A seminary is investigated for sexual harassment. Now its critics want the findings made public.

An investigation into sexual harassment and misconduct at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles was completed last month. It has not been made public.

The Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of American Jewish University. (Courtesy image)

July 9, 2024
By Yonat Shimron

(RNS) — As a first-year student at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles, Shayna Dollinger was inundated with sexual proposals from a fellow first-year student.

When she complained to the associate dean of the school about the unwelcome verbal advances, she was advised to see the Title IX administrator who handles complaints of sexual harassment and assault. But that administrator advised her against launching an official investigation and suggested the associate dean speak with the student instead.

When that discussion failed to stop the harassment, Dollinger went to the dean of the school. He suggested she and her classmates confront the student and tell him his comments were inappropriate.

“It was after that conversation when I decided that I wanted to transfer because I knew that I could no longer study in an environment that put it on me and my classmates to stop this behavior,” said Dollinger, 24. “I really did not have the support that I needed.”

Dollinger left the Ziegler School — one of two Conservative movement seminaries in the U.S.— at the end of 2022 and enrolled in a Reform movement rabbinical school, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, where she recently completed her first full year.

Shayna Dollinger. (Courtesy photo)

But she did not let the matter drop. With the help and guidance of other prominent female Jewish leaders who came together to hear her story, Dollinger pushed the American Jewish University, which houses the seminary, to conduct an outside investigation into sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based discrimination and misconduct. Now that the investigation has been completed, the group wants the university to release it publicly.

Religious groups across the spectrum are investigating their record on sexual misconduct. Three years ago, the Reform movement, the largest of the Jewish movements, paid external firms to conduct investigations into three of its institutions and then released them publicly.

The American Jewish University has not.

In a private email to some of its constituents, the university summarized the investigators’ findings in a June 17 email. According to the email, investigators with the firm of Cozen O’Connor did not find a “culture or climate of discrimination or harassment” that was widespread among most students who completed their degrees. But those who did not complete the program, it acknowledged, experienced “deep and lasting pain during and after their time at Ziegler.”

It said investigators recommended that the school revamp its Title IX office, hire an experienced administrator and revise its policies and procedures relating to sexual harassment.

Neither the president of American Jewish University nor the deans of the Ziegler School responded to requests for comment. A public relations consultant hired by the school said only that AJU “is now in the process of implementing all of the recommendations of the Cozen O’Connor Review.”

The group of activists who got together to hear Dollinger’s account of sexual harassment say that’s not good enough.

“Unless the details are made public, and people are named and held accountable for their actions, the degree to which the university will change is compromised and therefore the safety of present and future students is compromised,” said Keren R. McGinity, an educator-activist whose own account of sexual abuse helped launch the Jewish #MeToo movement.

The Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly is also working on an investigation of the Ziegler School. Jacob Blumenthal, the CEO of the Rabbinical Assembly, said that was all he could say.

The school, which was created 28 years ago as a West Coast alternative to the flagship Conservative seminary in New York, the Jewish Theological Seminary, has fallen on financial hard times of late.

This year, the American Jewish University sold its 35-acre Bel Air campus and closed its undergraduate program. The Ziegler School now leases space in an office building. In an effort to attract more students, Ziegler cut its tuition from about $31,000 to $7,000 a year. The seminary’s enrollment was 28 this past year, with only eight first-year students.


Former students who came together to write a letter to the Rabbinical Assembly’s ethics committee last year said they were particularly concerned the Ziegler School was losing talented female students.

“We believe that members of the administration have misused their power and been insufficiently self-reflective regarding the departures by women and others who leave the program,” the letter said.

They outlined a range of misconduct on the part of the school’s administration they said constituted a “clear pattern of misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, shaming, and double standards.”

That kind of school culture has gone on, they say, for 20 years.

Rabbi Cynthia Hoffman, who attended Ziegler in the early aughts, sought accommodations for clinical depression. Hoffman received none and dropped out. A few years later Hoffman was ordained through the Jewish Renewal movement.

“There was a constant undertone of belittling and being told, ‘Why can’t you be more like this person,’ who was always a man,” said Hoffman.

