The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first used the term “AIDS” on Sept. 24, 1982, more than a year after the first cases appeared in medical records. Those early years of the crisis were marked by a great deal of confusion over what caused the disease, who it affected and how it spread.

But the naming itself – acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, which we now know is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV – was a milestone. How people talked about and named the AIDS crisis shaped how it was viewed and either fostered or countered a culture of stigma.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, for instance, conservative Christian leaders such as Rev. Jerry Falwell described AIDS as “God’s punishment” for sexual immorality. Many AIDS activists, on the other hand, also took up the importance of naming. Instead of being called “AIDS victims,” they preferred phrases like “people with AIDS” and “people living with HIV” to affirm their status as people rather than merely patients or victims.

As a historian of religion, sexuality and public health, I became interested in how moral and religious rhetoric shaped this global pandemic from the start. In my book “After the Wrath of God,” I trace how the AIDS crisis could not be separated from the broader cultural contexts in which it emerged, including the histories of LGBTQ+ people and the Christian right.

In other words, from the start, this medical epidemic was also a moral epidemic.

Before ‘AIDS’

The naming of AIDS in 1982 came more than a year after the CDC first reported cases of young, otherwise healthy men diagnosed with rare forms of cancer, pneumonia and other infections that occur in people with weakened immune systems.

CDC researchers searched for a connection and found that these men were “all active homosexuals.” This confirmed what many gay and bisexual men living in places such as New York City and San Francisco already knew: There was a mysterious illness affecting their community.

Early news coverage described a new “gay cancer” or “gay pneumonia.” Some medical researchers called it GRID – gay-related immune deficiency– or acquired community immune deficiency. When CDC leaders settled on AIDS instead, they wanted to acknowledge the prevalence of cases among many other groups, including heterosexuals.

Despite these efforts, however, this early association with homosexuality would stick.

In fact, the history of homosexuality was crucial to the very discovery of AIDS. Scientists have now shown that HIV circulated well before 1981, especially among intravenous drug users, many of whom were homeless. But unusual illnesses and deaths within this population largely went unnoticed.

Meanwhile, the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement had been picking up steam since 1969, when a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City, set off a series of riots that prompted a new wave of LGBTQ+ activism. By the 1980s, queer and trans people asserted greater political and cultural influence.

This visibility and increasing cultural influence were crucial to the detection of this new disease.

Stirring ‘God’s wrath’

The early association of AIDS with homosexuality also ensured that this public health crisis would stir moral and religious debate.

In the 1970s, conservative Christian leaders had already warned the broader public about what they considered to be an epidemic of homosexuality. They argued that social acceptance of LGBTQ+ people was a sign of moral decline, and warned that if the United States did not stamp out this “moral disease,” the country would face the same fate as Sodom and Gomorrah, biblical cities destroyed by God.

In other words, the Christian right already had its own way to talk about homosexuality as an epidemic, as a threat to society itself. The AIDS crisis seemed to only confirm their belief in God’s wrath.

Medical and public health officials were not immune to this rhetoric. In the 1980s, at hospitals across New York, people readily referred to WOGS – the wrath of God syndrome. A physician at the Medical College of Georgia penned an editorial for Southern Medical Journal that asked whether AIDS fulfilled a biblical pronouncement about “the due penalty” for sexual sins and recommended conversion therapy for homosexuals.

In the White House, as historian Jennifer Brier has shown, President Ronald Reagan’s conservative advisers Gary Bauer and William Bennett formulated a strategy to fight AIDS that emphasized the moral righteousness of heterosexuality and abstinence outside of marriage.

They were frustrated to get pushback from the Reagan-appointed Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, a pediatric surgeon who had also become one of the leaders of the evangelical pro-life movement. He insisted that national AIDS policy focus on comprehensive sex education.

In 1988, Koop sent a mailer called Understanding AIDS to virtually every household in America. Conservatives balked at Koop’s approach, although he still prioritized abstinence for people who were unmarried as the best form of protection.

Bauer and Bennett complained that the flyer included information about condoms and described the risks of contagion through oral and anal sex. Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative Catholic crusader against feminism, abortion and gay rights, accused the surgeon general of trying to teach “safe sodomy” to third graders.

Beyond the Christian right

Not all conservative Christians understood AIDS to be God’s punishment for sexual sin. Many evangelical groups and Catholic leaders even pushed against that notion – yet still spoke of it in religious and moral terms.

Cardinal John O’Connor, the archbishop of New York, drew the ire of many AIDS activists when he spoke about AIDS at the Vatican in 1989. “Good morality,” he proclaimed, “is good medicine.”

Many Christians took more progressive positions. Southern Baptist ethicist Earl Shelp and chaplain Ronald Sunderland worked as research fellows at Texas Medical Center, where they first encountered people with AIDS. Together, they started one of the earliest AIDS ministry programs, which focused on helping gay men with AIDS without judgment.

And many queer and feminist Christian and Jewish leaders, including Jim Mitulski, Yvette Flunder and Yoel Kahn, forged queer-affirming and justice-oriented responses to the stigma of AIDS. They countered the idea that AIDS was a “gay disease,” but they also focused on how AIDS harmed populations that were often sidelined, including people of color, women and drug users.

What’s in a name?

Today, when I teach about the history of the HIV/AIDS crisis, my students tend to be confused by this early association with homosexuality. They associate AIDS with sub-Saharan Africa, which had become the epicenter of the pandemic by the 1990s.

Nevertheless, my students have grown up in a world where AIDS is far better understood. Thanks to the work of activists and scientists, far more people now know that HIV can be blocked by using condoms and sterile needles. Antiretroviral therapy has proven very effective in treating people able to obtain and tolerate the medicines.

Yet no matter how scientific or objective people hope to be, epidemics are shaped by culture. And studying that history helps us understand more about ourselves.

Anthony Petro does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Of all the questions confronting voters in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, few are as puzzling as the seemingly unwavering support for a political candidate deeply mired in embarrassing sex scandals and criminal business practices.

Such is the case with Donald Trump, whose behavior would have sunk the campaigns of most U.S. presidential candidates.

In the 1980s, for example, Democrat Gary Hart’s presidential ambitions went to ground over allegations of extramarital affairs on a boat aptly named “Monkey Business.” Over the past 20 years, two New York governors, Andrew Cuomo and Eliot Spitzer, both Democrats, resigned over charges of sexual misconduct. Democrat Al Franken’s career in the Senate was scuttled over charges of indiscretions during a USO tour.

But Trump’s convictions of financial fraud and being found culpable for sexual misconduct have not dampened the enthusiasm of supporters of Trump and his “Make America Great Again” movement.

Part of the reason may be explained by Max Weber, an early 20th century German sociologist and social theorist. At the center of Weber’s thinking about political authority was the word “charisma.”

In today’s street lingo, charisma has been shortened to “rizz” and defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “style, charm or attractiveness, and the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner.”

Nothing could be further from Weber’s understanding of charisma.

The religious roots of charisma

In his “Theory of Social and Economic Organization,” Weber goes back to the Christian roots of the word charisma to describe how social and political power achieved legitimacy within a society.

According to the Greek Bible, Jesus’ followers received spiritual gifts from God. Much later, derived from the Greek word “charis” – meaning “grace, kindness, favor – the word was brought over to English and referred to the gifts of healing, prophecy and other endowments of the Holy Spirit.

For Weber, what makes people charismatic is the possession of such gifts, through which they become mediators between God and their communities.

These gifts of the spirit transform the believer into a prophet.

Weber made a crucial distinction between a priest and a prophet. The priest acquires power through official credentialing and the routine performance of functions such as liturgies and rituals prescribed by the religion.

In contrast with the priest, the prophet derives authority not from official mechanisms but directly from God. The prophet thus stands outside the framework of the official religion – and even beyond society and a political state.

What characterizes the modern-day prophet is his defiance of the regimented order of society and his call to heed a higher calling. The prophet is inherently subversive.

While not religious, as historian Lawrence Rees has pointed out, the political prophet is "quasi-religious,” and the followers of such a person “are looking for more than just lower taxes or better health care, but seek broader, almost spiritual, goals of redemption and salvation.”

‘A call to arms’

Throughout modern history, charismatic leaders have shown their extraordinary ability to elicit devotion to themselves and their causes.

Some have been great spiritual leaders – Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, Civil Rights Movement leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela among them.

Others have been a scourge to humans – including Russian leader Josef Stalin, German dictator Adolf Hitler, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong and cult leader Jim Jones.

Of those charismatic “prophets,” none may have possessed more charisma than Hitler. He was the prototype of a charismatic leader, according to Weber’s definition.

Like the prophets of old, Hitler was an outsider who possessed remarkable gifts of oratory and uncanny good luck. Of his charismatic traits, none was more important than his ability to persuade. One early follower, Kurt Lüdecke, highlighted the power of a Hitler speech in 1922:

“When he spoke of Germany’s disgrace I felt ready to spring on an enemy. His appeal to German manhood was like a call to arms, the gospel he preached a sacred truth. He seemed another (Martin) Luther. I forgot everything but the man. Glancing around, I saw that his magnetism was holding these thousands as one.”

In his “Inside the Third Reich,” Albert Speer confessed that his decision to join Hitler’s movement was emotional rather than intellectual: “In retrospect, I often have the feeling that something swooped me up off the ground at the time, wrenched me from all my roots, and beamed a host of alien forces upon me.”

Speer was later convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Trump’s charisma

Weber’s concept of charisma helps us understand Trump’s appeal to his Christian followers.

Trump portrays himself as an outsider who will attack the decadent mainstream system – and his followers are willing to fight and die for him.

Indeed, the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters risked their freedom, their careers and, in at least one case, their lives for their leader. One of them, Ashli Babbitt, was fatally shot climbing through a shattered glass door inside the U.S. Capitol.

The list of lives and careers who were imprisoned as a result of service to Trump includes former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, ex-Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, among others.

Meanwhile, several ex-Trump lawyers have suffered or are facing disbarment and, in some cases, criminal charges related to their work for the Trump administration.

It’s my belief that Trump is not just an ordinary politician – people think he is a spiritual leader offering to bring them to the promised land.

Right-wing evangelicals such as Paula White, Tony Perkins and Hank Kunneman praise him as a man fulfilling God’s will through his actions.

Social media is filled with images of Trump being supported by Jesus, or even of Trump being crucified like Jesus.

And Trump himself has said that divine intervention saved him from an assassin’s bullets.

“And I’d like to think that God thinks that I’m going to straighten out our country,” Trump told Fox News host Mark Levin in September 2024. “Our country is so sick, and it’s so broken. Our country is just broken.”

A critical flaw

But the Achilles’ heel of the charismatic leader is lack of success.

In the case of Hitler, his battlefield failures in Dunkirk and Stalingrad during World War II punctured the charismatic balloon. But rebellions against his authority were fruitless, and Hitler was able to command obedience until his suicide in April 1945.

The need for continuous success is a cautionary tale for Trump, whose charisma appears to be ebbing.

Trump’s reputation as a winner took a blow with his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. With Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, Vice President Kamala Harris has made the 2024 presidential campaign a much closer race.

If the erosion continues, Trump will likely confront the fates of all failed prophets – to be barred access to the levers of power they crave.

Michael Scott Bryant does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

On Sept. 9, 2024, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will host a broadcast to celebrate the “life and teachings” of Russell M. Nelson, its president and prophet. Nelson, whose 100th birthday falls on that day, has asked church members to celebrate by reaching out to someone in need.

The centenarian has been a reactionary reformer: an energetic leader who streamlined bureaucracy and ended the church’s century-long relationship with the Boy Scouts, while reaffirming its opposition to LGBTQ+ relationships and identities. He steered the church unapologetically through storms of public scrutiny, including accusations that the church had concealed the value of its investments. For the faithful, Nelson represents God’s mouthpiece on Earth.

Yet one of his initiatives made an impact that rippled far beyond the church. In 2018, he surprised observers by declaring the use of the word “Mormon” a “major victory for Satan,” insisting on the use of the church’s full name. Individuals were to be recognized by their institutional affiliation, as “members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

The name of the church was given by God, and shortening it erases “all that Jesus Christ did for us,” Nelson argued. Yet adherents have long self-identified as Mormons, so the rebrand felt like a novelty to some members.

As a university lecturer teaching courses on American religion and Mormonism, I was one of many who wrestled with this change in terminology – and saw the confusion it created for my students and colleagues. For almost two centuries, the word “Mormon” has framed how Americans think about and discuss this faith.

Birth of a church

The name Mormon comes from the title of the Book of Mormon, a religious text unique to the faith. Founder Joseph Smith, who organized the church in 1830, believed he had been instructed by God to restore Jesus’ true church. He claimed that an angel had led him to uncover and translate ancient gold plates that detailed the religious history of an ancient civilization in the Americas, founded by Israelites who fled Jerusalem.

Early critics mockingly attached the word Mormon to the movement, but Smith insisted that in the book’s original language, the word meant “literally, ‘more good.’” By the time Smith was killed by a mob in Illinois in 1844, his followers had embraced the word.

After Smith’s death, Mormons split into different factions, with the largest group traveling by foot and wagon to the far American West. Yet, the group’s evolving practices continued to spark controversy. Polygamy and the church’s political and economic influence contributed to decades of animosity between Mormons and the rest of the nation.

The United States began seizing church property and imprisoning polygamist leaders, coercing church president Wilford Woodruff to end official support for polygamy in 1890.

A new debut

Three years later, at the Chicago World’s Fair, the church rebranded Mormonism, presenting Mormon pioneers as an embodiment of the values of the American frontier.

Woodruff, then 86 years old, spoke of himself as Utah’s oldest living pioneer and of Mormons as a people who built the American West. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed at the fair, reintroducing Mormons to the wider public as a sophisticated and artistic people. The crowd shouted, “Three cheers for the Mormons!” The Chicago Herald wrote, “Mormons and gentiles came together as friends.”

Despite this, many Americans still distrusted Mormons. In 1903, high-ranking church official Reed Smoot was elected to the U.S. Senate, which provoked national outcry and led to Senate hearings that lasted until 1907. The hearings substantiated charges that the practice of polygamy persisted but exonerated Smoot as an individual. As Smoot argued, Mormons were independent of the institutional church and thus trustworthy Americans. He convinced his fellow senators that if the church’s teachings came into conflict with his conscience or oath of office, then, as a Mormon, he would uphold the latter.

Following Smoot’s lead, the church embraced the trappings of American patriotism and doubled down against plural marriage. These moves won the Latter-day Saints powerful political allies, including Theodore Roosevelt, who disliked the institutional church but viewed Mormons themselves as intensely moral and patriotic.

‘Meet the Mormons’

Ab Jenkins, a race car driver whose records made him an international celebrity in the 1930s, capitalized on this new image of Mormon individuality and wholesomeness. The “Mormon Boy” credited his clean, church-approved lifestyle for his success. On his car, the Mormon Meteor, Jenkins rejected alcohol and cigarette endorsements and instead brandished a sign that read, “Yes, I’m a Mormon.”

For several decades, other Mormon celebrities like family band The Osmonds and golfer Johnny Miller continued to shape positive public views of Mormons – hitting a high-water mark in 1977, when Gallup found that only 18% of Americans held unfavorable views.

Church efforts to influence social issues, however, such as its decades-long opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, eventually took a toll. By 1991, public opinion of Mormons had fallen dramatically, with 37% of Americans viewing them unfavorably – and leaders decided that another rebrand was in order.

