the genocide, Capraru saw fertile ground for creativity and for transformation. There, alongside her Rwandan colleagues, she founded ISÔKO, The Theatre Source, a theatre company that blossomed from an inspired seedling of an idea to a full-fledged theatre company that tours, performs in three languages, and has has been the origin of many lengthy discussions on subjects such as genocide and loss as well as transformation and healing. In the Rwandan context, Capraru eloquently describes her view of “theatre as ritual, ritual as catharsis, catharsis as healing, and healing as hope”.

Around the country, people will walk with their neighbors in remembrance of 9/11. Photo by Gordon Bell/Flickr

As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, many of us are wondering how best to honor the many victims of that tragedy and its aftermath in a way that does not yield to the militarism, chauvinism, and Islamophobia that have often been linked to or justified as appropriate responses to 9/11. So here is a note we got from one spiritual progressive, Bart Campolo, whose ideas are closely aligned with the NSP:

Here in Cincinnati, my wife Marty’s answer is inviting some of our friends to join us on a walk with some Muslim and Jewish families she invited by simply calling their congregations. She got the idea from me and my friends at Abraham’s Path, who are sponsoring www.911walks.org to help people find or pull together their own 9/11 Walks all over the USA and around the world. The goal of these walks is simple: To help people honor all the victims of 9/11 by walking and talking kindly with neighbors and strangers, in celebration of our common humanity and in defiance of fear, misunderstanding and hatred.

The Western Wall is busy during Tish B'av.

1. “What are you doing here?”

On the last night of Ramadan – the month-long fast observed by Muslims – I pass through the Jordanian-Israeli border at a crossing called the Allenby Bridge. This is the only border crossing open to West Bank Palestinians. It is the only way Palestinians can come and go from their country. This border is patrolled and controlled by Israel.

I am here to renew my visa. But most of the crowd is made up of Palestinian families wheeling enormous suitcases and coming to Palestine for the four-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr that immediately follows Ramadan.

At the border, I’m quickly pulled aside by Israeli security. Because I live in the Palestinian West Bank and write – for this website and others – about Palestinians, Israelis, the conflict and the occupation, I’m regularly questioned.

Though I was surprised the first few times, now I’m used to this, to being pulled aside, interrogated and asked to wait.

“Where are you going?” one Israeli official asks me. “Why are you coming to Israel?”

“I’m going to Ramallah,” I say. “That’s where I live.”

He nods and squints at my passport.

“Samuel?” he frowns. “Are you Jewish?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say. “I am.”

He pauses.

“What are you doing here?”

The official leafs through my passport and makes a quick phone call. An armed guard appears behind me. “We’re going to ask you some questions.” The guard presses me forward, through a set of doors and to a row of chairs. He doesn’t say anything. I take a seat next to a Palestinian father and his two daughters, who have also been set aside for questioning.

The family next to me – and most of the crowd here – are Muslims. They’re fasting, waiting for sundown to eat, drink and smoke their cigarettes. There are no windows inside and no one can see the sun set, but people glance at their watches. One man unpacks a woven prayer mat and slings it over his shoulder. It’s almost time to pray.

Anyone driving through Madison, Wisconsin in April and May would have recognized those nine beeps of car and truck horns, ubiquitous throughout the city: This is what democracy looks like!

Wisconsin State Capitol

The mainstream media focused on unions, of course, public and private, coming together in unexpected solidarity, but not everyone realized that spiritual and religious groups played a significant role as well. And here’s something that will challenge your prejudices: evangelical groups were among them. Together with the religious organizations that form the usual progressive “suspects,” they chanted their own variation on a theme: This is what religion looks like.

Bruno, Hawkings, Dowling at WCSA

Houses of Worship: the new “public” spaces for political action?

