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As Election Day approaches, the most craven, partisan, dire (and dumb) religious appeals begin to surface.

After Richard Mourdock, a Republican Senate Candidate in Indiana, called pregnancy after rape a gift from God critics were furious. Were they wrong to conclude that this popular theology leads to some very disturbing beliefs?

“First of all, I’d like to say thank you. Secondly, I’d like to say I’m sorry. I’d like to thank you because of your support and affirmation. And I’d like to say I’m sorry because of the ways that Christianity is far too often used as a tool of exclusion rather than inclusion. I’d also like to say that there are many other pastors and people of faith who share views such as my own. My speech just happened to go viral on the internet, but I have a ton of colleagues doing similar things all across the U.S. on a regular basis. We may not receive as much publicity as the highly-funded voices on the religious right, but I am hardly a lone voice.”

A new memoir by Israeli peace activist Miko Peled, the son an honored general, details a far different history from the one most Americans are familiar (or comfortable) with.

For those still in denominations like the United Methodists that are not accepting of LGBT people, go to your church and put a note in the offering plate that says you won’t give until things change. Every time we’ve tried that, the pastors have called people in immediately to talk to them and it opened up a dialogue in that church that was serious because they could see that that could spread among other people who are pro-gay. One thing you can do is withhold your money. Why are we supporting our own oppression?

Parting Ways is Butler’s attempt to construct a Jewish narrative that coheres with her philosophical and political sensibilities as well as her allegiance to her Jewish heritage and lineage. As a Jew for whom religious practice and the Jewish textual tradition do not constitute her Jewish core, hers is a secular narrative of Jewishness outside the orbit of Zionism. Butler’s concern for Israel is that she believes its present construction is “Jewishly” indefensible (in the terms she develops in her book) and the muscularity with which Zionism is proffered squashes any alternative narrative of diasporic Jewish identity.

I just returned from watching 2016: Obama’s America, arch-conservative Dinesh D’Souza’s election-year documentary, which I went to because I wanted to see it at our former church, a central Nebraska Salvation Army congregation’s “Teen Night.”

Tyler Perry’s Madea franchise is part of a collective of black, fat drag, comedy-dramas. These films bear six distinguishing features: 1) they are considered “successful” because they gross more than their production costs; 2) they are accompanied by an R&B/gospel soundtrack, and 3) include casts of popular black actors and actresses who are well known within African American communities. Also characteristic of these films are 4) the use of multiple and arguably watered-down Protestant messages about the importance of faith in God, couched in comedic performance, to appeal to mass audiences. An additional feature is that 5) the black church is the space where a significant turning point and/or the film’s resolution occur. Most notably, these films are characterized by 6) the donning of intricately designed fat suits by black men (Tyler Perry, Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy) to parody black women.

After an article in Christianity Today, arguably the mouthpiece of contemporary American evangelicalism, alleged that a Rev. Moon-like, self-proclaimed messiah was affiliated with The Christian Post that publication hit back with allegations that one of the article’s authors was involved with child porn.

What is it about rage that pervades so much thinking about Islam? Start by picking up the latest issues of Time and Newsweek—America’s airport reading—and talking to Google.