The previous year, senior leader Gordon B. Hinckley had admonished members to make the word Mormon “shine with added luster.” When he became president in 1995, Hinckley worked to reframe how the public saw Mormons, arguing on the “60 Minutes” TV show that Mormons were “not a weird people.”

The Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002 pushed Mormonism into the national spotlight, and that same year, the church launched its major website, Mormon.org, with stories and headlines liberally using the term “Mormon.” A media campaign followed a decade later, featuring prominent members declaring, “I’m a Mormon.” Ordinary members were then encouraged to upload their own “I’m a Mormon” profiles to this website and share them on their own social media accounts.

Mitt Romney’s Republican nomination for the 2012 presidential election and the popularity of the satirical “Book of Mormon” musical pushed Mormons again into the national spotlight. In 2014, the church produced a documentary titled “Meet the Mormons,” shown in theaters across the U.S., which apostle Jefferey R. Holland explained was to “show people what we’re really like.”

In 2017, a Pew Research Center survey’s “feeling thermometer” found public opinion of Mormons to have risen to the “somewhat warmer” rating of 54, a 6-point increase from 2014.

‘More good’?

That said, the church’s relationship to the word Mormon has always been complex. As far back as 1990, Nelson was already warning fellow Latter-day Saints that Mormon was “not an appropriate alternative” for the church’s full name. During the 2002 Olympics, the church advised media that the nickname was acceptable for individuals but not to refer to the institution itself.

Overall, however, I would argue the church has used the word Mormon to improve public opinion for more than a century. Part of this branding downplayed popular fears about the church and its influence – allowing outsiders to develop favorable views toward Mormons, even if they disliked the institution itself.

In March 2023, a Pew Research poll reported a low point in public opinion of Mormons, falling for the first time below every other measured group. A quarter of Americans held “unfavorable views of Mormons,” while only 15% held “favorable” ones.

Mormon had been an important term in engaging those outside the faith, particularly in countering negative perceptions. Nelson’s legacy will thus have less to do with whether the term disappears from popular use but rather with how much outsiders associate it with “more good” – both institutionally and individually.

Konden Smith Hansen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Fifty-eight years ago in the summer of 1966, a group of Black church leaders took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times titled “Black Power.” Their densely worded statement called on national leaders, “white churchmen,” Black citizens and the mass media to correct the country’s racial power imbalance. In essence, they asked their fellow citizens to support Black power.

Prominent church leaders such as Rev. Paul Washington of the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, Rev. Gayraud Wilmore of the Presbyterian Commission on Religion and Race, and Rev. Benjamin Payton of the National Council of Churches were among the signatories. With years of civil rights experience, 48 Black church leaders boldly asserted their unequivocal support for the Black Power movement.

Like many white Christian nationalists in 2024, these Black church leaders believed that God was punishing their beloved country. Both groups called for repentance and fundamental change. And like white Christian nationalists, the 1966 Black Christian activists asserted that their faith had something to say on matters of racial identity and power politics.

Such a comparison might suggest that the two groups – each proud of their racial identity – were alike in the ends they sought. However, the church-based advocates of Black Power in 1966 articulated their vision, pursued their goal of correcting the nation’s corruption and engaged with their fellow citizens in dramatically different ways than white Christian nationalists do today.

As a scholar of religion and race in social protest movements, I argue that the assertion of Black power was not in any way a threat to democracy – unlike today’s white Christian nationalists’ demands for taking the reins of power.

A pragmatic approach to power

Only weeks before the ad appeared, activist Stokely Carmichael had brought the phrase “Black Power” to national attention during a freedom march in Greenwood, Mississippi. He proclaimed: “We’ve been saying freedom for six years, and we ain’t got nothin’. What we got to start saying now is Black Power! We want Black Power.” His rhetoric and the race riots then rocking the country in cities like Chicago, Cleveland and Dayton, Ohio, prompted the Black church leaders to take out their ad.

In the nearly 3,000-word full-page statement, pastors proposed that fair distribution of political and economic power would solve the cities’ problems. Accurate news coverage, full employment and equal education would make that power sharing possible. As religious leaders, they also called their congregations to heal internal divisions and practice racial self-love.

In addition, the Black church leaders used the text of their paid advertisement to refute the idea that any “nation, race or organization” had the right to hold “ultimate power.” They aimed to reassure readers that the Black Power activists shouldn’t hold ultimate power, either. They then moderated their patriotism by noting that “America is our beloved homeland” but that the country was “not God.” Unlike some Black nationalist activists of the era, they did not call for separation from white society.

Rather than an “other worldly conception of God’s power,” they focused in their ad on exercising power in the “here and now.” And they called for access to power that would allow Black citizens to participate at “all levels of the life of our nation.”

As historian and activist Vincent Harding has observed, their words echoed congregants who would criticize overly spiritual church leaders by asserting, “Praying is fine in a prayer meeting, but it ain’t no good in a bear meeting.” That is, in a dangerous situation – whether an urban rebellion or an encounter with a wild animal – religious resources were insufficient.

Theirs was a pragmatic embrace of power, grounded in an appeal to the founding principles of the United States.

Power with limits

However, their pursuit of Black power had limits. In the text of their ad, the Black church leaders clearly advocated for “all people” to have power which, by necessity, required that Black people also have power.

They also conceded that the very institutions they led – Black congregations – already had some degree of power. Since the mass exodus of Black congregants from white-led congregations in the aftermath of emancipation, independent Black congregations had provided religious support and sustenance while also fostering a base for political action.

Black congregations had supported congregants who challenged white supremacy during Reconstruction, called for access to jobs during World War II and marched on Washington for jobs and freedom during the Civil Rights Movement.

A means to participation

But perhaps most centrally, the 48 signers of The New York Times statement – like other secular proponents of Black power at the time – did not seek control of the country.

Instead of “a foolish effort at domination” or a “new form of isolationism,” they said in the ad, they sought power so that they could effectively participate “at all levels of the life of our nation.” Their goal was to “make the rebuilding of our cities” the country’s first priority.

Within a decade of the 1966 publication of the statement, the phrase Black Power had waned even among its most vocal advocates. Internal fractures, often prompted by paid informants, had weakened Black Power organizations. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had organized violent attacks on Black Power activists. Other proponents of Black power were arrested and imprisoned by both local and federal officials.

As Lerone Martin, the director of Stanford University’s King Center, has shown, Hoover was motivated in his undermining of power for Black people out of his devout expression of a Christianity that was “unerringly conservative, patriotic and white.”

Another way to join faith and politics

Proponents of white Christian nationalism continue to seek a religiously run, white-dominated government. A recent PPRI study also found that white Christian nationalists were twice as likely to support political violence.

By contrast, the example of the short-lived, church-based promotion of Black power puts contemporary Christian nationalism in a broader context. The Black church leaders demonstrated that there was a way to bring religious commitments to bear on political pursuits without insisting on racial dominance or rejecting the separation of church and state.

As these Black Power advocates made clear, it was possible to be patriotic and also be critical of the nation’s failures to embody racial justice. Unlike the contemporary proponents of a belief in the United States as being founded on Christian principles and threatened by “non-whites, non-Christians, and immigrants,” in their statement the 1966 Black Power advocates condemned the “overt violence of riots.” Even Malcolm X, the outspoken Nation of Islam activist, was suspended from his religious duties for implying that President John F. Kennedy’s actions had resulted in his assassination when he said that the chickens had come “home to roost.”

From both a pragmatic and a principled position, the Black church leaders did not see violence as viable. Even when promoting the highly controversial idea of Black power to a white nation, they maintained a belief that democracy was consistent with their goals rather than opposed to it.

Tobin Miller Shearer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

I am a vinyl record aficionado. My father, also a musician, recently gave me his vinyl collection, and it made me reflect: Why, despite limited use of my arms due to disability, do I still go to the effort of playing vinyl albums, old or new, daily?

The historian in me acknowledges a bit of nostalgia and fascination with vintage audio processes, while the musician in me prefers the open sound of analog vinyl over the compromised, “flat” sound of low-resolution streaming.

But nostalgia and audiophilia do not fully explain the depth of meaning ascribed to these objects. The experience of placing the record on a turntable is ritualistic, with the albums themselves elevating me, and many others, beyond the experience of mere sound.

As I learned from my significant other, Jennifer, who has a background in religious studies, the vinyl experience parallels other forms of the sacred in everyday life.

Vinyl once reigned supreme

The vinyl experience, including the necessary ritual of interacting with the physical medium, has persisted for over a century despite the rise and fall of various formats of recorded music.

The recorded music industry arose in the early 20th century to fulfill what historian Daniel Boorstin described as the “repeatable experience.” By the early 20th century, technology provided the means of re-experiencing a moment in time by looking at a photograph, watching a film or listening to a recording. People wanted to hear a song they enjoyed repeatedly. Advances in audio tape recording and mass production of records provided the means of that repeatable experience.

The phonograph, or record player, quickly became a popular staple of many households. By 1948, long-playing, or LP, vinyl records came onto the market as an upgrade to acetate records, and vinyl would go on to dominate the music industry into the 1980s.

During the 1970s, when the recording industry began tracking yearly sales by format, listeners purchased 74% to 82% of recorded music on vinyl. Cassettes and 8-track tapes took a small share of vinyl sales, but by 1982, 8-track production ceased. In 1985, the number of cassettes sold surpassed the units of vinyl sold and continued to grow until 1993, when CD sales overtook cassettes.

Meanwhile, vinyl sales all but disappeared through the 1990s and first decade of the 2000s, accounting for less than 1% of all music revenues each year. Only noncorporate, independent labels kept the vinyl format alive, sometimes enticing fans with vinyl-only extra tracks.

Gradually, however, a small but significant cohort of music listeners brought the format full circle – from records to tapes, CDs, digital downloads and streaming – and started returning to vinyl.

In an era of cheap and easy access to streaming music, vinyl record sales nonetheless rank higher as a proportion of all recorded music revenues in the United States than at any time since 1988, now accounting for 8% of all music revenues and 17.4% of all nonstreaming music sold, ranking only behind downloads.

Vinyl records as sacred objects

Multiple factors explain the vinyl resurgence – among them certainly the nostalgia and love of analog sound that I and others experience. But to many music fans, these vinyl albums are sacred objects.

Religious studies scholar Ann Taves observes that “the tendency to set some things apart is a deeply rooted human characteristic.” When we set things set apart and infuse them with value and meaning, we may be practicing everyday religion whether we realize it or not.

The separation cues us to the importance of the object being distinct and not just part of a collection. The relationship established between that object and something meaningful beyond ourselves takes us into spiritual territory.

Vinyl enthusiasts demonstrating these tendencies abound on platforms such as YouTube. They speak in tones of reverence for their rare or meaningful finds, demonstrating a careful and ritualized handling of the artifacts.

Most enthusiasts perform ritualistic cleaning processes, buy special archival sleeves to preserve their records, and maintain a personal collection database. They dedicate entire rooms of their homes to meticulously curated archives of records and create listening rooms. Both are shrines to a repeatable vinyl listening experience that elevates the records into unique places of profound meaning. They are artifacts of connection to the past and hold the means to transport listeners beyond themselves.

To experience music on vinyl, the listener must pull the record from the shelf, carefully unsleeve and clean it, place it on the turntable and set it to spin. The needle drops and the familiar magical crackle begins for a few seconds before the beauty of the analog music is transmitted from the vinyl disc into the listener’s ears.

With streaming or downloaded music, there is no physical relationship or interaction with the song. The sound of the music may still be special, but the object has been removed. There is nothing to set apart. We cannot carefully clean, shelve, protect, admire or display a digital version of a song. The song may be beautiful, but the object that provides a deeper connection is gone.

Former Black Flag vocalist and spoken word artist Henry Rollins explains that today, “you’re listening to something served to you from some cloud, something out in the ether, but you can’t touch it. So what stays the same is analog. It always sounds good to the ear. And it’s what’s left of humanity meeting music.”

Finding the sacred

My dad’s vinyl records – and those I have added and will pass along – comprise some of the most sacred objects in my household: those I treasure and understand as part of a legacy of music and family, of shared, repeatable meaning.

Not all listeners would characterize their return to vinyl as a spiritual experience or religious journey. But they are nonetheless drawn to its repetition and its beauty – to something made, kept, handed down and cherished. Space and time are set aside for the ritual of listening. We hold an album reverentially because it reciprocally holds a place of meaning and connection, special and apart.

Jennifer Wilken, associate vice provost, Arizona State University, contributed significantly to this piece.

Brock Ruggles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

A self-driving taxi has no passengers, so it parks itself in a lot to reduce congestion and air pollution. After being hailed, the taxi heads out to pick up its passenger – and tragically strikes a pedestrian in a crosswalk on its way.

Who or what deserves praise for the car’s actions to reduce congestion and air pollution? And who or what deserves blame for the pedestrian’s injuries?

One possibility is the self-driving taxi’s designer or developer. But in many cases, they wouldn’t have been able to predict the taxi’s exact behavior. In fact, people typically want artificial intelligence to discover some new or unexpected idea or plan. If we know exactly what the system should do, then we don’t need to bother with AI.

Alternatively, perhaps the taxi itself should be praised and blamed. However, these kinds of AI systems are essentially deterministic: Their behavior is dictated by their code and the incoming sensor data, even if observers might struggle to predict that behavior. It seems odd to morally judge a machine that had no choice.

According to manymodernphilosophers, rational agents can be morally responsible for their actions, even if their actions were completely predetermined – whether by neuroscience or by code. But most agree that the moral agent must have certain capabilities that self-driving taxis almost certainly lack, such as the ability to shape its own values. AI systems fall in an uncomfortable middle ground between moral agents and nonmoral tools.

As a society, we face a conundrum: it seems that no one, or no one thing, is morally responsible for the AI’s actions – what philosophers call a responsibility gap. Present-day theories of moral responsibility simply do not seem appropriate for understanding situations involving autonomous or semi-autonomous AI systems.

If current theories will not work, then perhaps we should look to the past – to centuries-old ideas with surprising resonance today.

God and man

A similar question perplexed Christian theologians in the 13th and 14th centuries, from Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus to William of Ockham. How can people be responsible for their actions, and the results, if an omniscient God designed them – and presumably knew what they would do?

Medieval philosophers held that someone’s decisions result from their will, operating on the products of their intellect. Broadly speaking, they understood human intellect as a set of mental capabilities that enable rational thought and learning.

Intellect is the rational, logical part of people’s minds or souls. When two people are presented with identical situations and they both arrive at the same “rational conclusion” about how to handle things, they’re using intellect. Intellect is like computer code in this way.

But the intellect doesn’t always provide a unique answer. Often, the intellect provides only possibilities, and the will selects among them, whether consciously or unconsciously. Will is the act of freely choosing from among the possibilities.

As a simple example, on a rainy day, intellect dictates that I should grab an umbrella from my closet, but not which one. Will is choosing the red umbrella instead of the blue one.

For these medieval thinkers, moral responsibility depended on what the will and the intellect each contribute. If the intellect determines that there is only one possible action, then I could not do otherwise, and so I am not morally responsible. One might even conclude that God is morally responsible, since my intellect comes from God – though the medieval theologians were very cautious about attributing responsibility to God.