Churches, temples, synagogues, and mosques have an ambivalent history with social justice, but a panel at the Working Class Studies conference in Chicago this June offered evidence of deep and innovative support for justice movements, worker rights in particular, which really inspired me. Not everyone knows, for example, that during the Wisconsin Uprising, a Shabbat service was held in the Capitol with Hebrew songs in which Rabbi Renee Bauer played a key role. Or that four hundred clergy signed a statement of support, and one hundred fifty of them marched in the protests. Robert Bruno, author of Justified by Work, moderated an impressive panel consisting of Father Larry Dowling, a Catholic priest from a 50 percent unemployed, 55 percent ex-incarcerated parish, and Rev. C. J., . Hawking, Executive Director of Arise Chicago, and Minister of Social Justice at the Euclid Avenue Methodist Church. Unfortunately, Rabbi Brant Rosen, leader of an activist Jewish Reconstructionist congregation, and a Muslim Imam were not able to come.

As if we haven’t had enough unexpected twists in the Oslo tragedy, a fascinating op-ed on Islamophobia by none other than Abe Foxman (“Norwegian attacks stem from a new ideological hate – The Washington Post“) of the Anti-Defamation League appeared in yesterday’s Washington Post.

I don’t often find myself agreeing with Mr. Foxman on issues involving Muslims – though I certainly share his concerns about the use of anti-Semitism as a political tool by Muslim extremists — but I think he is to be applauded for this principled and thoughtful warning about the growing threat of Islamophobia. Most interestingly, Foxman explitly explores the profound parallels between this new hate and the age-old “Socialism of Fools” that the ADL exists to fight.

Abe Foxman: “Norwegian attacks stem from a new ideological hate” – The Washington Post

One of the global architects of terror responsible for inspiring the 9-11 tragedy was finally killed this week. Osama bin Laden, who violently hijacked the faith of 1.5 billion to rationalize his perverse criminal actions, is permanently seared into our collective consciousness as the 21st century boogeyman.

Sadly, in the eyes of many Americans, bin Laden has also become one of the most visible icons of “Islam” alongside Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X. Furthermore, 10 years after the 9-11 tragedy, nearly 60% of Americans say they don’t know a Muslim, and the favorability rating of Islam is at its lowest ebb.

Muslim Americans, like much of the world, still cannot escape the overbearing shadow of the fallen towers. There is a permanent fork in the timeline of the Muslim American narrative: Pre-911 and Post 9-11.

Pre 9-11, I was another awkward, well intentioned, multi-hyphenated Muslim American with exotic dietary habits who prayed 5 times a day and drank chai instead of alcohol during college.

Post 9-11, I received a special screening in front of my fellow passengers who boarded the plane to North Carolina while observing my Muslim security clearance zoo exhibit.

I felt like smoking a cigarette and spouting a witty barb after my intimate encounter with the TSA.

Cinco de Mayo celebration. Photo: Creative Commons/vpickering.

Crossposted from Colorlines.com

by Roberto Lovato

Back in the late 70′s and 80′s, when most white people didn’t feel safe in predominantly Latino neighborhoods like San Francisco’s Mission district (or inner cities, for that matter), summer started with Cinco de Mayo. Tiny, hyper-local street fairs where Mexican restaurants, crowds of happy, loud brown people and lamb chop-sideburned Santana-wannabe garage bands filled the air with cultural and political electricity. It went largely unnoticed outside of the Latino neighborhood, what used to be called El Barrio.

Cinco de Mayo’s mix – live salsa, mariachi and rock Latino music; sometimes-inspired English and Spanish-language political speeches and volanteando (flyering) – provided the soft cultural cushion for generations of citizens and non-citizens dropped by the American Dream. And none but the cigarette smoking Marxista even knew or spoke about May Day, the International Workers Day rallies that filled cities around the country this past weekend.

Thirty years, millions of mobile devices and a massive wave of migration later, Latinos have largely forgotten the meaning of Cinco de Mayo. There’s still considerable color, music and even some inspiration among attendees at Cinco de Mayo events, but the electricity of the events has been heavily doused by beer promoters trying to capture Latina hearts and minds and by military recruiters desperate for young Latino bodies. With notable exceptions among the more thoughtful Cinco de Mayo organizers around the country, event organizers no longer tell us that we’re celebrating the victory of the badly-equipped, but inspired Mexican guerrilla army that fought and defeated the far better-equipped forces of Napoleon III’s decaying French Empire. Cinco de Mayo’s loss of electricity has itself become a Latino-”American” sign of imperial malaise.