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, who received her ordination from Ziegler in 2008, said she was called names, had her appearance criticized and her actions questioned in a way that many of her classmates’ weren’t. “There wasn’t a federal violation, but there was profound damage done to me nonetheless. My trust in myself, my intuition, got a beating. It was more of an experience of regular ongoing manipulation, bullying, harassment.”

Ruttenberg was one of the 13 who wrote to the Rabbinical Assembly’s ethics committee to demand an investigation. She is now advocating for public release of the investigation.

“Our absolute bottom line is that this harm cannot be perpetrated anymore,” she said.

Dollinger, whose experience at Ziegler prompted the investigation, was vindicated in one way. Shortly after she left the school, another student filed a Title IX complaint against the same student who sexually harassed her. Months later, the accused student was expelled.

But Dollinger, too, is advocating for the report’s release.

“I’d like to see the AJU administration begin the same processes that other Jewish organizations have to address their deep systemic issues around gender discrimination,” Dollinger said. I would like to know if anyone in leadership at AJU seeks t’shuvah (repentance) and is ready to begin that process.”

Bills to enhance religion in schools spur fights between faiths

As lawmakers push faith-focused education bills, the statutes are facing pushback from an unexpected source: other religious people.

A copy of the Ten Commandments is posted along with other historical documents in a hallway at the Georgia State Capitol Building Thursday, June 20, 2024, in Atlanta. Louisiana has become the first state in the country to require the Ten Commandments are displayed in all public schools. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

July 5, 2024
By Jack Jenkins

(RNS) — When Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry was asked to defend his support for a new state law requiring public schools to display a version of the Ten Commandments in public classrooms, he made sure to touch on the bill’s obvious religious connections.

“This country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, and every time we steer away from that, we have problems in our nation,” Landry, a Catholic, said during an interview with Fox News.

But just a few days later, it was Christian clergy — along with an array of religious leaders and parents of various faiths — who filed a lawsuit against the new statute, backed by the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and offices of the ACLU.

“As a minister, this law is a gross intrusion of civil authority into matters of faith,” the Rev. Jeff Sims, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) minister and plaintiff in the case, said in a press conference about the lawsuit. “It interferes with the administration of God’s word, co-ops the word for the state’s own purposes, or claims God’s authority for the state.”

The back-and-forth is part of a broader fight raging across the country, with conservative state lawmakers — often backed by conservative Christians — pushing faith-focused laws and running into opposition from other religious people and their secular allies.

Over the past two years, at least 19 states have considered faith-forward legislation, including bills promoting the display or discussion of the Ten Commandments in schools and those allowing for school chaplains. Three states — Louisiana, Utah and Arizona — have already passed Ten Commandments legislation, although Arizona’s governor vetoed the bill, and Utah’s Legislature walked back their initial proposal, with lawmakers ultimately only adding the decalogue to a list of historic documents that can be discussed in class. In addition, Louisiana recently joined two other states — Texas and Florida — that have passed laws allowing for chaplains in public school.

At least one state has achieved similar aims by circumventing the legislative process altogether. Last month, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Education Ryan Walters issued a directive requiring schools to “incorporate the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support,” and has said teachers who fail to teach students about the Scripture could risk losing their license.

“We’re proud to be the first state to put the Bible back in school classrooms,” Walters said in an interview with News Nation.

FILE – Republican State Superintendent Walters ordered public schools Thursday, June 27, 2024, to incorporate the Bible into lessons for grades 5 through 12, the latest effort by conservatives to incorporate religion into classrooms. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)

Religious leaders in the state were quick to push back against the directive, however, with one pastor from the more socially liberal United Church of Christ denomination posting, “Public schools are not Sunday schools,” according to KFOR. Rachel Laser, head of Americans United, told KFOR her group is mulling a legal challenge like the one they helped file in Louisiana, while Jewish leaders, Muslim leaders and a local Methodist bishop spoke out.