On the other hand, if intellect places absolutely no constraints on my actions, then I am fully morally responsible, since will is doing all of the work. Of course, most actions involve contributions from both intellect and will – it’s usually not an either/or.

In addition, other people often constrain us: from parents and teachers to judges and monarchs, especially in the medieval philosophers’ days – making it even more complicated to attribute moral responsibility.

Man and AI

Clearly, the relationship between AI developers and their creations is not exactly the same as between God and humans. But as professors of philosophyand computing, we see intriguing parallels. These older ideas might help us today think through how an AI system and its designers might share moral responsibility.

AI developers are not omniscient gods, but they do provide the “intellect” of the AI system by selecting and implementing its learning methods and response capabilities. From the designer’s perspective, this “intellect” constrains the AI’s behavior but almost never determines its behavior completely.

Most modern AI systems are designed to learn from data and can dynamically respond to their environments. The AI will thus seem to have a “will” that chooses how to respond, within the constraints of its “intellect.”

Users, managers, regulators and other parties can further constrain AI systems – analogous to how human authorities such as monarchs constrain people in the medieval philosophers’ framework.

Who’s responsible?

These thousand-year-old ideas map surprisingly well to the structure of moral problems involving AI systems. So let’s return to our opening questions: Who or what is responsible for the benefits and harms of the self-driving taxi?

The details matter. For example, if the taxi developer explicitly writes down how the taxi should behave around crosswalks, then its actions would be entirely due to its “intellect” – and so the developers would be responsible.

However, let’s say the taxi encountered situations it was not explicitly programmed for – such as if the crosswalk was painted in an unusual way, or if the taxi learned something different from data in its environment than what the developer had in mind. In cases like these, the taxi’s actions would be primarily due to its “will,” because the taxi selected an unexpected option – and so the taxi is responsible.

If the taxi is morally responsible, then what? Is the taxi company liable? Should the taxi’s code be updated? Even the two of us do not agree about the full answer. But we think that a better understanding of moral responsibility is an important first step.

Medieval ideas are not only about medieval objects. These theologians can help ethicists today better understand the present-day challenge of AI systems – though we have only scratched the surface.

David Danks is a member of the National AI Advisory Committee. He is also an external advisor for Salesforce, HydroX AI, and Personal AI. The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his personal capacity.

Mike Kirby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Many voters are willing to accept misinformation from political leaders – even when they know it’s factually inaccurate. According to our research, voters often recognize when their parties’ claims are not based on objective evidence. Yet they still respond positively, if they believe these inaccurate statements evoke a deeper, more important “truth.”

Our team conducted a series of online surveys from 2018 to 2023 with over 3,900 American voters. These surveys were designed to elicit responses about how they evaluated political statements from several politicians, even when they recognized those statements as factually inaccurate.

Consider former President Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Even among supporters who recognized that his claims about fraud were not grounded in objective evidence, we found that they were more likely to see these allegations as important for “American priorities”: for example, they believe the political system is illegitimate and stacked against their interests.

The same logic applies to factually inaccurate statements about COVID-19 vaccinations that President Joe Biden made, suggesting that vaccinated people could not spread the disease. In our surveys, voters who supported the president saw the statement as important for American priorities, despite recognizing its factual inaccuracy.

Through these questions, we were able to uncover the criteria that guide voter behavior, depending on who makes which statement. Voters from both parties cared more about “moral truth” when they were evaluating a politician they liked. When evaluating a politician they didn’t like, on the other hand, voters relied more on strict factuality.

Our surveys documented how voters provide such justifications for their partisan standard-bearers, revealing a significant degree of “moral flexibility” in voters’ political judgment. I conducted this research with Oliver Hahl of Carnegie Mellon University, Ethan Poskanzer of the University of Colorado, and Ezra Zuckerman Sivan of MIT.

Why it matters

Conversations about how to combat misinformation often focus on the need for better fact-checking and education. However, our discovery illustrates the deeper but overlooked drivers behind voters’ tolerance and support for factually inaccurate statements. The findings suggest that misinformation survives not only due to voters’ “gullibility” but their moral calculations about whether partisan ends justify the means.

If voters are deliberately choosing to support misinformation because it aligns with their partisan perspectives, then providing factual corrections will not be enough to protect the democratic norm of grounding public policies in objective facts.

What still isn’t known

Our research leaves critical questions about how to combat such moral flexibility and its consequences.

To be sure, we do not see such moral flexibility as categorically wrong. As a society, for instance, we tend to think that telling kids that Santa Claus exists is unproblematic, because doing so protects certain values – such as children’s innocence and imagination.

But when it comes to public debate on an issue that should be based on objective evidence, moral flexibility limits the extent to which partisan groups can come to an agreement about facts, let alone what policy to derive from them.

What’s next

What can pull people on opposite sides of the political spectrum to cooperate with one another, if they cannot agree on what is factually correct?

There are likely more areas where partisan voters do agree with one another than the “culture war” narrative implies – and we hope to learn from them. In work in progress with sociologist Sang Won Han, we are studying lawmakers who frequently co-sponsor bills with politicians in the opposite party.

Sociologists Daniel DellaPosta, Liam Essig and I are also researching what contributes to politicians’ polarization in situations where opposite partisan voters actually do share a consensus. For example, a majority of both Democratic and Republican voters support background checks for gun purchases, while bills for such measures consistently fail to pass.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Minjae Kim does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The growth of “halal mortgages” over the past 20 years has expanded financial access to homeownership for many Muslims. Halal mortgages provide interest-free loans in keeping with Islamic beliefs.

These mortgages are available in over 80 countries that have a significant Muslim population, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Turkey, Bahrain, Indonesia and Pakistan, where they account for the vast majority of the global US$3.9 trillion Islamic finance economy.

Access to halal mortgages has been growing in the United States. Until 1997, no financial institution was willing to offer halal mortgages, but in 2024, over 25 banks had made them available.

The Conversation asked Shariq Siddiqui, assistant professor and director of the Muslim Philanthropy Initiative at Indiana University, to explain halal mortgages.

What are halal mortgages?

Halal mortgages are a tool of Islamic finance and offer an equitable way to gain homeownership. They emphasize risk-sharing and mutual cooperation with the aim of checking unfair exploitation and wealth accumulation in the hands of a few. In such a system, money is a means of exchange rather than a commodity that generates profit.

What are the religious roots of Islamic finance?

The Muslim holy book, the Quran, and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, the Sunnah, prohibit riba, (interest), maisir (speculation) and gharar (uncertainty or uneven risk).

For example, the Quran says, “O you who believe, do not eat up the amounts acquired through ribā (interest), doubled and multiplied. Fear Allah, so that you may be successful.”

Over time, Muslims have sought to develop systems that adhere to these rules. These include bonds that do not receive interest but are based on profit-sharing; socially responsible mutual funds that comply with ethical rules; and insurance that provide protection through a communal fund.

Since World War II, however, monetary policies in the global financial market are largely based upon interest.

How does Islamic financing work in modern context?

In the modern context, Muslims use contract law for economic activity and offer home mortgages without interest. For example, as an attorney, I would develop mortgage contracts that would allow buyers and sellers to transact without interest. This “mortgage” contract would be recorded with the county.

Traditionally, there are three kinds of halal mortgages. In the first, known as ijara, the bank purchases the property and leases it to the homeowner; the homeowner pays rent, principal payments and bank charges; the buyer’s share in the home remains the same until the entire loan is paid off.

Diminishing musharaka is another type of joint ownership plan between the bank and the buyer. The buyer makes principal monthly payments and pays bank charges rather than interest. With each principal payment, the ownership of the buyer increases and the bank’s ownership decreases.

In the third type, murabaha, the bank purchases the home and resells it immediately to the buyer at a higher price – termed as profit. The buyer typically pays a 20% down payment. Thereafter, the buyer makes fixed interest-free payments until the loan is paid off.

What is the availability of halal mortgages in the US?

In 2001 and 2003, respectively, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae started buying Islamic mortgage products to provide extra liquidity in the U.S. Islamic finance market. These government-backed housing giants work under the conservatorship of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and are one of the principal means of bolstering homeownership in the United States.

These mortgage buyers have grown to become the main investors in Islamic mortgages. For example, Freddie Mac has invested in Guidance Residential, one of the largest halal mortgage companies in the U.S.

What are the advantages?

These systems ensure that there is mutual risk-taking between the bank and the homebuyer. For example, should the homebuyer be unable to keep up payments, their prior principal payments are protected and not consumed by the interest. Furthermore, if the home loses value, both homebuyer and bank proportionally lose out on the principal value of the home.

They require greater transparency on costs, fees and responsibilities; both parties are required to work together and fulfill their obligations.

This reduces the risk of failures like the subprime lending crisis, when banks overvalued homes and financed mortgages that buyers could not afford, leading to a global recession in 2008.

What are the downsides?

Halal mortgages are more expensive and more difficult to enter into, as they require a down payment of at least 20%. Furthermore, they are not available in every state in the United States.

Additionally, many Muslims are unwilling to deposit their money in banks, if those banks are required to pay interest or earn part of their revenue based upon interest.

Shariq Siddiqui does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

Title of course:

“Intoxication Nation: Alcohol in American History”

What prompted the idea for the course?

I wanted to get students excited about studying the past by learning about something that is very much a part of their own lives.

Alcohol – somewhat surprisingly to me at first – featured prominently in my own research on minority rights and U.S. democracy in the mid-19th century. As a result, I knew quite a bit about the temperance movement and conflicts over prohibition during that period. Designing this course allowed me to broaden my expertise.

What does the course explore?

Prohibition is a must-do subject. Students expect it. But I cover several hundred years of history: from the 17th-century invention of rum– as a byproduct of sugar produced by enslaved people – to the rise of craft beer and craft spirits in the 21st century.

Along the way, I’m thrilled when students get excited about details that allow them to taste a more complicated historical cocktail. For example, they learn why white women’s production of hard cider was crucial to the survival of colonial Virginia. The short answer: Potable water was in short supply, alcoholic drinks were far healthier, and white men – and their indentured and enslaved workforce – were busy raising tobacco. It fell to women to turn fruit into salvation.

Why is this course relevant now?

Alcohol remains a big and almost inescapable part of American society. But of late, Americans have been drinking differently – and thinking about drinking differently.

Examples abound. Alcohol producers, we learn, now face competition from legalized weed. Drinking levels rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet interest is declining among Gen Zers. The “wine mom” culture that brought some mothers together now faces mounting criticism.

And, of course, there’s the never-ending debate about the health benefits and risks of alcohol. Of late, the risks seem to be dominating headlines.

What’s a critical lesson from the course?

Alcohol has been a highly controversial, central aspect of the American experience, shaping virtually all sectors of our society – political and constitutional, business and economic, social and cultural.

What materials does the course feature?

• Historian Bill Rorabaugh’s“The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition”: a classic social history explaining why Americans in the early 19th century drank twice as much per capita as we do today

• Jack London’s alcoholic memoir, “John Barleycorn”: a deep dive into the notorious workingmen’s saloons of the industrial era, as well as one person’s reckoning with alcoholism

• “Days of Wine and Roses”: the 1962 film starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick that spotlighted the place of alcoholic marriages and Alcoholics Anonymous in post-World War II America

• Murray Sperber’s“Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education”: a provocative early 2000s assessment of college sports and the surrounding party culture vis-a-vis declining academic standards – still relevant today

What will the course prepare students to do?

Like any history course, this one aims to develop student’s analytical, written, research and verbal skills. In lots of ways, the topic is just a tool to get students to grow their brains. But I also seek to grow students’ critical awareness of the place of alcohol in their own lives. The course has also informed students’ paths after graduation – including some who wound up working in the alcohol industry or recovery organizations.

Kyle G. Volk works for the Department of History at the University of Montana. He has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The increase in settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank over the past year has been unprecedented. Since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack and the start of the war, there have been more than 1,000 attacks, according to a new report from the International Crisis Group.

The spike, which has raised international alarm, is often blamed on the permissive policies of Israel’s right-wing government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu. According to a U.N. investigation, nearly half of all settler attacks documented in October 2023 were conducted in collaboration with, or in the presence of, Israeli military forces.

I have studied Jewish violent extremism for more than 20 years. I would argue these developments result from long processes tied to the erosion of Israel’s democratic foundations – that the seeds were planted long before Netanyahu came to power.

Since the late 1970s, the future of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank has been the country’s most divisive debate. Yet the once-fringe settler movement has arguably become the most influential actor in Israeli politics.

Ideological origins

Israel took over the West Bank, then ruled by Jordan, during the 1967 Six-Day War against its Arab-majority neighboring countries.

Afterward, Israel imposed martial law in the region, yet Jewish settlement in the occupied area began immediately afterward. The first settlements were erected illegally and were allowed to stay on a temporary basis. Eventually, after the right-wing Likud party came to power in 1977, the settlements gained legal status and their number expanded rapidly. Most countries, however, consider them a violation of international law.

The first groups of settlers, and still the majority of them, are part of the larger religious Zionist movement, which aspires to combine dedication to a Jewish nation-state with religious orthodoxy. These Israelis consider the emergence of the Zionist movement, the establishment of the state of Israel and its subsequent military victories as phases in a holy redemption, which will end with the coming of the Messiah and the establishment of a Jewish kingdom.

Many believe this process can be expedited by restoring a Jewish presence in the West Bank, which is part of the biblical kingdoms of Judea and Israel.

In 1989, West Bank settlers made up less than 2% of Israel’s total population. Today, they constitute close to 6%, despite the fact that the country’s population has doubled.

About 150 settlements are scattered throughout the West Bank, in addition to unauthorized outposts – undermining the possibility of a viable Palestinian state with an undivided, continuous territory. As the government intensified efforts to promote settlement via various subsidies and the development of infrastructure, a growing number of Israelis have moved to the West Bank to improve their quality of life and for financial reasons rather than ideological ones.

Gaining influence

Settlers traditionally had limited representation in Israel’s Parliament. But that changed, thanks to a combination of several strategies.

Historically, the majority of the secular Israeli public was not willing to support Israel’s control over the West Bank for religious reasons. The left’s position is that settlements are an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians and are morally problematic.

In order to build support, the settlers movement adopted a complementary narrative, focusing on their communities’ contribution to national security. Activists magnified the settlements’ role as a buffer zone between the Palestinian population living under occupation and the main Israeli population centers. Today, nearly half of Jewish Israelis believe they help strengthen national security.

In addition, the movement likened West Bank settlers to the Zionist pioneers who arrived in Palestine at the turn of the 20th century and founded modern Israel – although many of those original Zionists were staunchly secular. Thus, settlers legitimized their cause by portraying themselves as followers of Israel’s founding fathers.

Simultaneously, the settlers gained power within influential Israeli institutions, including the military. Today, settlers hold prominent positions in the army’s leadership, which may partially explain the often weak response to settlers’ illegal activities.

Settlers’ political standing also rose as a result of their ability to gain positions within the government. They achieved this with the help of sympathetic ministers, by using party primaries to extract appointments and by winning existing officeholders to their cause. As right-wing governments became more the norm, some settler leaders became cabinet members.

A case in point is Uri Ariel. After leading the Yesha Council – a forum of mayors of West Bank settlements – Ariel became minister of construction, as well as minister of agriculture and rural development. Before stepping down in 2019, he promoted the expansion of settlements, as well as initiatives to specifically serve the Jewish population in the region, such as roads, tourist sites and industry.