Instead, our electricidad has migrated to Primero de Mayo (May Day). Born in the U.S., after immigrant and other workers protesting in Chicago’s Haymarket Square were killed by police in the late 19th century, Primero de Mayo was, until very recently, a largely forgotten commie affair. Today, Latino workers, specifically immigrant workers, march against the militarized immigration forces of President Obama, and these workers are powering May Day back to relevance in a decaying empire that tries to border itself off from the rest of the working world by celebrating “Labor Day” in September. The day connects us to people marching throughout the hemisphere and the entire world; it previews and makes palpable the bottom-up borderlessness that is the only salvation for this extremely troubled planet.

A few days ago, I came across a wonderful op-ed by a journalist and Middle East commentator in the Danish newspaper Politiken – which one might call Denmark’s answer to The New York Times – that I think admirably sums up how the last few months’ events in the Middle East have exposed the abject superficiality and thinly-veiled prejudice that often infects Western and especially American MSM analysis of Middle Eastern politics.

For far too long, it’s been customary to dismiss the Arab masses with this offensive, meaningless shorthand — the “Arab Street” — that casts them as mindless herds of animals ever on the verge of violence and in thrall to extremists.

What follows is my (no doubt imperfect) translation of the article in its entirety.

By Carla Sameth

At age 23, my mom was allowed to leave home in the Bronx to go help her sister, my aunt Charlotte, with her new baby in Seattle. But the Jewish guys in Seattle met all the new girls “fresh off the boat” and she was quickly snatched up by my dad. When my mom decided to marry him soon afterwards and stay in Seattle, her father, my Grandpa Sam, put a curse on her saying her children would “scatter across the globe.”

The author's son, Gabe, at a Haitian Refugee Camp in the Dominican Republic (Global Leadership Adventures, 12/2010). See the end of this article for how to win a scholarship to go on one of these programs.

This was strangely prophetic because my siblings and I somehow ended up living in countries as diverse as Israel, France, Sri Lanka, Mexico, and Japan. Like so many other Jewish youth, we also sought out international travel and community service trips as young adults. For me this was combined with a deep interest in Jewish culture abroad and a fascination for those stories involving Jewish families starting in one country with one generation, say Iraq, then the family moving to India and ending up in Berkeley or going from Syria to Argentina to Israel and ending up with names like Yoko Birnbaum, Ester Rabkin or Uri Santos. Clearly the phrase “Wandering Jew” did not apply only to a plant species.

While we were “cursed” (or “blessed”) to wander, also in our destiny was political awareness and activism, sniffing out injustice in the world and giving to the community. The obligation, as a previously oppressed people to fight injustice as opposed to contribute to it, was intrinsically part of the values I grew up with and certainly the brand of Judaism I was exposed to at Habonim Camp – Machaneh Miriam on Gabriola Island in Canada. I was part of a Chavarah heading for Kibbutz and following a set trajectory: camp, leadership-training and then “workshop”– a year on Kibbutz. Learning to “give what you can and take what you need” and the belief in a kind of socialism went hand-in-hand with the protest marches I went on with my parents. I was not surprised, therefore, to find that international programs for high school students, emphasizing community service and leadership training, such as the one we went on this winter break in the Dominican Republic with Global Leadership Adventures (GLA) are heavily attended by Jewish youth.

My son, Gabe and I traveled to the Dominican Republic to assist with rebuilding a home in one of the worst slums in the area and visited a Haitian refugee camp, playing soccer with the kids there.

Mr G.

Meet Mr. G. He’s been teaching high school in Santa Fe for twenty years.

You might ask,”Is that a neck brace he’s wearing?”

Now that you mentioned it, yes. Mr. G. is wearing a neck brace.

This is the story of how, after an excruciating year of teaching, Mr. G. discovered he’d been standing at the blackboard with multiple neck fractures.