“United Methodists believe that the state should not attempt to control the church, nor should the church seek to dominate the state,” UMC Bishop James Nunn told KOCO in a statement. “We endorse public policies that do not create unconstitutional entanglements between church and state.”

While there are some differences, many of the bills share common traits or even language. Most of the bills advocating for displaying the Ten Commandments use a translation of the decalogue derived from the King James Version of the Bible, a translation that is not embraced by all Christians, much less Jewish Americans or those of other faiths. In fact, the text is slightly different from the KJV and has a particular history: It is the version compiled by the Fraternal Order of Eagles used to help promote the 1956 movie “The Ten Commandments.” The same version was also used on a Ten Commandments monument that sits outside the Texas State Capitol. (Despite a legal challenge, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the monument is allowed to stand because of its “passive” nature.)

Bills pushing school chaplains also share common traits, likely a byproduct of the religious groups behind them. According to The New York Times, the National Association of Christian Lawmakers — a new group formed in 2020 — worked with lawmakers in Florida, Louisiana and Texas to pass chaplains bills. The Texas bill was also spurred by a group of activists affiliated with the National School Chaplain Association, a group run by former drug smuggling pirate Rocky Malloy.

As debate over the Texas chaplains bill heated up last year, one Democratic lawmaker in particular — Rep. James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian — emerged as someone who opposed the bill on both legal and religious grounds. During debate on the House floor, he expressed concerns that NSCA’s parent organization, Mission Generation, appeared to have advocated for proselytizing to children in schools.

“I see this as part of a troubling trend across the country of Christian nationalists attempting to take over our democracy and attempting to take over my religion — both of which I find deeply offensive,” Talarico told Religion News Service in an interview last year, referring to the chaplains bill and efforts to pass a Ten Commandments bill in Texas.

Republican lawmakers did not amend the chaplains bill to bar proselytizing or impose credentialing requirements for chaplains, leaving it up to individual school districts to outline parameters themselves.

Texas State Rep. James Talarico speaks on the floor of the Texas House of Representatives on May 24, 2021, in Austin, Texas. Submitted photo

The National School Chaplain Association is referenced by name in the text of Pennsylvania’s school chaplains bill, which was introduced in April. It defines a “certified school chaplain” as “an individual certified by the National School Chaplain Association or other similar organization.” The NSCA was also mentioned in committee discussions in Nebraska.

And where the chaplains bills have become law, criticism has been a constant — especially from religious groups. In March, a coalition of religious organizations signed a letter condemning efforts to install public school chaplains as “greatly flawed” and as threatening “the well-being, education, and religious freedom of our students.” Signers of the letter included entire Christian denominations, such as the Alliance of Baptists, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, United Church of Christ as well as other religious groups such as the Union for Reform Judaism and the Unitarian Universalist Association. Religious advocacy groups, such as the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Hindus for Human Rights, The Sikh Coalition and Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, also signed the letter.

In Texas, as school boards across the state gathered in recent months to vote on whether to allow chaplains in their regions, faith leaders regularly appeared to voice disapproval, and more than 100 chaplains signed a petition arguing religious counselors in public classrooms would be “harmful” to students.

In their letter, chaplains decried the absence of standards or training requirements for school chaplains in the bill aside from background checks. They pointed to military chaplains or those who work in health care as a point of comparison, noting requirements like extensive training and instruction on how to work across multiple faiths — conditions absent from the Texas law.

“Because of our training and experience, we know that chaplains are not a replacement for school counselors or safety measures in our public schools, and we urge you to reject this flawed policy option: It is harmful to our public schools and the students and families they serve,” the letter reads.

Proponents of the new slate of faith-focused bills appear confident the courts will back them — especially the current conservative-leaning Supreme Court. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry declared at a GOP fundraiser that he “can’t wait to be sued” over the state’s Ten Commandments bill, and Walters of Oklahoma — who has accused Biden, a Catholic, of wanting to destroy “our Christian faith” — told PBS he was unconcerned about legal challenges to his Bible directive because justices appointed by Donald Trump would back him.

“If we get sued and we get challenged, we will be victorious, because the Supreme Court justices (Trump) appointed actually are originalists that look at the Constitution and not what some left-wing professor said about the Constitution,” he said.