Legitimizing violence

In the past decade, a militant stream gained increasing popularity within the settlers movement.

Known as “Hardalim” – a combination of the words “ultra-Orthodox” and “nationalist” in Hebrew – this group adopts a more Orthodox religious lifestyle. Adherents are less committed to Israel’s liberal and democratic traditions, prioritizing religious and nationalist values.

Furthermore, its leaders have embraced the followers of Kahanism, a racist ideology promoted by Rabbi Meir Kahane in the 1970s and ‘80s. Kahane proposed extreme policies to promote Jewish supremacy in Israel and the West Bank, such as calls to expel all Arabs from the country or prohibit marriage between Jews and Muslims.

Kahane’s followers also justified violence against Palestinians, teaching that harm to a Jew is a desecration of God’s name and must be avenged.

Today, some settler leaders – including past and current Parliament members such as Michael Ben Ari and Zvi Sukkot– have also promoted support for extreme policies to secure Israel’s ongoing control and eventual annexation of the West Bank and Gaza. These include population transfer– a form of ethnic cleansing – as well as mass punishment of Palestinian communities.

Ultimate victory

Following 2022 elections, Prime Minister Netanyahu included extremist settler leaders in his cabinet, which signaled to many settlers that violent and illegal acts against Palestinians would be considered legitimate.

In addition, the appointments have further politicized government bureaucracy. The minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir – a former member of the Kahanist movement – has transformed the police force, employing aggressive measures against Palestinians and demonstrators opposing Netanyahu’s government.

Bezalel Smotrich, the political leader of the Hardali stream of the settler movement, now serves as minister of the treasury. Smotrich has pushed to direct more funding to settlements, approve expansions and legalize unauthorized outposts.

Both ministers and their parties have pressured the government to escalate the military campaign in Gaza. Meanwhile, they have expanded restrictions on West Bank Palestinians, such as limiting permits to work in Israel and increasing limitations on movement– reflecting how far Israel must go to restore its democratic ethos.

Arie Perliger receives funding from NIJ, DOD and DHS for conducting research related to domestic extremism and terrorism.

As the Jewish High Holidays approach, which begin with Rosh Hashanah and continue with Yom Kippur, the theme of forgiveness keeps coming to my mind.

The 10 days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur are referred to in the Jewish tradition as the days of repentance, or the days of awe. During this period, Jews who observe the holidays implore God to respond to their sins with mercy, while also requesting forgiveness from anyone those individuals may have wronged in the past year.

Most conversations about forgiveness focus on the meaning and value of forgiving others. Douglas Stewart, a philosopher of education who has researched forgiveness extensively, writes that to forgive implies a willingness to let go of our negative emotions or hard feelings and to adopt in their place a more generous and compassionate attitude toward our wrongdoers.

Other philosophers have pointed out that the benefits of forgiveness include overcoming resentment, restoring relationships and setting a wrong to rest in the past – without vengeance. As such, to forgive should be considered morally valuable and admirable.

But what about self-forgiveness? Is it morally valuable, or just something we do to make ourselves feel better? And what is self-forgiveness, anyway?

As a philosopher of education, some of my own research has wrestled with these questions.

Defining self-forgiveness

Self-forgiveness means managing to work through painful feelings such as guilt, shame and deep disappointment with ourselves. It entails transforming negative attitudes, such as contempt, anger and shame, into more positive emotions such as respect and humility.

It is important to recognize, however, that a wrongdoer cannot simply reject shame: They must confront it. Moral philosophers such as Byron Williston assert that people who have deeply wronged others, such as betraying a loved one, need to experience shame and take responsibility for their actions – such as asking for forgiveness. Otherwise, an attempt at self-forgiveness is not likely to be meaningful.

Finally, we need to keep in mind that self-forgiveness does not imply someone has extinguished all the negative feelings directed at themselves or is done with self-reproach. This would amount to an impossible goal.

Rather, as philosopher Robin Dillonpointed out, self-forgiveness suggests that someone is no longer being consumed or overwhelmed by those negative feelings. In short, it is possible to forgive ourselves and still view ourselves with a demanding and critical eye.

Moral development

Getting there, though, is not easy. Self-forgiveness entails working through a rigorous process of coming to terms with wrongdoing.

According to ethicist Margaret Holmgren, that process includes at least four steps: acknowledging that what we did was wrong; coming to terms with why it was wrong; allowing ourselves to experience grief and self-resentment at having injured another person; and, finally, making a genuine effort to correct the attitudes that led to the harmful act and making amends to the victim.

In other words, confronting negative emotions, attitudes and patterns is essential prior to attempting to restore relationships with others. Only once we are able to relax the preoccupation with guilt and shame, and to genuinely forgive ourselves, can we meaningfully contribute to relationships as liberated and equal partners – especially in ongoing ones, such as with family and friends.

Of course, there are cases in which the offense is so vast, such as genocide, that no individual can make full restitution or provide an adequate apology for the wrong.

There are other times when an apology is impossible. Perhaps victims are dead; perhaps a direct apology would retraumatize them or do more harm than good.

In those cases, I would argue, an offender can still attempt to work toward self-forgiveness – acknowledging not only the victim’s intrinsic worth but their own, regardless of their ability to make amends. This in itself is moral growth: appreciating that neither is a mere object that can be manipulated or abused.

The take-home point, I would argue, is that going through the process of self-forgiveness is morally beneficial. It can not only liberate people who tend to reproach themselves incessantly, but it can enhance their ability to relate ethically toward others – to acknowledge wrongdoing, while simultaneously affirming their own value.

Most people have experienced at least one situation in which they inflicted pain on someone else and recognized that their words or actions caused harm. In such situations, we also often feel ashamed of ourselves and attempt to apologize or make amends.

Yet I hope that during this High Holiday season we keep in mind that self-forgiveness should also be considered essential. If moral development means a process in which our self-awareness and character mature, then acknowledging wrongdoing and experiencing shame, followed by self-forgiveness, are indispensable for that process.

Mordechai Gordon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The recent launch of the video game “Black Myth: Wukong” has broken numerous records around the world for the number of users. The game is set in the world of the famous Chinese novel “Journey to the West,” where players battle gods and demons of traditional popular Chinese religion. In the first few weeks following its release on Aug. 19, 2024, “Black Myth: Wukong” had reportedly sold over 18 million copies, making it one of the fastest-selling games of all time.

Players take on the role of freeing Sun Wukong, the monkey protagonist from the popular 16th-century novel. The story details the journey of the Chinese monk, Xuanzang, as he makes his way to India in search of Buddhist scrolls. Sun Wukong aids the monk in this trip. Yet, the monkey proves to be the ultimate troublemaker, as Sun Wukong insults popular gods of the Chinese pantheon and insists on besting them in magical battles. Sun Wukong’s fate is sealed when the Buddha imprisons him under a mountain as punishment for all the havoc he created in Heaven.

The video game picks up after the end of the story, pitting the player against those whom Sun Wukong had fought in the popular narrative. In so doing, the game continually references the complex and competitive world of traditional Chinese religion in which Buddhist, Taoist and popular gods are always interacting with one another.

As a scholar of Chinese religion, I am interested in the ways narratives of Chinese deities become popular and spread across different contexts. The popularity of “Black Myth: Wukong” is the most recent example in a centuries-old tradition of retelling this story through popular media.

Many stories, many versions

“Journey to the West” was first published in 1592, but the stories were popular long before that.

As scholar of Chinese literature Anthony Yu notes, the various tales describing Xuanzong and Sun Wukong’s adventures existed for nearly 1,000 years before they were collected and published in “Journey to the West.” People in traditional China would hear many of these adventures through oral storytelling, but also through various media such as dramatic performances, poetic tales and short stories.

Traveling opera troupes were one of the most popular ways to tell Sun Wukong’s tale. Professional actors would perform tales of Sun Wukong’s exploits through dramatic renditions coupled with acrobatic fight scenes and dazzling displays of martial arts. These entertaining performances would disseminate information about the gods to both literate and illiterate audiences all throughout China.

Stories of Sun Wukong’s mischievous, and often irreverent, behavior made their rounds throughout traditional Chinese society. The monkey hero’s brash attempts at subverting authority and picking fights with divine personae cemented his place as a popular cultural icon. As scholar of Chinese religions Meir Shahar notes, novels such as “Journey to the West” served as a way to define and transmit an entire pantheon of deities all across the various regions of traditional China.

In so doing, these forms of media would reflect the dynamic world of Chinese religion and, at the same time, help shape the way people would come to understand the stories of their own gods.

Impact on Chinese religions

Many of the characters who appear in “Journey to the West” come directly out of the Chinese pantheon. Guanyin, the Buddhist deity of compassion and one of the most popular gods across East Asia, has her struggles against Sun Wukong; Taoist figures, such as the deified Lao-tzu, the purported author of the Taoist classic “Tao Te Ching,” battles with the monkey, and ancient Chinese deities like the Queen Mother to the West and the Jade Emperor play a prominent role as authority figures throughout the story.

Sun Wukong also battles localized gods like the martial deity Erlang. Many of these figures are also referenced throughout the video game, while some, like Erlang, appear as “bosses” who need to be defeated before moving on to the next level.

In the novel, the gods work together to stand in the way of Sun Wukong, representing the authority of the Chinese pantheon. At the same time, Sun Wukong often gets the better of the gods, either through trickery or martial prowess. Eventually, the authority of the gods wins out, with the monkey trapped under the mountain. Yet, this is not the end of Sun Wukong. As the recent release of the video game demonstrates, it is but one more beginning to the monkey’s story.

While the game is careful not to promote any one religious identity, the cultural source for these compelling characters remains deeply rooted in the long history of Chinese religions.

Today’s gamers get to encounter aspects of Chinese culture in a whole new way. Players who may be unfamiliar with Sun Wukong’s character from the novel can still see Sun Wukong flip in the air, brandish his weapons and defeat his enemies with dramatic flair. Only now the gamer gets to perform these feats through their connection with the video game’s hero.

Still, while the gaming experience may be relatively new, enjoying tales of the gods is very old.

Michael Naparstek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The Nicaraguan government recently shut down more than 1,500 nonprofits – many of them civic and religious groups doing humanitarian work in a country long mired in political violence, economic upheaval and social strife.

The August 2024 closures were the latest in a long-running crackdown on civil society, including religious groups – some of the last influential, independent organizations in the country. That same month, the government revoked churches’ tax-exempt status. Over the past few years, many houses of worship have been closed or had their bank accounts frozen.

As a sociologist, I have worked with Central American scholars to research the role of religionin public life in Central America, including Nicaragua. Several hundred Catholic figures have been detained in an ongoing crackdown under President Daniel Ortega, now 78, who leads the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

Sweeping suppression

Ortega’s FSLN party, as it is known in Spanish, is the authoritarian remnant of the group that led a broad national movement against Anastasio Somoza Debayle’s dictatorship in the 1970s. After overthrowing Somoza in 1979, Ortega and the Sandinistas governed until losing the 1990 election.

Since Ortega returned to power in the 2006 elections, moderates have fled the FSLN, which since then has used oppression and violence for political and social control. In 2013, the National Assembly removed presidential term limits set by the Nicaraguan constitution.

In April 2018, Ortega’s regime began targeting student protesters. Since then, hundreds of citizens — religious leaders, university students, academics, journalists and doctors — have been killed or arrested, gone into hiding or been forced to flee the country.

Ortega’s crackdown has been broad. Universities had their assets confiscated and funding cut, and some have been shut down as the government took control of higher education. Media outlets have been shuttered, and international aid organizations have been expelled.

Paramilitary police officers and prison guards have been accused of engaging in arbitrary killings and torture. Meanwhile, a record number of refugees are fleeing the country.

Silencing churches

Among the nearly 5,500 nonprofits that closed in Nicaragua between 2018 and 2024 are Catholic, evangelical Christian and historical Protestant organizations, as well as secular humanitarian ones. Of those, 1,650 organizationsand churches were shuttered in August 2024, with government officials claiming their closure was due to ties to private enterprises or a lack of financial records.

Catholic media andradio stations, missionary orders and humanitarian groups have been shuttered, too, as Ortega and the vice president – his wife, Rosario Murillo – have sought to eliminate settings where ideas and information freely flow, and people act independently of the government.

The highest-profile religious leader caught up in the clampdown is Rolando Álvarez, a popular bishop, critic of Ortega, and a prominent Catholic voice of protest. Álvarez was detained in August 2022, accused of “conspiracy and spreading false news,” stripped of his citizenship and sentenced to 26 years in prison.

With international pressure mounting, Alvarez and a group of fellow detained Catholic clergy were released in January 2024 and exiled to the Vatican– where the regime had previously expelled the apostolic nuncio, the pope’s top diplomat in Nicaragua. They are among 245 Catholic figures the country has expelled in recent years. An additional 135 people, including Catholics and evangelicals, were expelled and stripped of their citizenship in September 2024.

Today, 43% of Nicaraguan citizens identity as Catholics. But that percentage used to be much higher, and the country has deep cultural roots in Catholicism.

In Nicaragua, as in much of Latin America, the Catholic Church is the most powerful source of social authority and the largest independent institution for public debate. It represents a key channel through which democratic values may take root, grow and thrive – an obstacle, in the regime’s eyes.

For many years, the church was the only organization to escape Ortega’s grip – but no longer.

Dangerous path

I have witnessed firsthand Nicaragua’s shift from a country with promising seeds of democracy to violent autocracy. As civil war raged between the original Sandinista regime and U.S.-backed Contras in the 1980s, I led travel seminars to Nicaragua for faith groups, journalists, congressional aides and university students. I once personally encountered Ortega, serving as translator during a meeting with American journalists when his official translator failed to show up.

Today, as Ortega continues to consolidate power by crushing opposition, Nicaragua has deteriorated into an oppressive state ruled with an iron fist. This reality reflects broader dynamics globally, from autocratic movements in the U.S. and Western Europe to current regimes in Russia, India, Turkey, Hungary and China.

Closer to home, Ortega poses a regional threat as a model for other potential autocrats. This is especially the case for neighbors like El Salvador, where President Nayib Bukele – the popular, self-described “coolest dictator” – is going down a similar path of turning the nation into an authoritarian state.

I have seen Nicaraguans’ generosity and courage in the long fight for liberty and justice. The closure of democratic spaces, civic institutions and humanitarian organizations, along with the suppression of religious freedom, is a glaring sign that the country is being marched toward more oppression and violence – and, as history shows, risks becoming ripe for revolution.

Only a gradual rebuilding of civil society, I believe, may save Nicaragua from that fate. The tragedy is what Nicaragua could have been: a thriving democratic society, with a commitment to empowering the poor.

From 1983-1987 and part-time from 1987-1992, Richard Wood worked running travel seminars in Mexico and Central America. From 2010-2012, he received funding from the Center on Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California and The John Templeton Foundation for research collaboration with Central American researchers.

Supporters of both major U.S. political parties tend to claim their presidential candidate is the “real” Christian or the “better” Christian or just the “true” Christian.

For a majority of white evangelical protestants, Trump is the good Christian. Christians for Kamala, a newly created group of self-identified Christians who support the Democratic nominee, say that her campaign embodies the “compassionate heart of Jesus and his teachings.”

Yet, most American adults agree that religion should be separate from government. This widely shared belief is a cornerstone of religious freedom. As a scholar of religious freedom, I have studied the complex and ever-evolving role of religion in American politics. I argue that this election year, while the Christian character of each candidate is discussed everywhere, religious freedom, one of the core freedoms of American democracy, is not.