And stage 4 cancer.

He kept teaching until he was unable to stand on his feet.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. declared that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” In this struggle for justice, Massachusetts-based artist Pamela Chatterton-Purdy sees godliness made manifest. Godliness is reflected in the actions of individuals who protect the weak from the strong, who maintain innocence in an evil world, or who fight for the dignity of being a human being. The arc is bent through the struggle and sacrifice of innumerable individuals, only some of whom will be named in a place of honor in the pages of history. Chatterton-Purdy has devoted the last seven years to a project called “Icons of the Civil Rights Movement … Connecting the Dots,” that venerates these heroes — both the known and unknown.

MLK - I Have a Dream

To see more of Pamela Chatterton-Purdy’s work, visit the Tikkun Daily Art Gallery and visit the artist’s website.

Demonstration Against Mubarak Government in Cairo (Jan. 25, 2011)

2/1/2011 Note from Dave Belden: we are delighted to see this piece by Rabbi Lerner is prominent on the Al Jazeera English website today (permanent link here).

Ever since the victory over the dictator of Tunisia and the subsequent uprising in Egypt, my email has been flooded with messages from Jews around the world hoping and praying for the victory of the Egyptian people over their cruel Mubarak regime.

Though a small segment of Jews have responded to right-wing voices from Israel that lament the change and fear that a democratic government would bring to power fundamentalist extremists who wish to destroy Israel and who would abrogate the hard-earned treaty that has kept the peace between Egypt and Israel for the last 30 years, the majority of Jews are more excited and hopeful than worried.

by Rosemary H. Hayes

How influential an ancient story can be is demonstrated in the State of Israel’s insistence on its right to Palestinian territory as “promised” by their ancestral god and recorded in the Hebrew scriptures. However, in our time, Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, said the opposing Palestinian claim to its own existential homeland meant that here was hot a case of “right and wrong,” but a case of “two rights.” This was substantiated by the British in 1917 with Lord Balfour’s famous declaration: “His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people … it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

The roots of this drama lie in archaic tales of the Arab and Jewish peoples, descendants of Ishmael and Isaac, sons of the patriarch Abraham. In the shadows behind them stands the archetypal rivalry of brothers, showing us through Cain and Abel the potential enmity hidden in the intimacy of sibling relationship. These stories reflect the pattern of human behavior where, as always, hubris confronts the truth of humility.

Although not an exact analogy to the first Semitic brothers, the twin sons of Isaac, Esau and Jacob, have a story asking to be held alongside the current bitter and bloody Middle Eastern conflict in which our own nation is seriously involved. Perhaps attention to this seminal story could somehow contribute to the desperately needed “roadmap” for resolution of such sensitive history.

Auburn University professor Alan Gribben has just come out with a revised version of Huckleberry Finn from NewSouth Books that replaces the N-word with “slave.”

Wow, the reaction! Typical of many critics is Michael J. Kiskis of Elmira College who says in a newspaper interview, “I don’t think you should change a writer’s text” (So much for translation!) “It changes the tone and intention.” When he teaches the book at the college level, he notes, “We talk about the context” and adds, “It’s not enough to just say ‘well, everybody used this language in the 1880s’.’ That’s not true.”

My reply? There’s theory and there’s practice. And practice at the below-college level is mighty rough.

At the last Tikkun gathering that I attended back in February one of the speakers talked about how Jews and Christians are united in their discomfort about the fact that Jesus was Jewish. So I laughed with everyone else, and have shared this insight with many others since, and still see that I personally love it that he was Jewish, because I feel a sense of connection with him that is rendered more meaningful this way. Which almost begs the question: how would a Jewish woman born and raised in Israel develop a sense of connection with Jesus?

