Rethinking Religion

Animals Endowed With Rights

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Leonardo Boff asserts: “Whether one acknowledges the dignity of animals depends on that person’s paradigm (vision of the world and values).” Boff breaks down the two paradigms which we need to subvert in order to grow our ecological consciousness.

Editorials & Actions

Christian Theologian Gregory Baum 1923-2017 z’l –a great friend of the Jewish people

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Tikkun author Gregory Baum was a powerful Catholic force for reconciliation and care between Catholics and Jews. We at Tikkun mourn his death. When the rabbis of the Mishnah wrote that the righteous of all people and all religions have a place in the world to come, they could have been thinking of people like Baum. –Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor, Tikkun magazine

Gregory Baum, who as a theological expert at the Second Vatican Council was one of the drafters of the conciliar document Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, which repudiated anti-Semitism, died Oct. 18 in Montreal at the age of 94.

Articles

Beyond McMindfulness

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Rather than applying mindfulness as a means to awaken individuals and organizations from the unwholesome roots of greed, ill will and delusion, it is usually being refashioned into a banal, therapeutic, self-help technique that can actually reinforce those roots.

Other Voices

Which Version of Islam Should Muslims Follow?

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SHOULD MUSLIMS FOLLOW THE QUR’AN
EPISODICALLY OR CHRONOLOGICALLY? AND HOW DOES THIS IMPACTS RELATIONS WITH JEWS AND CHRISTIANS[1]
Saleem Ahmed, Ph.D[2]

Summary
      Many more Qur’anic verses promote violence than peace. Thus, non-Muslims cannot be faulted for concluding that Islam is not a religion of peace, especially when the actions of some extremist Muslims continue to confirm this perception.  Starting as a spiritual movement when Muhammad lived in Mecca, Islam evolved into a fighting force after Muhammad moved to Medina and confronted enemies on all sides. It was only in his 10th year in Medina, after many tribes had accepted his message, that the Qur’an adopted a peaceful posture towards non-Muslims and declared that all its earlier messages (of war) were being superseded by its new message of peace. However, since extremist continue to follow superseded Qur’anic verses, an uphill – but doable and necessary — task lies ahead for the Muslim majority.

Articles

American Post-Judaism with Shaul Magid

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Judaism Unbound (http://www.judaismunbound.com) is a project of the Institute for the Next Jewish Future, a project that catalyzes and supports grassroots efforts by “disaffected but hopeful” American Jews to re-imagine and re-design Jewish life in America for the 21st Century. In the third of a four-part series discussing the Jewish future in America, Shaul Magid discusses his 2013 book American Post-Judaism and explores various challenges that face Jews and Judaism in America in the next generation. Focusing on the idea that America is moving into a post-ethnic phase whereby ethnicity no longer defines collectives the way it once did, Magid talks about various new forms of Jewish spiritual practice, syncretism and hybridity with other religions, the role of the non-Jew in the Jewish community, the developing role of the Holocaust and Israel in American Jewish life, the cresting of Habad’s influence, the normalization of intermarriage, the contributions ex-haredi Jews can make to American Judaism, and two models he calls “survivialism” and “spiritual humanism” that have emerged as competing paradigms in the 21st century.