The case of Ezra Stiles Ely

America’s history of religious freedom is filled with stories that are instructive for our current moment. One such instructive lesson comes from the early 19th century.

The Second Great Awakening was an intense period of religious revival. Evangelical Christians sought to reform American law and politics to reflect what they considered to be true Christianity. According to legal scholar Geoffrey R. Stone, it was at this time the claim that the “United States is a ‘Christian nation’ first seriously took root.”

A striking figure from the period is the Philadelphia Presbyterian minister Ezra Stiles Ely. On July 4, 1827, the Yale-educated minister delivered his infamous call for “a Christian political party” in the run-up to the 1828 presidential election.

Ely’s oration, The Duty of Christian Freemen to Elect Christian Rulers, is a 19th-century version of what is today called “Christian nationalism.” In it, Ely lays out his view of a distinctly Christian vision of who should serve as political leaders and how they should govern.

Before an Independence Day audience in Philadelphia’s Seventh Presbyterian Church, Ely declared, “Every ruler should be an avowed and sincere friend of Christianity. He should know and believe the doctrines of our holy religion, and act in conformity to its precepts.” Ely also advocated for “a new sort of union, or, if you will, a Christian party in politics.”

Ely closed his sermon by exhorting Christians to “awake … to our sacred duty to our Divine Master; and let us have no rulers, without our consent and cooperation, who are not known to be avowedly Christians.”

Critiques in defense of religious freedom

While Ely sought to wed Christianity and American politics, others voices responded against this move. Religious freedom was new for the young nation. Yet, its supporters recognized its importance for American democracy.

On Feb. 7, 1828, a pamphlet titled Sunday School Union, or Union of Church and State was placed on the desk of each member of the Pennsylvania Senate. The pamphlet contained excerpts of Ely’s speech that advocated the union of Christianity and politics. Ely’s speech was also the subject of debate in several 19th-century newspapers, including the Harrisburg Chronicle and The Pennsylvania Reporter.

Notable among these voices was Massachusetts-born and Harvard-educated Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story.

In an 1828 speech delivered in Salem, Massachusetts, Story boldly declared his support for religious freedom. He stated: “Religious freedom is the birthright of man; that governments have no authority to inflict punishment for conscientious differences of opinion; and that to worship God according to our own belief is not only our privilege, but is our duty, our absolute duty, from which no human tribunal can absolve us.”

“Wherever religious liberty exist,” he argued, “it will, first or last, bring in, and establish political liberty.”

Politics and American democracy

America is not the same as at the time of the Second Great Awakening. Yet, the role of Christianity in political life is seemingly as alive as ever.

The steady decline in church attendance has not resulted in a diminished Christian presence in American public life. The public square still contains powerful appeals to Christianity rather than a shared democratic heritage.

Former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump recently stated, “We have to bring back our religion. We have to bring back Christianity in this country.”

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has commended the religious convictions of citizens, stating, “People with deep religious convictions may be less likely to succumb to dominating ideologies or trends, and more likely to act in accordance with what they see as true and right. Civil society can count on them as engines of reform.”

A 2023 survey, in which the nonprofit, nonpartisan research and education organization PRRI interviewed more than 22,000 adults, found that approximately 3 in 10 Americans either supported or held Christian nationalist views. Christian nationalists tend “to see political struggles through the apocalyptic lens of revolution and to support political violence.”

In my opinion, the linkage of Christianity and politics in the United States undermines American democracy. Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, a prominent public voice, explains how Christian nationalism undermines both Christianity and American democracy. In her 2024 book “How to End Christian Nationalism,” Tyler writes, “Christian nationalism is the greatest threat to religious liberty in the U.S. today, as well as a clear and present danger to our constitutional republic.”

While debates over the Christian virtues of the candidates may be important for Christian communities, religious freedom is important for American democracy. The response to Christianity and politics is not more Christianity but more democracy. And religious freedom is key.

Corey D. B. Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The Family Research Council is a conservative advocacy group with a “biblical worldview.” While it has a church ministries department that works with churches from several evangelical Christian denominations that share its perspectives, it does not represent a single denomination. Although its activities are primarily focused on policy, advocacy, government lobbying and public communication, the Internal Revenue Service granted the council’s application to be treated as “an association of churches” in 2020.

Concerned that the IRS had erred in allowing the council and similar groups to be designated churches or associations of churches, Democratic members of the House of Representatives sent the Treasury secretary and the IRS commissionerletters in 2022 and 2024 expressing alarm. The House Democrats pointed to what appeared to be “abuse” of the tax code and asked the IRS to “determine whether existing guidance is sufficient to prevent abuse and what resources or Congressional actions are needed.”

As a professor of nonprofit law, I believe some groups that aren’t churches or associations of churches want to be designated that way to avoid the scrutiny being a charitable organization otherwise requires. At the same time, some other groups that should qualify as churches may have difficulty doing so because of the IRS’ outdated test for that status.

Together with my colleague Ellen P. Aprill, I recently published a paper outlining two main arguments in favor of revising the federal government’s definitions of churches as they pertain to tax law.

No 990s means less scrutiny

All charitable nonprofits, including churches, get the same basic benefits under federal tax law. This means they don’t have to pay taxes on their revenue and that donors can deduct the value of their gifts from their taxable income – as long as they itemize deductions on their tax return.

Unlike other tax-exempt charities, churches don’t have to file 990 forms. That means the public does not have access to churches’ staff pay, board membership and funding details, which are in this publicly available tax form that all other charities must complete every year. The availability of 990 forms enhances the transparency and accountability of the nonprofit sector.

And churches and associations of churches are unlikely to get audited by the IRS. Federal law requires that a senior IRS official “reasonably believes” the church or association has violated federal tax rules before beginning an investigation. This means that an official must have reason to believe the organization has violated federal tax law before obtaining any information from the organization.

This standard is higher than what’s needed before an audit can begin for all other tax-exempt organizations and indeed all taxpayers. For everyone else, the IRS is free to begin an examination based only on a suspicion of a violation or even based on random selection.

Also, unlike other tax-exempt charities, churches and church associations are automatically eligible for their tax-exempt status. They don’t have to apply for it.

Why churches get special treatment

Congress has passed laws granting churches and what it calls “integrated auxiliaries” and “conventions or associations of churches” special protections because the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects religious freedom.

Churches include houses of worship ranging in size from a handful of parishioners to megachurches with 10,000 or more people attending weekly services. Houses of worship of all faiths, including synagogues, mosques and temples, count as churches, according to the IRS.

Integrated auxiliaries are church schools and other organizations affiliated with churches or conventions and primarily supported by internal church sources, as opposed to by the public or government.

Conventions or associations of churches are organizations that have houses of worship from either a single denomination or from multiple denominations as their members. Most denominational bodies, such as the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are likely conventions or associations of churches, although the IRS does not publish a list of such entities.

Not every religious nonprofit belongs in one of these categories.

For example, the University of Notre Dame, where I teach law students and conduct legal research, and World Vision, a global humanitarian group, are both religious organizations that do not fall into any of these categories. This makes sense, because Notre Dame and World Vision are primarily engaged in activities other than fostering a religious congregation or coordinating the activities of churches within a single denomination.

The IRS has long relied on a 14-factor test to distinguish churches from the other religious nonprofits. Examples of those factors include having ordained ministers, a formal doctrine, a distinct membership and a regular congregation attending religious services.

It’s not necessary for all the factors to apply to pass this test.

Yet for almost as long, courts have been uncomfortable with this test because it draws heavily on the traditional characteristics of Protestant Christian churches, as the U.S. Court of Federal Claims explained in a 2009 ruling. This system therefore may be a poor fit for houses of worship of other faiths, especially given the increasing diversity of faith communities.

These courts have instead adopted an “associational test.” It focuses on whether the organization’s congregants hold religious services on a regular basis and gather in person on other occasions.

With the growth of virtual and televised religious services, an update of this test is overdue.

Proposed solutions

Aprill and I recommend that the IRS change its definition for churches to the associational one adopted by some courts in rulings as early as 1980. As the U.S. Court of Federal Claims explained in that 2009 ruling, this test focuses on whether a body of believers assembles regularly to worship. Given technological advances, the IRS should also make it clear that this test can be satisfied through remote participation in religious services using interactive, teleconferencing apps such as Zoom.

This definition would be also better suited for congregations of all faiths because some faiths do not prioritize many of the factors included in the IRS test, such as having a formal code of doctrine or requiring members to not be associated with other houses of worship or faiths. And it would better reflect how some Americans participate in religious services today.

We recommend that the IRS revisit its test for being a church and that Congress pass a law that would change the definition of church associations. The new law could limit associations of churches to organizations that represent a single denomination, as Congress likely initially intended.

This latter change would make it harder for religious organizations that are primarily involved in bringing churches from multiple faiths together to engage in advocacy or other activities to obtain this status and the lack of transparency and accountability that come with it. We believe Congress, not the IRS, should make this change because of the potential political tensions that narrowing the definition could create.

We don’t think the changes would impinge upon the special role that churches have in our society. Indeed, the revised test for qualifying as a church would better fit with both the increasing variety of faiths in our country and technological advancements.

Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer is affiliated with the University of Notre Dame, a tax-exempt religious nonprofit corporation. Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer is also affiliated with South Bend City Church, a tax-exempt religious nonprofit corporation that is classified as a church for federal tax purposes.

In preparation for the many Hindu fall festivals such as Diwali, Dussehra or Durga Puja, worshipers all over the world will purchase flowers for use in ritual worship in temples, outdoor ceremonies or altars at home.

Throughout India, markets are always bustling with flower vendors, selling freshly cut marigolds, roses and lotus flowers. Devotees offer flowers and flower garlands to Hindu deities such as Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth; Ganesha, the remover of obstacles; or the warrior goddess Durga.

India’s wealthiest temple, Sri Venkateswara Temple at Tirumala, in southern India, used 3 tons of flowers during a floral bath and procession ceremony in 2024. The demand for flowers in worship is so high that two sisters from Bengaluru, Yeshodha and Rhea Karuturi, started a subscription-based service in 2019 to provide fresh flowers for puja or ritual worship throughout India.

Hindu texts describe worship with flowers as one of 16 “upacaras” or “services” to the divine. In temple rituals, “pujaris,” priests responsible for conveying the offerings to the deity, place flowers at the feet or drape them in garlands around the neck of the icon of the deity enshrined in the temple. Flowers are placed on a puja table at the feet of the image with the stems facing the devotee.

As a scholar of South Asian religions, I know that stories found in the “Puranas,” religious texts likely composed between the second and 10th centuries, describe why gods and goddesses favor certain flowers. The Puranas, loosely translated as “Old Tales,” include popular stories about Hindu gods and goddesses, kings and queens, and sages and other cultural heroes.

Pleasing the gods

In her study of the use of Sanskrit ritual manuals in central India, the Indologist Gudrun Buhnemann noted that devotees, ancient and modern, observe elaborate rules for the use of flowers in the worship of particular deities.

For example, the manuals say that basil is favored by the Hindu god Vishnu but should never be offered to the god Ganesha. Lord Shiva grants blessings to those who worship him through offering leaves from the wood apple tree. Wood apple leaves, however, should never be offered to Surya, the Sun.

The “Skandha Purana” – the longest Purana with about 81,000 verses – is dedicated to the deity Skandha, a son of god Shiva and goddess Parvati. The text provides a gradation of flowers that culminates in the superiority of the jasmine or “jati” flower for the worship of Vishnu. “The jati flower is better than all other flowers … the man who duly offers me a splendid garland with a thousand jati flowers … lives in my heavenly city for billions of kalpas (ages),” Vishnu explains in the text.

In her classic study “Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls: Popular Goddess Worship in West Bengal,” religion scholar June McDaniel discusses traditional practices for the worship of Kali, the fearsome and protective mother goddess, who is to be decorated in red hibiscus flowers. Red flowers, in general, are believed to be sacred to Kali.

The 14th chapter of the “Shiva Purana” contains a section on “Directions for the Worship of Shiva.” Those who desire wealth should worship Shiva with flowers or petals from the “kamala” or lotus flower, chrysanthemum, or marigold. Worshiping Shiva with 100 flowers is said to enhance one’s wealth and wipe away all sins.

Flowers can at times displease the gods

The Puranas also explain which flowers might displease the gods. Red flowers, such as plumeria, and those from the screw pine tree are not to be offered to the god Shiva. The Shiva Purana, in fact, explains why the “ketaki,” or screw pine flower, should never be offered to Shiva in worship.

Once upon a time, as the story goes, gods Vishnu and Brahma were debating which of them was the superior deity when suddenly a shaft of blazing light appeared between them. They decided to investigate. Transforming himself into a boar, Vishnu tunneled down into the earth to search for the origin of the lingam of light. Riding on a goose, his divine vehicle, Brahma flew upward in an attempt to discover the extent of the light.

After much digging, Vishnu indicated that he was unable to discover the light’s place of origin. While flying upward, however, Brahma encountered a ketaki flower that had fallen from a branch nearby. Brahma convinced the flower to support a false claim suggesting that he had reached the top of the shaft of light.

Just at that moment, Shiva appeared from the light and cursed both Brahma and the ketaki flower for their dishonesty. Due to his arrogance and deception, Brahma would henceforth have few devotees. For its part, despite being aromatic and pleasing to the eye, the ketaki flower is cursed by Shiva never to be offered to him in ritual worship.

However, Shiva later amends the curse to allow for the ketaki to be used for worshiping him during the popular festival called the “Great Night of Shiva” or Mahashivratri. Due to the increase in demand, there is a surge in the price of ketaki flowers during this annual spring festival.

In one of the most popular Hindu texts, however, the flower offered is less important to the deity than the attitude of the devotee making the offering. In the “Bhagavad Gita” or “Song of the Lord,” the deity Krishna declares that he will accept any sincere devotional offering, regardless of the type of flower: “Whoever offers me a leaf, flower, fruit, or water with sincere devotion, I will accept them.”

Lotus for Lakshmi

During the coming fall holiday season, devotees around the world will honor many deities, including the mother goddess, with flowers and other rituals. Prominent among the deities will be Sri Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and good fortune.

Lakshmi is depicted as seated on a lotus throne, while also holding a lotus in one hand. The lotus flower grows in muddy ponds or pools but blossoms above the water. The lotus in bloom symbolizes many of the qualities associated with Sri Lakshmi, such as purity, prosperity and spiritual enlightenment.

When devotees around the world lovingly welcome the goddess into their homes on Diwali, the festival of light, they will be sure to offer Lakshmi her favorite flower – the lotus.

Robert J. Stephens does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Since returning to power three years ago, the Taliban have been enforcing oppressive laws that violate people’s freedoms and human rights, especially those of women and girls.

But a newly passed “vice and virtue” law goes further. It is among the most repressive and discriminatory measures ever enacted by the Islamist fundamentalist group.

As a human rights activist from Afghanistan, and as a scholar working on Afghanistan since 2002, we have been documenting the Taliban’s attacks against women for decades.

The new law seeks to completely silence women in public. They are prohibited from speaking, singing or praying aloud. The law also attempts to literally erase them from view, ordering women to cover every part of their body and face in public.

The edict suppresses most of women’s political, civil and human rights guaranteed under international law. And if women resist, it orders the use of violence to repress them.