Loving No Matter What

The year was 1991. I was having a fight with a friend during and after a back-packing trip. We were lying on my bed, facing each other, talking, and trying to get to the bottom of what was going on. We weren’t getting very far, though we were getting friendlier than before. Then my friend expressed an entirely new piece I hadn’t heard before: she was upset with me for not protecting myself at all. It drove her crazy, she said, that all through the trip I continued to reach out to her, extended my love and friendship, and tried to connect. I was distraught, to the core. I started crying, I just couldn’t contain my helplessness. I couldn’t fathom how someone could be upset with me for loving, for reaching out. In my agony I cried out that I didn’t want to learn to protect myself. I knew even then, before discovering Nonviolent Communication, that I didn’t want to learn to protect myself. And right there, in the midst of crying, I suddenly sat up, agitated and excited. I understood, intuitively, from the inside out, from within the despair, what Jesus was trying to do: he was trying to love no matter what. I felt an enormous sense of kinship with him. Not because I was anywhere near where I sensed he got to. That didn’t matter. I was on the same path, and I was not the only one. In that moment, without knowing hardly anything about him, I found peace and inspiration in this way of understanding his life.

On Sunday December 5th, Afghan children and a U.S. combat veteran shared their experiences of the war with each other and people across the world. Their stories were heart-breaking, their mutual calls for an end to the war powerful and clear, and their gift to anyone willing to truly listen and learn about the situation in Afghanistan is priceless. You can take part in the next two conversations on Sunday December 12th and 19th.

The Maccabees by Wojciech Stattler (1800-1875)

Christmas and Chanukah share a spiritual message: that it is possible to bring light and hope in a world of darkness, oppression and despair. But whereas Christmas focuses on the birth of a single individual whose life and mission was itself supposed to bring liberation, Chanukah is about a national liberation struggle involving an entire people who seek to remake the world through struggle with an oppressive political and social order: the Greek conquerors (who ruled Judea from the time of Alexander in 325 B.C.E.) and the Hellenistic culture that they sought to impose.

The holiday celebrated by lighting candles for eight nights (the first night is tonight) recalls the victory of the guerrilla struggle led by the Maccabees against the Syrian branch of the Greek empire, and the subsequent rededication (Chanukah in Hebrew) of the Temple in Jerusalem in 165 B.C.E. However, there was a more difficult struggle that took place (and in some dimensions still rages) within the Jewish people between those who hoped for a triumph of a spiritual vision of the world embedded (as it turned out, quite imperfectly) in the Maccabees and a cynical realism that had become the common sense of the merchants and priests who dominated the more cosmopolitan arena of Jerusalem.

Dear Tikkunistas,

It is with great pleasure that we bring you the Spanish translation of the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, or ESRA. Written by Rabbi Michael Lerner and Peter Gabel, and developed in collaboration with the Network of Spiritual Progressives, this Spanish version was translated by José Luis Sanchez (and proofread by me).

We hope this enables more people to get excited about the ideas of the ESRA. Please pass this post or the entire text around to any Latino organization or individual you think might want to get behind it. Also, remember that we are looking for people who can translate the ESRA into Hebrew, Arabic, French, Italian, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and other languages. If you know anyone with these language capabilities who would like to do it, please ask them to contact Rabbi Lerner at rabbilerner@tikkun.org. We are interested in translating other Tikkun articles and NSP materials as well.

Por favor, circule este documento y procure el endoso de consejos municipales, legislaturas estatales, senadores y congresistas federales, partidos políticos y organizaciones cívicas, religiosas y profesionales.

Por favor, firme y endose la Enmienda de Responsabilidad Ambiental y Social (ESRA)a la Constitución de los Estados Unidos.

"All your Church are belong to us!"

In the Reformation, religious controversy and gunpowder mixed together on a large scale. Previous religious disputes involved swords, catapults, burnings at the stake, or sometimes just the pulling of beards and the smashing of wine bottles. In the 16th and 17th centuries, however, the whiff of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate became “the devil’s incense” for theological struggles. In the West, the blog posts have replaced cannonballs as tools of controversy. But in Great Britain on the fifth of November, Guy Fawkes Night keeps alive the memory of the era of “black powder theology.” In a way no one can ignore.

