Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

“Right now, given the current climate and the political rhetoric, we are a target,” says Olivia Cantu, South Florida director of Emerge USA, a national organization that works to increase Muslim-American engagement in politics. “We are being attacked.”

"Spirituals are, of course, the songs that the enslaved crafted to tell the story of their experience. But more than that, to tell the story of their faith and the understanding of who they were in relationship to God, and who God was in relationship to them, and it became a story of freedom,” says Rev. Kelly Brown Douglass, Canon Theologian at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

United Methodism, Roman Catholicism, evangelical Christianity, and “the power of positive thinking” have all shaped the politics and personal stories of this year’s candidates for national office.

Peace, says history professor and scholar of the Muslim world Juan Cole, “is very central to the cultures of the Middle East. You greet someone by saying ‘Peace be upon you.’ It has the form of a prayer.”

“Catholics are the perennial swing voters in American politics. Whichever way Catholics go, usually that’s the way the presidency goes. I expect that to be true this election, too,” says Professor Stephen Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America.

“I was living in the Bay Area. I had a nice salary. I had a very expensive foreign car. I had everything you think that a twenty-some-year-old kid would want. But I realized that without going back to Liberia I’d never really know who I am truly as a person,” says Chid Liberty, social entrepreneur and CEO of Liberty & Justice, a sustainable, fair-trade garment factory in Monrovia that manufactures school uniforms for children across Liberia.

“A lot of evangelicals are doubling down, especially that old-guard religious right, on their support of Trump. Never Trump evangelicals are saying look, this is the last straw. There’s no way any good evangelical can support this guy. The key is you’re seeing some of this showing up in the polls for white evangelical voters. They’re only supporting him about 65 percent. That’s not nearly enough to get Donald Trump into the White House,” says David Gibson, a national correspondent for Religion News Service.

“We know what a childhood is supposed to be, what innocence is, and if there really are millions of children that don’t have that and that are being abused in the worst way—how can you face your maker and say I did nothing?” That is the question of Tim Ballard, founder of Operation Underground Railroad.

“Now that I know how many kids feel like their life is meaningless and they don’t expect to live to see their 18th birthday, I can’t walk away and not do something about it,” says Teresa Goines, founder of Old Skool Café, a supper club run by at-risk youth in San Francisco.

“Facts are facts,” says Holocaust studies professor Deborah Lipstadt, author of “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.” “There are not two sides to every story, and there are certain things that can’t be contested.”

“All of nature spoke to Francis,” says Fr James Gardiner of the Franciscan Monastery in Washington, DC. “The more we learn to reverence all of creation, we might learn to reverence and cherish one another better… I think Francis would approve.”

“One of the things we discovered very early on in our existence is there was pent up demand both in the United States, but also globally, for various religious actors and communities to come and engage with the State Department, to learn about our foreign policy,” says Shaun Casey, US Special Representative for Religion and Global Affairs.

“There’s a lot of dislike for us. We’re just worthless creatures who really shouldn’t be alive,” says John, a homeless man in Albuquerque, New Mexico. So the city started a program called There’s a Better Way, to employ homeless men and women, pay them, and connect them to local services they didn’t know were available.

“We are igniting our lives as humans,” says Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, “using the Jewish toolbox to make what we inherited work for today.” Rabbi Lau-Lavie leads New York City’s Lab/Shul in preparations for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

“There’s something about the shofar that is like the chatter of children. It’s the crying of babies. It’s the mother giving birth. It’s the grief wailing. It is a human, primitive voice.” Watch excerpts from our interview with Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie about the sound of the shofar and the meaning of "teshuvah" during the Jewish High Holy Days.