A return to power

Generations of women who grew up in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, and who are now living in Afghanistan and abroad, have responded to the vice and virtue law with disbelief and horror.

After 2001, when the Taliban were removed from power, millions of Afghan women and girls went to school. They became professionals – lawyers, artists, athletes, engineers and human rights leaders. They voted in large numbers and served in all areas of government.

But the Taliban returned to power in August 2021 after waging a violent war against the United States and Afghanistan’s NATO-backed government. And they have aggressively rolled back two decades of advancements in women’s rights.

Since then, the Taliban have issued over 100 decrees and directives that violate women’s and girls’ rights under international law and Afghan national law.

They include more than 20 increasingly restrictive directives. Among other things, they ban women and girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade, denying 1.5 million girls and young women access to education. Afghanistan is now the only country in the world to ban girls from both secondary school and university.

The mandates have also barred women and girls from employment in the United Nations and other nongovernmental organizations. This has made it exceptionally difficult for humanitarian aid agencies to reach Afghan women and children in dire need of assistance, particularly in public health.

The fundamentalist group, additionally, prohibits women and girls from traveling, going to parks or being in public without a male relative accompanying them. And it bars women and girls from gathering to protest this treatment.

Punishments include torture and rape

To enforce these violations, the Taliban dissolved the Ministry of Women’s Affairs just weeks after assuming power and replaced it with the Ministry of Virtue and Vice, whose morality police violently enforce the measures.

Punishments for those who protest the laws include beatings, detention, torture, rape and death. Women protesters have reported being beaten and tortured with electric shocks. The Taliban have reportedly raped girls and women in jail, including filming the gang rape of an Afghan woman activist jailed for protesting.

Women, simultaneously, have no means of seeking justice. The Taliban have abolished the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. The commission investigated and reported about alleged extrajudicial killings, rape, torture, illegal detention and inhuman treatment and violence against women, among other rights violations.

The Taliban, additionally, have eliminated other mechanisms for protecting women, including by shuttering all women’s shelters and domestic violence centers.

‘Duty-bound to hide her voice’

The new vice and virtue law further breaches women’s rights.

Article 13, for example, dictates that if a woman leaves her home, she “is duty-bound to hide her voice, face and body.”

It orders women’s voices to be completely silenced. They are not to speak, sing, laugh, cry, pray or recite the Quran in public. The measure instructs enforcers to prevent“the sound of a woman’s voice or any music emanating from any gathering or from the home.”

The measure also defines the hijab, a head covering worn in public by some Muslim women, in the most restrictive terms possible. No longer just a head covering, the hijab is extended to a full body covering and veiling of the face. Women are also prohibited from making eye contact with men.

This runs against Afghan tradition. Traditional Afghan attire for women is brilliantly colored, elaborately decorated, with long sleeves, full skirts and pants underneath.

Wider restrictions

The vice and virtue measure also takes aim at the general population.

It censors people’s access to media and dictates punishments for broadcasting music, videos, photographs or films of humans or animals. Article 22 forbids Afghan women and men from befriending non-Muslims or assisting them in any way.

The law gives overwhelming power to religious inspectors, called “enforcers.”

Enforcers can act based on observation and hearsay, or the testimony of two people.

And there is a list of punishments that enforcers can apply. They include intimidation, verbal punishment and the confiscation and destruction of property.

Repeated violations by individuals or groups can lead to prosecution before a court. Based on the Taliban’s erroneous interpretation of Sharia criminal law, the vice and virtue law allows for long-term imprisonment, stoning, flogging, execution and being thrown from a mountain.

Shortly after the measure was enacted, for example, enforcers severely assaulted two women for going to the city market.

The vice and virtue mandate has dashed many Afghans’ hope of real change in the Taliban’s repressive policies. And it has cast serious doubt on how successful the international community has been in its efforts to improve the status of Afghan women.

In recent high-level talks with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, U.N. and U.S. officials caved on the Taliban’s demands for the complete exclusion of Afghan women from the talks. Just weeks later, the Taliban, seemingly emboldened, announced their new virtue and vice law.

These human rights violations run counter to religion and culture in Afghanistan, where women have a long history of fighting for their rights.

Today, there is perhaps no other country in the world that uniformly violates the human rights of women and girls to the level of the Taliban. But it’s not only the problem for the women and girls in Afghanistan. The protection of human rights and human dignity is a responsibility that falls to each one of us.

Dyan Mazurana receives funding from a number of governments, United Nations agencies, international organizations and private foundations to support her research.

Sima Samar is affiliated with Afghanistan Human Rights Center, which received funding from Counterpart for establishing the office.

Mindfulness, the meditation practice that brings one’s attention to present experiences, is gaining traction in the business world.

Researchers have long known that being mindful causes physical and mental benefits such as better brain health, decision-making and stress resilience. Major companies such as Google, Aetna and Intel offer mindfulness training programs as a way to boost employee well-being and productivity.

Building on this trend, financial products and services are starting to use the term “financial mindfulness” as a way to appeal to consumers. For instance, Fidelity talks about the importance of mindfulness in saving and investing, while PNC and Vanguard focus on regulating your emotions during financial planning.

Retailers offer financial mindfulness journals that claim to help people distinguish needs from wants and set financial goals. Books such as “Mindful Money” and “The Mindful Millionaire” explore how to achieve peace and prosperity through money management. Fintech has hopped on the financial mindfulness bandwagon, with apps such as Financial Mindfulness, Allo: Mindful Money Tracker and Aura, a mindful money management platform designed to “help you put your money to work and anxiety to rest.”

But not everyone agrees on what “financial mindfulness” means – and does it even matter?

The short answer is yes.

What financial mindfulness is

Together, our team has 32 years of experience investigating the psychology of consumer finance. Georgetown professor Simon Blanchardand I, along with Cornell Ph.D. student Lena Kim, conducted the first large-scale academic study on financial mindfulness.

We began by conducting a dozen hourlong interviews to ask: “What does financial mindfulness mean to you?” The people we interviewed were from various life stages, from their late teens to early 60s, and they could speak to different kinds of financial stressors: everything from how to best manage college debt, to how to navigate the financial and emotional stress of a divorce, to how to stay on track with retirement saving.

Our interviews revealed two main abilities that consumers associate with being financially mindful: high levels of financial awareness, or knowing what you have and what you owe; and high levels of financial acceptance.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean being complacent. Instead, it’s about being able to face unpleasant financial decisions without letting your emotions take over.

We used these two components to create an eight-item scale to measure how financially mindful someone is.

Why financial mindfulness matters

We then wanted to examine whether financial mindfulness actually results in better financial decisions.

Past research has shown that practicing general mindfulness makes people less likely to fall prey to the sunk cost bias: the tendency to continue working on something just because you’ve already invested large amounts of money, effort or time.

As an example, people are told that an investment strategy they developed over several months is not working, and there is no way to recover their lost time or money. Those who show the bias decide to continue with their current investment strategy even though they know it’s not working.

Importantly, when we measured how generally mindful someone is, as well as how mindful they are about finances in particular, we found that their level of financial mindfulness is a better predictor of the decision to change their investment strategy. Put differently, people with a good awareness of their finances, and who are willing to accept their financial situation, are better able to resist the sunk cost bias, since they are better able to manage emotions surrounding their money.

In addition to collecting our own data, we also partnered with two fintech apps that allowed us to administer our financial mindfulness scale to their customers.

With Aura Finance, a wealth-management app that targets young, high-earning women, we examined each user’s percentage allocation of stocks versus bonds, a common measure of investment risk tolerance. There is no optimal split level between stocks and bonds, but younger people are typically advised to take on more financial risk. Although we did not include the Aura data in our published paper, when we matched users’ scale scores to their portfolios, we found that financially mindful users were willing to take on more risk in their portfolios.

With Debbie, an app that helps customers track progress toward repaying debt and provides rewards when they achieve goals, we found that those who are more financially mindful have higher credit scores. Every 1-point increase in financial mindfulness was associated with a 14.8-point increase in credit score.

Increasing financial mindfulness

In the current economic climate, financial stress is a major concern for many Americans, leading to anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. Here are some practical steps to bring mindfulness to your finances:

1. Build financial awareness: Track and monitor your spending habits using available software, tools and apps, such as those offered through your bank. This will help you understand your relationship with money and build financial awareness. You can’t have financial mindfulness without knowing what’s going on with your own money.

2. Develop financial acceptance: You also need to accept your financial situation, even if your finances are not where you want them to be. Take advantage of services such as money coaches or online communities for money matters. Talking about money helps.

3. Learn about your money personality– your core beliefs about whether money can solve problems and what financial goals are most important to you. This will help you to develop better coping mechanisms.

Incorporating mindfulness into financial practices and habits can help people navigate their financial journeys. Based on our research, we believe that financial service providers should continue to offer not only awareness-related services but also acceptance tools – helping their customers lead financially happier lives.

Our research team partnered with Aura Finance and Debbie to collect some of the data discussed in this article.

Across the United States, the second Monday of October is increasingly becoming known as Indigenous Peoples Day. In the push to rename Columbus Day, Christopher Columbus himself has become a metaphor for the evils of early colonial empires, and rightly so.

The Italian explorer who set out across the Atlantic in search of Asia was a notorious advocate for enslaving the Indigenous Taínos of the Caribbean. In the words of historian Andrés Reséndez, he “intended to turn the Caribbean into another Guinea,” the region of West Africa that had become a European slave-trading hub.

By 1506, however, Columbus was dead. Most of the genocidal acts of violence that defined the colonial period were carried out by many, many others. In the long shadow of Columbus, we sometimes lose sight of the ideas, laws and ordinary people who enabled colonial violence on a large scale.

As a historian of colonial Latin America, I often begin such discussions by pointing to a peculiar document drafted several years after Columbus’ death that would have greater repercussions for Indigenous peoples than Columbus himself: the Requerimiento, or “Requirement.”

Catch-22

In 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas infamously divided much of the world beyond Europe into two halves: one for the Spanish crown, the other for the Portuguese. Spaniards lay claim to almost the entirety of the Americas, though they knew almost nothing about this vast domain or the people who lived there.

In order to inform Indigenous people that they had suddenly become vassals of Spain, King Ferdinand and his councilors instructed colonizers to read the Requerimiento aloud upon first contact with all Indigenous groups.

The document presented them with a choice that was no choice at all. They could either become Christians and submit to the authority of the Catholic Church and the king, or else:

“With the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can … we shall take you and your wives and your children and shall make slaves of them … the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault.”

It was a catch-22. According to the document, Indigenous people could either voluntarily surrender their sovereignty and become vassals or bring war upon themselves – and perhaps lose their sovereignty anyway, after much bloodshed. No matter what they chose, the Requerimiento supplied the legal pretext for forcibly incorporating sovereign Indigenous peoples into the Spanish domain.

At its core, the Requerimiento was a legal ritual, a performance of possession – and it was unique to early Spanish imperialism.

‘As absurd as it is stupid’

But for all of its seeming authority, the reading of the Requerimiento was an absurd exercise. It first occurred at what is now Santa Marta, Colombia, during the expedition led by Pedrarias Dávila in 1513. An eyewitness, the chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, stated the obvious: “we have no one here who can help [the Indigenous people] understand it.”

Even with a translator, though, the document – with its lofty references to the Biblical creation of the world and papal authority – would hardly be intelligible to people unfamiliar with the Spaniards’ religion. Explaining the convoluted document would require nothing less than a long recitation of Catholic history.

Oviedo suggested that to deliver such a lecture, you’d have to first capture and cage an Indigenous person. Even then, it would be impossible to verify whether the document had been fully understood.

However, for the Requerimiento’s greatest critic, Bartolomé de las Casas, translation was merely one of many problems. A missionary from Spain, Las Casas criticized the spurious requirement itself: that a people should be expected to immediately convert to a religion they have only just learned exists, and

“swear allegiance to a king they have never heard of nor clapped eyes on, and whose subjects and ambassadors prove to be cruel, pitiless and bloodthirsty tyrants. … Such a notion is as absurd as it is stupid and should be treated with the disrespect, scorn and contempt it so amply deserves.”

Las Casas, who documented abuses against Indigenous people in multiple books and speeches, was one of the most outspoken denouncers of Spanish cruelty in the Americas. While he believed Spaniards had a right and even an obligation to convert Indigenous people to Catholicism, he did not believe that conversion should be done under the threat of violence.

Wars and forced settlement

Indigenous people responded to the Requerimiento in numerous ways. When the Chontal Maya of Potonchan – a Maya capital now part of Mexico – heard the conquistador Hernando Cortés read the document three consecutive times, they answered with arrows. After Cortés captured the town, they agreed to become Christian vassals of Spain on the condition that the Spaniards “leave their land.” When Cortés’ men remained after three days, the Chontal Maya attacked again.

Farther north, Spanish expeditioners Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and Melchior Díaz used the Requerimiento to forcibly relocate various Indigenous groups.

A bloodthirsty governor of the province, Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán – so violent that the Spanish themselves imprisoned him for abuses of power – had driven Indigenous residents out of the Valley of Culiacan in a series of brutal wars. But in 1536, Cabeza de Vaca and Díaz forced several groups, including the Tahue, to repopulate the valley after convincing them to accept the terms of the Requerimiento.

Resettlement would enable the collection of tribute and conversion to Catholicism. It was simply easier to assign missionaries and tribute collectors to established Hispanic townships than to mobile communities spread out across vast territories.

Cabeza de Vaca encouraged Indigenous leaders to accept the proposition by claiming that their god, Aguar, was the same as the Christians’, and so they should “serve him as we commanded.” In such cases, conversion to Catholicism was just as farcical as the Requerimiento itself.

Violence and colonial legacy

Even when Indigenous people accepted the Requerimiento, however, Las Casas wrote that “they are (still) harshly treated as common slaves, put to hard labor and subjected to all manner of abuse and to agonizing torments that ensure a slower and more painful death than would summary execution.” In most cases, the Requerimiento was simply a precursor to violence.

Dávila, the conquistador of present-day northern Colombia, once read it out of earshot of a village just before launching a surprise attack. Others read the Requerimiento “to trees and empty huts” before drawing their swords. The path to vassalage was paved in blood.

These are the truest indications of what the Requerimiento became on the ground. Soldiers and officials were content to violently deploy or discard royal prerogatives as they pleased in their pursuit of the spoils of war.

And yet, despite the viciousness, many Indigenous peoples survived by stringing their bows like the Chontal Maya, or negotiating a new relationship with Spain like the Tahue of Culiacan. Tactics varied greatly and changed over time.

Many Indigenous nations that exercised them survive today, long outliving the Spanish Empire – and the people who carried the Requerimiento on their crusade across the Americas.

Diego Javier Luis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The ancient Maya believed that everything in the universe, from the natural world to everyday experiences, was part of a single, powerful spiritual force. They were not polytheists who worshipped distinct gods but pantheists who believed that various gods were just manifestations of that force.

Some of the best evidence for this comes from the behavior of two of the most powerful beings of the Maya world: The first is a creator god whose name is still spoken by millions of people every fall – Huracán, or “Hurricane.” The second is a god of lightning, K'awiil, from the early first millennium C.E.

As a scholar of the Indigenous religions of the Americas, I recognize that these beings, though separated by over 1,000 years, are related and can teach us something about our relationship to the natural world.