Guy Fawkes has long since passed to his eternal reward. But every 5th of November, he comes alive in effigy. His slouch hat and goatee once again make their appearance. Led by a procession of lit torches and the accompanying sound of firecrackers, jolly souls carry “the old Guy” to his fiery doom. Bonfires, burning in effigy, and fireworks complete the ceremony. It’s like a combination of Halloween and the Fourth of July.

Guy Fawkes’ Night commemorates the foiling of “The Gunpowder Plot,” which according to most historians would have wiped out King James, his court, and Parliament– and according to explosives experts, a good chunk of London.

On the surface, this seems to be an anti-treason and anti-terrorism holiday. Isn’t it a good thing to celebrate stopping such a horrible crime?

But there’s a deeper message to this, too. One that is very real for English Catholics.

Father to "No Islam!"

In our day, Islamophobes have used 9-11 as a means of spreading fear and hatred of American Muslims. Likewise, since the 1600s anti-Catholics in Great Britain used the bonfires of Guy Fawkes’ Night to attack English Catholics. This holiday was the capstone in the propaganda of “The Black Legend” – a term historians use to describe the image of a vast, nefarious Catholic menace seeking to subjugate the whole world to papal rule and the rebirth of “the Dark Ages.”

In reality, English Catholics were staunchly patriotic. Just as American Muslims have been key in fighting terrorism, English Catholics foiled a plot to kidnap James I in 1603, two years before Guy Fawkes’ “Gunpowder Plot.” English Catholics have generally opposed the very notion of blowing up Parliament and Crown. Although they oppose what the “Gunpowder Plot” stands for, English Catholics generally see Guy Fawkes’ Night not as a statement against treason, but as an element in the long campaign to paint Catholics as the devil.

American Muslims know what that’s like.

When will we stop associating beards with threats to "Homeland Security"?

"Does this hat make my bomb look big?"

The history of terrorism in the West has two key dates: September 11 and the Fifth of November.

9/11, of course, needs no introduction, its shadow is as prominent in our time as a Himalayan mountain overlooking a valley in Tibet. Britons excepted, we’re much less aware of the Fifth of November, in the year anno Domini 1605. The central figure of that day, Guy Fawkes, has become something of a hipster hero, thanks to the graphic novel and movie V for Vendetta. In contrast, the details of the “Gunpowder Plot” that made his name (in)famous is little known. But although we are less conscious of it, this seventeenth-century terrorism plot has left its marks on the Anglo-American mind. It was a key event in the demonization of Roman Catholicism. The fear of “popery” has, in turn, influenced the way Muslim-bashers paint a menacing portrait of Muslims today.

Which brings us to Robert Spencer. Among the legion of anti-Muslim bloggers and writers, Bob Spencer stands supreme — the alpha male of the Islamophobes, one might say. His position, as he argued in a recent debate, is “The only good Muslim is a bad Muslim.” That is, a Muslim may not be a terrorist or a jihadist only because he or she ignores or changes the basic principles of Islam. For Spencer, Islam is essentially violent — while Christianity is not.

The "Gunpowder Plot" would have devastated the heart of London. (Image: IOP/Guildhall Library)

Which makes one wonder what Bob Spencer thinks of Guy Fawkes. Fawkes’ plot, in relative terms, would have caused much more damage than 9-11 had it succeeded. Many today, including some Catholics, defend Fawkes, the way some “Politically Correct” people defend Hamas and Hezbollah. So, I ask Mr. Spencer: What’s your position? Do you condemn “Gunpowder, Treason and Plot”, and the current pro-Guy Fawkes fad?

This isn’t a “gotcha question.” I’m genuinely curious about what Robert Spencer what he thinks about Guy Fawkes’ violence. He did give an interview to the anti-modern right-wing group Tradition, Family and Property, an analogue to the Muslim Brotherhood from his own religion. We have mutual friends, so I know from his social circles there are people who reject Vatican II’s embrace of modern religious liberty and think Guy Fawkes a cool guy.

I would also like to know what Robert Spencer thinks of the way anti-Catholic bigots exploited this conspiracy — especially since James I spoke about Catholics in the same way that Spencer talks about “Good Muslims/Bad Muslims.”