Huracán, the ‘Heart of Sky’

Huracán was once a god of the K’iche’, one of the Maya peoples who today live in the southern highlands of Guatemala. He was one of the main characters of the Popol Vuh, a religious text from the 16th century. His name probably originated in the Caribbean, where other cultures used it to describe the destructive power of storms.

The K’iche’ associated Huracán, which means “one leg” in the K’iche’ language, with weather. He was also their primary god of creation and was responsible for all life on earth, including humans.

Because of this, he was sometimes known as U K'ux K'aj, or “Heart of Sky.” In the K'iche’ language, k'ux was not only the heart but also the spark of life, the source of all thought and imagination.

Yet, Huracán was not perfect. He made mistakes and occasionally destroyed his creations. He was also a jealous god who damaged humans so they would not be his equal. In one such episode, he is believed to have clouded their vision, thus preventing them from being able to see the universe as he saw it.

Huracán was one being who existed as three distinct persons: Thunderbolt Huracán, Youngest Thunderbolt and Sudden Thunderbolt. Each of them embodied different types of lightning, ranging from enormous bolts to small or sudden flashes of light.

Despite the fact that he was a god of lightning, there were no strict boundaries between his powers and the powers of other gods. Any of them might wield lightning, or create humanity, or destroy the Earth.

Another storm god

The Popol Vuh implies that gods could mix and match their powers at will, but other religious texts are more explicit. One thousand years before the Popol Vuh was written, there was a different version of Huracán called K'awiil. During the first millennium, people from southern Mexico to western Honduras venerated him as a god of agriculture, lightning and royalty.

Illustrations of K'awiil can be found everywhere on Maya pottery and sculpture. He is almost human in many depictions: He has two arms, two legs and a head. But his forehead is the spark of life – and so it usually has something that produces sparks sticking out of it, such as a flint ax or a flaming torch. And one of his legs does not end in a foot. In its place is a snake with an open mouth, from which another being often emerges.

Indeed, rulers, and even gods, once performed ceremonies to K'awiil in order to try and summon other supernatural beings. As personified lightning, he was believed to create portals to other worlds, through which ancestors and gods might travel.

Representation of power

For the ancient Maya, lightning was raw power. It was basic to all creation and destruction. Because of this, the ancient Maya carved and painted many images of K'awiil. Scribes wrote about him as a kind of energy – as a god with “many faces,” or even as part of a triad similar to Huracán.

He was everywhere in ancient Maya art. But he was also never the focus. As raw power, he was used by others to achieve their ends.

Rain gods, for example, wielded him like an ax, creating sparks in seeds for agriculture. Conjurers summoned him, but mostly because they believed he could help them communicate with other creatures from other worlds. Rulers even carried scepters fashioned in his image during dances and processions.

Moreover, Maya artists always had K'awiil doing something or being used to make something happen. They believed that power was something you did, not something you had. Like a bolt of lightning, power was always shifting, always in motion.

An interdependent world

Because of this, the ancient Maya thought that reality was not static but ever-changing. There were no strict boundaries between space and time, the forces of nature or the animate and inanimate worlds.

Everything was malleable and interdependent. Theoretically, anything could become anything else – and everything was potentially a living being. Rulers could ritually turn themselves into gods. Sculptures could be hacked to death. Even natural features such as mountains were believed to be alive.

These ideas – common in pantheist societies – persist today in some communities in the Americas.

They were once mainstream, however, and were a part of K'iche’ religion 1,000 years later, in the time of Huracán. One of the lessons of the Popol Vuh, told during the episode where Huracán clouds human vision, is that the human perception of reality is an illusion.

The illusion is not that different things exist. Rather it is that they exist independent from one another. Huracán, in this sense, damaged himself by damaging his creations.

Hurricane season every year should remind us that human beings are not independent from nature but part of it. And like Hurácan, when we damage nature, we damage ourselves.

James L. Fitzsimmons does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Twenty years ago, the television show “The O.C.” invented the word “Chrismukkah.” Main character Seth Cohen, played by Adam Brody, described his interfaith family’s December tradition of “eight days of presents followed by one day of lots of presents.”

Today Brody is back, starring in a new Netflix show. But this time, instead of playing the child of an interfaith marriage, he is a rabbi dating a woman “without a Jewish bone in her body” – one who, at times, seems unfamiliar with the basics of American Jewish culture.

“Nobody Wants This” is the story of a romance between Rabbi Noah and Joanne, played by Kristen Bell: a blond, non-Jewish woman who hosts a podcast about her dating disasters. The show uses the word “shiksa” to describe Joanne, which means a non-Jewish woman. Many consider it so rude, though, that I feel certain that my mother will materialize in my apartment to wash my mouth out with soap for even typing it.

Joanne and Noah meet at a party, where he flirts with her. Quickly, they agree that the religious gulf between them means that they cannot date.

But of course, they do.

In 2024, the largest Jewish movement in the United States, Reform Judaism, decided to allow students with non-Jewish partners into rabbinical school – as do several smaller liberal Jewish movements, including Renewal, secular humanistsand Reconstructionists. Conservative and Orthodox rabbis are not permitted to marry a non-Jewish spouse, and as recently as 2023, the Conservative movement reiterated that its rabbis cannot perform interfaith marriages.

While some rabbis have only recently been able to have a non-Jewish partner, the basic plot of Jewish men dating and marrying non-Jewish women has been a trope of stage and screen for 100 years. As a scholar of American Judaism, I write about these depictions of interfaith couples in my book “Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States.”

Becoming ‘real’ Americans

In 1922, “Abie’s Irish Rose” premiered on Broadway, where it was a commercial hit for five years. The comedy features a romance between Abie, an American Jewish soldier, and Rose, his Irish American nurse during World War I.

Rose and Abie’s courtship is beset with disapproval from their fathers, who are portrayed as symbols of the old world, dangerously concerned with preserving their outdated worldviews. Meanwhile, the young couple’s love underscores their willingness to move past their identities as Catholic and Jew – both of which were considered “outsider” religions in the 1920s – to become “real” Americans.

The rabbi and priest who attend their wedding are veterans, too, deepening the play’s message that patriotism comes first. Abie and Rose’s marriage is presented as an idealized, romanticized version of the American melting pot.

The play was just as successful on tour as it was on Broadway, though many critics loathed it. It was revived on Broadway twice and made into two films. Multiple knockoffs were made, including a movie called “The Cohens and the Kellys.”

In the 1940s, “Abie’s Irish Rose” became a radio spinoff, but times had changed. The over-the-top ethnic caricatures were no longer considered acceptable, and after a few seasons, the show was canceled.

‘Bridget Loves Bernie’

In the early 1970s, CBS created a sitcom based on the premise of a Jewish man – in this case, a cabbie whose parents own a New York deli – falling in love with a Catholic teacher who comes from a wealthy family. As in “Abie’s Irish Rose,” the younger generation in “Bridget Loves Bernie” supports the marriage, including the bride’s brother, who is a priest.

The objections all come from members of the older generation, who are depicted as tropes – irrational and stuck in their ways. The television show suggests it is old-fashioned and not really acceptable to oppose interfaith marriage.

“Bridget Loves Bernie” received vociferous protests and was canceled at the end of the first season. Many Jewish viewers objected to the suggestion that interfaith marriage was acceptable and even hip.

The show was likely particularly unnerving to the Jewish community because the interfaith marriage rate was rising at unprecedented rates in the 1970s, creating fear in the community that Jewish assimilation to wider American culture would prove too successful. The worry was that interfaith couples would not raise their children as Jewish, shrinking the Jewish community into nonexistence. In addition, Judaism has traditionally considered a child Jewish only if the mother is also Jewish – though that has changed in liberal movements.

As I write in my book, one critic, writing to The New York Times, suggested that a situation comedy about interfaith marriage was as tasteless as one about “the merry adventures of a Jewish family on their way to the gas chambers.”

While CBS denied that the show was canceled because of the protests, it remains the highest-rated show to be canceled by network television.

The theme of Jewish interfaith marriage as American, and opposition to interfaith marriage being outmoded, echoes through films, as well – most notably, the original “Heartbreak Kid” and “Annie Hall.”

Though no one ever mentions religion in the decade-long show “Mad About You,” it two features a Jewish man married to a non-Jewish woman – and much of its humor stems from their cultural differences.

New series, same stereotype

Both notions are also present to some degree in “Nobody Want This” – which includes another, uglier theme from the interfaith marriage archives, as well.

In his opening scene, Noah breaks up with his Jewish girlfriend, Rebecca – a woman so desperate for a proposal that she searches his locked desk, finds an engagement ring, puts it on without him knowing and then tries to convince him that despite his doubts, they should marry. This ex-girlfriend and her best friend, Noah’s sister-in-law, appear repeatedly throughout the series, demonstrating a range of negative stereotypes about Jewish women as wives and lovers. Noah’s mother, who speaks with an old-world accent, claims to know all his friends, and she reminds her son: “No one can take a rabbi seriously who is dating a shiksa, never mind marrying one. I do not mind looking like an overprotective mother.”

These characters reflect negative stereotypes that American Jewish men and women have long held about each other, as historian Riv-Ellen Prell has written: “the ghetto girl” – a Jewish women who is too greedy, pushy and grasping; and men who are essentially mama’s boys. Joyce Antler, also a historian of American Judaism, has written specifically about stereotypes of Jewish mothers as meddlesome, interfering, overbearing and over-involved.

Like generations of non-Jewish leading ladies before her, Joanne is what one of my interviewees used to call a “shiksa goddess.” She is blonde, she is easygoing, she is everything that Jewish women are supposedly not. She is appealing in her contrast.

In some ways, “Nobody Wants This” demonstrates something new: Not only can one make a show about interfaith dating, but the Jewish dater can also be a rabbi! But in other ways, it is old as the hills, or at least as the silver screen – serving up stories, tropes and misogynistic stereotypes in sparkling new packaging.

Samira Mehta receives funding from the Henry Luce Foundation.

Many Black leaders are swinging into action for the Harris-Walz campaign – and clergy are no exception.

On Aug. 5, 2024, The Black Church PAC hosted a “Win With the Black Church” webinar to register voters, sign up volunteers and raise funds for Vice President Kamala Harris. The kickoff event, which organizers said raised US$500,000 and boasted 16,000 attendees, was hosted by the political action committee’s co-founder, Mike McBride – pastor of The Way Christian Center in California.

Apart from politics, McBride shares something else with many of the people on the webinar, including gospel singer Erica Campbell, pastor Jamal Bryant and co-founder the Rev. Leah Daughtry: All draw on Pentecostal faith.

As a scholar of American Pentecostalism and Black Studies, I see this event as but one example of Black Pentecostal and charismatics’ increasing visibility in American politics – a notable shift from the past.

Power of the Holy Spirit

Pentecostalism is a global Protestant Christian movement. As an evangelical Christian tradition, Pentecostalism emphasizes salvation through Jesus Christ and the centrality of scripture. It differs, however, in its understanding of the Holy Spirit: how God’s energy and essence work in the world.

Across most denominations and traditions, Christians believe in the Holy Spirit – part of the Holy Trinity, together with God the Father and Jesus Christ, the Son.

Pentecostalism is distinct, however, because its adherents claim that they directly experience the active presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives, through spiritual gifts such as healing, prophecy and speaking in tongues – a spiritual experience consisting of a series of unintelligible speech-like utterances and sounds. Pentecostals believe that speaking in tongues, or “glossolalia,” is a divine language and an essential means for communicating with God.

Pentecostals draw inspiration from the Book of Acts, part of the Bible that describes the founding of the early church after Jesus’ death. Chapter 2 depicts an event called the Pentecost, when disciples of Jesus were gathered together. Scripture describes them suddenly “filled with the Holy Spirit and (beginning) to speak in other tongues,” yet onlookers heard their own language spoken. In this moment, Pentecostals believe that the power of the Holy Spirit was poured out on Christ’s followers – and that it has been accessible ever since.

Because Pentecostals maintain that this type of spiritual activity continues today, they also emphasize speaking in tongues as evidence that someone experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Glossolalia is seen as a critical entryway to the faith and to personally experiencing the Holy Spirit in your life.

Apart from Pentecostal churches, Christians called “charismatics” have similar beliefs about the dynamic activity of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Charismatic Christians, however, are affiliated with other denominations, from Catholicism to mainline Protestant churches.

Black Pentecostal tradition

Within the global Pentecostal and charismatic landscape, Black American churches form a distinct tradition.

In June 2024, with support from the Public Religion Research Institute, PRRI fellows Youssef Chouhoud, Flavio Rigerio Hickel and Leah Payne and I conducted a survey of 2,418 adults in the United States. Half of the 734 Black respondents identified as Pentecostal or charismatic. Similarly, in 2021, Pew Research Center reported that “half of all Black churchgoers say services include speaking in tongues.”

Scholars of American Pentecostalism maintain that from its inception, the movement was indebted to the religious practices of enslaved Black Christians. Black Pentecostal churches and organizations formed in the early 20th century as a result of racism. In 1914, for example, the white founders of the Assemblies of God, USA decided to disaffiliate from the predominantly Black Church of God in Christ.

Black Pentecostalism teaches that Christians have an obligation to do good in the world. Social engagement has been essential to many Black Pentecostal identities and congregational life since their beginnings, especially material works of mercy – feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and educating the ignorant.

Eyes toward heaven

Such commitments were a stark contrast to Black Pentecostals’ civic life and political involvement.

Although there have been Pentecostals associated with politics and community activism, the tradition does “not possess an explicit political theology,” as Pentecostal theologian Steven M. Studebaker observes. Black Pentecostal traditions especially have often oriented themselves away from this world’s sociopolitical affairs, toward concerns about personal and social morality and hope of heaven.

In fact, for generations, American Pentecostals broadly prided themselves on being intentionally apolitical. Black churches and leaders were key to mobilizing the Civil Rights Movement, for example, but Pentecostals believed that their most important contribution was through prayer, as historian Jonathan Chism notes.

Moreover, Black Pentecostals’ absence from politics reflects a history of discrimination and condescension from other Black Americans, including Black mainline Christians. During the early to mid-20th century, Black Pentecostals were often seen as lower class, unlike other Protestant groups such as Black Baptists and Methodists.

Critics feared the emotionality of their religious expression and their tendency toward gender inclusivity, which they worried would make Pentecostals a liability in the push for Black Americans’ rights. Black Pentecostals were not trusted with representing Black social and political interests in the public square.

Recent shift

Since becoming the Democratic nominee, Harris has garnered a wellspring of support from Black faith leaders, including influential Black preachers who either remain in or came up in the Pentecostal or charismatic congregations. Among them are Traci Blackmon, Chrisette Ellis and Gabby Cudjoe Wilkes.

Trump has enjoyed endorsements from a smaller number of Black Pentecostal leaders, but without the same celebrity status as the Black Pentecostal or charismatic preachers backing Harris. Take for example Darrell Scott, a pastor from Ohio, who remains firm in his support. Harry R. Jackson, a prominent Black pastor in conservative circles who died in 2020, was a religious adviser to the former president. Most recently, Lorenzo Sewell, the pastor of 180 Church in Detroit, addressed the Republican National Convention.

On both sides, these developments mark a noticeable shift among Black Pentecostals from private prayers or local social engagement to visible political involvement. This is also true for some of their conservative evangelical counterparts, especially Black Baptists affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, who are leaving that denomination over differences in social and political issues, especially around race.

In the same 2021 report, Pew highlighted the political tensions embedded in race and religion for Black Christians in the United States. Only 10% of Black Americans lean toward the Republican Party, but that percentage doubles for Black Protestants who attend a mostly white church. Still, what this data helps show is that for the majority of Black Christians, their political views are more reflective of their experiences with race than their congregational affiliation.

Contemporary Black Pentecostals and charismatics are turning the page on their history of political apathy – whether through public endorsements, voter registration drives or as part of groups such as the Black Church PAC. Churches have long been a pillar of how Black Americans “hold and build political power in this country,” as McBride told Religion News Service. Pentecostals are working to keep that legacy alive – and expand the proverbial walls of the Black church.

Dara Delgado is affiliated with the Public Religion Research Institute as a 2024-2025 Public Religion Fellow.

Hank Greenberg might be the best baseball player you’ve never heard of.

Greenberg was the first baseman for the Detroit Tigers during the 1930s and 1940s. His career was relatively short – 13 years – and interrupted by two stints of service in World War II.

Yet outside the war years, there were glorious seasons.

Greenberg led the American League in home runs four times, played in five All-Star Games, twice won the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award and, in 1938, nearly broke what was then the game’s most hallowed record: Babe Ruth’s 60 home runs in one season. In 1956, Greenberg was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Greenberg was also Jewish, and he is often called America’s first Jewish sports superstar. As Greenberg wrote in his autobiography, that was not an easy honor to bear. Greenberg played during a time of rising antisemitism, and the cruel taunts he suffered from players and fans lasted throughout his career. Vile remarks and bigoted slurs – “kike,” “sheenie” and “Jew bastard” were typical – left a mark on him and the sport he loved.

Along the way, Greenberg also faced a crisis of conscience: his struggle on whether to play during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Jewish High Holidays. He resolved the conflict with a Solomon-like choice, more than 30 years before baseball legend Sandy Koufax pondered the same dilemma during the 1965 World Series.

Today, nearly 80 years after Greenberg retired from baseball, antisemitism is once again on the rise both in the U.S. and worldwide. As a historian of American sport, I suggest there are lessons to be learned on how Greenberg handled the hate.

Horns like the devil

Greenberg signed a contract with the Tigers in 1930 and played in the minor leagues for the next three years. For many of his teammates, he was the first Jewish person they’d ever met. One told Greenberg, quite seriously, that he thought Jewish people had horns, like the devil.

Once brought up to the major leagues, Greenberg was generally accepted by his teammates. The same could not be said of opposing players and fans, who hounded him throughout his career. The fans insulting Greenberg were in the distinct minority, but they were loud, nonstop and got virtually no resistance from other fans or the media.

Greenberg’s response to the abuse: ignore it. But he reacted at least once, during a game against the Chicago White Sox. One Chicago player tried to injure Greenberg – his autobiography does not report how – and another called him a “yellow Jew son of a bitch.” After the game, Greenberg visited the opposing team’s locker room and demanded to know who the name caller was. At 6 feet, 3 inches tall and 200-plus pounds, Greenberg was intimidating. The room fell silent. The White Sox players never antagonized him again.

Other pressures bore down on Greenberg. Detroit was a hotbed of antisemitism in the 1930s. The Dearborn Independent, a newspaper owned by the industrialist Henry Ford, described Jews as “the world’s foremost problem,” an echo of Ford’s antisemitic beliefs. The city was also home to Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest who reviled Jews and spread antisemitic rhetoric during his radio show – which at its height was heard by perhaps 40 million people. Overseas, Adolf Hitler was the fuhrer of Germany, and his persecution of Jews became even more apparent after Kristallnacht, in November 1938, when the Nazi regime went on an antisemitic rampage.

“I came to feel,” Greenberg wrote later, “that if I, as a Jew, hit a home run, I was hitting one against Hitler.”

Playing on Jewish holidays

In 1934, when he was 23, Greenberg decided he would not play on the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, a holiday when observant Jews were supposed to pray and not work. But the Tigers were in a close race for the American League pennant. The team needed Greenberg, their star player.

A local newspaper reporter interviewed a Detroit rabbi and asked if it was acceptable for Greenberg to play. The rabbi said it was OK. Deciding at the last minute, Greenberg played and hit two home runs. Detroit won the game, 2-1. The Detroit Free Press ran a headline in Yiddish, with an English translation: “Happy New Year, Hank.”

Ten days later came Yom Kippur, the most sacred of all Jewish holidays. Also known as the Day of Atonement, observant Jews are to spend the day in prayer and self-reflection; baseball was not on the agenda. This time, Greenberg did not play, and attended services instead. When he entered the synagogue, the congregation applauded.

The Tigers lost 5-2 to the New York Yankees that day. But Detroit won the pennant anyway.

“I used to resent being singled out as a Jewish ballplayer, period,” Greenberg said in his autobiography. “I’m not sure why or when it changed, because I’m still not a particularly religious person. Lately, though, I find myself wanting to be remembered not only as a great ballplayer, but even more as a great Jewish ballplayer.”

Meeting Robinson

1947 was Jackie Robinson’s rookie year and Greenberg’s last. Robinson, the first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers, had broken the color line and was baseball’s first Black player of the modern era; he was enduring enormous abuse, something Greenberg, now with the Pittsburgh Pirates, clearly understood. They played against each other for the first time at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh in May.

In the fourth inning, Greenberg got to first on a walk, and according to newspaper accounts, he had a few words for Robinson: “I know it’s plenty tough,” he said. “You’re a good ballplayer, and you’ll do all right.”

Greenberg also publicly supported Robinson, one of the few opposing players to do so.

Nearly a half-century later, Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer were considering whether the Supreme Court should meet on Yom Kippur. They too found inspiration from Greenberg; Ginsburg noted that Greenberg did not “betray his conscience.” The Supreme Court did not meet on Yom Kippur that year, and it hasn’t since.

Although there has been tremendous progress, racial and ethnic slurs persist in American sports. In 2024, some fans directed racially abusive comments at two Black players on the U.S. men’s national soccer team. In English football – known as soccer in the U.S. – Muslim players reported widespread discrimination and abuse. Things have changed, but not enough.

Although not a devout Jew, Greenberg understood that to endure the abuse, he had to embrace his identity. Those athletes of today, recently stung by the vitriol of bigots and trolls, may wish to take heed of the lessons learned by this reticent hero from the previous century, a man whose quiet dignity spoke volumes.

Robert Gudmestad does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

People sometimes feel pressured to choose one identity over another. Kamala Harris, who is multiracial– her mother is from India and her father is a Black immigrant from Jamaica – illustrates the complexity of defining identity.

Harris is often asked questions about her Black identity. She has responded by saying how it relates to her sense of self. “I’m really clear about who I am, and if anybody else is not, they need to go through their own therapy.”

At the National Association of Black Journalists conference, in July 2024, former president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump questioned her Black identity by saying, “Is she Indian or is she Black?”

The question reflected a narrow, either/or approach. As a scholar who draws from the ideas of Black thinkers to explore how society works, I know that identity is not the result of a single decision, but rather the confluence of several factors, such as someone’s environment and socialization.

‘The Truths We Hold’

Harris’ parents, Donald Harris and Shyamala Gopalan, met at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1960s. They connected through the radical politics of the Black intellectual tradition, finding both community and shared values. As part of a study group and, later, the Afro-American Association, they developed a language to confront civil rights struggles and systemic oppression.

Harris often refers to herself as both African American and Asian American. During the Democratic National Convention, she paid tribute to her multiracial background and upbringing.

But in her autobiography, “The Truths We Hold,” Harris explains how her mother was cognizant that some people would see her and her younger sister, Maya, as Black, and was “determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud Black women.”

Harris chose to attend Howard University, a historically Black University, and joined a Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. In her autobiography, she highlighted how the values of hard work and social justice were instilled in her by her parents.

Identities are fluid and expanding

Individuals can hold multiple dimensions of identity based on their race, sexual orientation, culture and social class, among others. It is impossible to separate one from another. For example, someone can be Black, a lesbian and a woman at the same time.

Instead, identities inform one another; no one is simply Black, or a woman, or a lesbian, but these social identities compound, forming a unique experience. Furthermore, identity is fluid, and expanding. Your beliefs and values can shift, and so too can the ways in which people define themselves.

In these ways, identity is the work of context and choice. Defining your identity is about deciding not just who you want to be but how you choose to live and show up in the world. It is a complex process of making choices and navigating challenges along the way. For example, somebody navigating the intersection of race and gender might choose to embrace both identities fully, despite external pressures to conform to societal expectations.

Harris’ embrace of her multiracial identity, thus, is the result of things she learned from her parents and the various contexts and communities she inhabited.

Claims to an identity

Historically, there has been a disregard for complex identities that don’t fit into clear categories, driven by fears about preserving white racial purity and protecting associated privileges. So, when Trump questioned Kamala Harris’ racial identity, it was a reminder of the long-standing notion of pressuring someone to choose one identity over another.

An example of this is the “one-drop rule” in the United States, where even a small amount of nonwhite ancestry classified a person as nonwhite, reinforcing strict racial boundaries. Dating back to a 1662 Virginia law, the one-drop rule ensured that a single drop of Black blood assigned minority status to mixed-race individuals.

The idea that identity can be simplified to just one thing, such as race, is based on the wrong assumption that these identities never change. It’s worth repeating that Harris is of South Asian and Black descent, and it is her choice to define her racial identity. I believe that any effort to question her on the topic is disingenuous and not grounded in a willingness to engage with the complexity of her identity or anyone else’s either.

Wilson K. Okello works for The Pennsylvania State University

In the run-up to the first anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel, there has been no shortage of dramatic events making headlines in Israel. On Oct. 1, Israelis took shelter during Iran’s missile attack. In the days leading up to the attack, Israel assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s longtime leader, in Beirut; invaded Lebanon; and saw its economic rating downgraded, to name a few.

What was notably missing from the newspaper pages were the 101 hostages still held by Hamas, with about a third presumed dead. Their faces still look out at you from posters and flyers on walls, billboards, fences and bus stops, as well as in ads and banners in newspapers and news outlets. However, their stories have faded from the spotlight, where they had been for nearly a year.

When Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the state was experiencing its most severe political conflict since its establishment. Many saw the right-wing government’s attempts to overhaul the judicial system as an effort to dismantle Israeli democracy, sparking weekly mass protests. For a few short weeks after the attack, the protests subsided, and it seemed as if Israel might overcome its internal divisions in efforts to retrieve the hostages.

However, the hopes for solidarity soon faded. The hostages quickly went from a symbol of national resolve and unity to a symbol of the country’s preexisting divides.

As a scholar of Israeli culture, history and politics, I have been monitoring coverage in Israel and abroad. On the international stage, the image of the hostages has been employed to justify Israel’s devastation of the Gaza Strip– and now its military operations in Lebanon. Within Israel, however, attention on the hostages has posed a significant challenge for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition.

Two groups, two priorities

Most advocacy efforts for the hostages are channeled through the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a volunteer-based organization that focuses on “bringing our loved ones home by any means necessary through all available channels” – including as part of negotiations for a cease-fire or a complete military pullout from Gaza.

However, a small group of families established a rival organization, the Tikva Forum– meaning “Hope.” They state on their website: “The Tikva Forum will not allow our children, parents, and friends to be used to bolster our enemies or enable them to repeat the attacks of October 7th. Our only option is to win this war and to remove any incentive to ever attack Israel again.” Viewing the liberation of the hostages as less important than decisively defeating Israel’s enemies, they oppose efforts to de-escalate the conflict or negotiate with Hamas.

It is no surprise, then, that these two forums have aligned themselves with opposing political camps, with the prime minister’s coalition embracing the Tikva Forum.

Thorn in the government’s side

In the weeks and months after the attack, members of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum became increasingly frustrated with Netanyahu and his government. Following the first Israel–Hamas prisoner exchange in November 2023, which saw the release of 80 Israeli hostages and 25 foreign nationals, it became evident that key factions within the prime minister’s coalition opposed any further deals that might involve concessions to Hamas.

Bringing an end to the war would thwart far-right parties’ vision of resuming Israeli control over Gaza, expelling Palestinians and renewing Jewish settlements there. Time and again, they have threatened to withdraw from the coalition and trigger new elections if Netanyahu agrees to a cease-fire in Gaza – and recently, in Lebanon as well.

Members of Netanyahu’s coalition have disparaged appeals made by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. More than once, legislators from the prime minister’s Likud party have accused the forum of serving Hamas’ interests. Yuli Edelstein, chairman of the foreign affairs and defense committee, ran into an uncle of a hostage in the Knesset and told him to “get out of my sight.” When hostages’ family members told Nissim Vaturi, the deputy speaker of the Knesset, that their loved ones were going hungry in Gaza, he responded: “Did you eat this morning? So everything is fine.” Netanyahu himself only met with families of hostages murdered in Gaza in June, eight months after Hamas’ attack and only after prolonged public outcry.

For many, such conduct symbolizes the failure of politicians to secure the life of Israeli citizens, and their disregard for their pain.

In response, members of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum have taken an increasingly public role in demonstrations against the government. These have intensified significantly in recent weeks.

Controversial ceremony

The Oct. 7 memorial ceremonies themselves illustrate the current state of Israel’s polarization.

An official ceremony will be led by the minister of transport, Miri Regev. The kibbutz communities which bore the brunt of the Hamas attack, however – home to many of the hostages still held in Gaza – announced that they would not take part. They noted that Netanyahu and his government have yet to take responsibility for the disaster and that they showed little care for the victims and survivors of Oct. 7.

When Regev planned to visit Kibbutz Be'eri, the site of one of the most horrible massacres, residents asked her not to enter the kibbutz. According to an investigation from Israel’s Channel 13, her spokesman said, “These Kibbutzim are the extreme left. … We have to get the minister a camel and a kaffiyeh. Start chopping off heads,” suggesting the minister should finish the work started by Hamas. Regev likewise threatened that Be'eri “will be the last kibbutz to be rebuilt.” She dismissed criticism of the official ceremony as “background noise.” Attempting to pacify the public outcry, President Isaac Herzog offered to host the state ceremony instead, but Regev rejected it outright.

On their part, many families of victims and of hostages decided to boycott the official ceremony and hold alternative ones, with the main one to take place in Tel Aviv.

Shaping the story

Indeed, the government seems intent on controlling how Oct. 7 and its aftermath are remembered and diverting attention from its failures – embodied first and foremost by the hostages. Government guidelines for commemoration ceremonies in schools, for example, mention neither the hostages nor the ongoing war in Gaza as topics to be discussed. Instead, they suggest focusing on those who were killed and sharing stories of heroism.

From this perspective, the recent military operations in Yemen and Lebanon and the possibility of strikes in Iran have been advantageous for Netanyahu and his coalition. For the first time in a year, Israeli actions have generated headlines showcasing Israeli success.

While Israelis remain divided on the objectives of the war in Gaza and the best strategies to free the hostages, recent polls indicate that 90% of Israeli Jews support the offensive against Hezbollah. Following recent military successes, approval ratings for the prime minister, minister of defense and military chief of staff have improved significantly: to 37%, 57% and 63%, respectively.

As the anticipated military escalation looms, attention has been diverted from the hostages and their families, and some have expressed concerns that those in captivity will be all but forgotten. Their fears appear well grounded.

Shai P. Ginsburg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.