Whether or not justices would actually support the laws is unclear. While opponents of the laws point to ample Supreme Court precedent suggesting the statutes violate the constitutional prohibition against establishing a state religion, at least two members of the Supreme Court — Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — declared in a 2020 concurring opinion they believe the establishment clause only applies to the federal government, not the states. While their viewpoint is considered fringe by many scholars, it remains to be seen if others on the court, such as Justice Amy Coney Barrett, agree.

And while some of the education bills have died in committee, such as in Nebraska, others have helped spur related legislation. Lawmakers in Indiana, for instance, dropped the chaplains bill as part of a compromise legislation that allows students to leave school for religious instruction if they request it.

But religious opponents to such laws say they are prepared to combat them. In the press conference with those suing Louisiana over its Ten Commandments law, Joshua Herlands, a Jewish parent and one of the plaintiffs in the case, laid plain what he feels the debate is ultimately about.

“The displays distort the Jewish significance of the Ten Commandments in several places and send the troubling message to students — including my kids — that they may be lesser in the eyes of the government because they do not necessarily follow this particular version, or any version, for that matter, of the religious text,” Herlands said. “The state is dividing children along religious lines.”

Students call for transparency as Cornerstone University guts humanities programs

Several former faculty told RNS that the changes include the involuntary departures of six tenured faculty who had already signed contracts for the next school year.

Cornerstone University logo. (Courtesy image)
July 10, 2024
By Kathryn Post

(RNS) — Meredith Mead, a conservative Christian with a love of words, enrolled in Cornerstone University three years ago, choosing the 83-year-old nondenominational school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, over other top Christian schools because of its creative writing major.

When she received an email from the university on June 13 announcing her major had been cut, she said, it felt like a gut punch.

“The more I read it, just the more sick I felt,” Mead told Religion News Service. “I’m looking at a list saying you are enrolled in a major that no longer exists, and just trying to wrap my mind around, what does that look like?”


Adding to the confusion, a report began to circulate that all humanities and arts programs had been cut. Then a local news outlet reported that while some humanities programs had been combined, they hadn’t all been eliminated. Students turned to social media to find out what they could.

On June 19, an anonymous Instagram account called Voice of CU emerged, offering to pass the Cornerstone community’s concerns along to the administration. Since the initial announcement, however, the university still hasn’t publicly confirmed which professors have been impacted.

Heidi Cece, vice president for enrollment management and marketing, maintained that there were no terminations, but “some positions were eliminated tied to very low or no student program enrollment,” and all individuals were “offered extensive severance.”

RNS confirmed that at least six professors left involuntarily: Cynthia Beach (English and creative writing), Michael Stevens (English), Jason Stevens (English), Martin Spence (history), Desmond Ikegwuonu (music) and Ken Reid (seminary theologian). Five of those six had already seen their department, humanities, merged last year with several others to form the School of Ministry, Media and the Arts.

Several former Cornerstone faculty told RNS that all six of those who left were tenured and had already signed contracts for the forthcoming school year when they were informed in June that their roles were being ended — likely too late to be able to obtain a similar spot elsewhere.

Andrea Turpin, a historian of religion in American higher education and professor at Baylor University, said Cornerstone’s cuts are in line with those at small institutions across American higher education. “Many institutions nationwide, including mostly secular institutions, are downsizing humanities programs,” she said.

But Turpin added that Cornerstone’s timing raised ethical concerns.“Terminating tenured faculty who have already signed a contract that was offered to them in the late spring, given knowledge of the academic hiring cycle, would be unethical in the absence of absolute dire financial emergency,” she said.

The last-minute cuts also come as Cornerstone has lost more than 150 employees, including 38 faculty, since the arrival of President Gerson Moreno-Riaño in 2021.


Gerson Moreno-Riaño is the president of Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. (Video screen grab)

While the majority of those who left resigned or retired, at least 15 employees were terminated, according to several sources. Some former faculty said the wave of departures is linked to discontent with Moreno-Riaño, who received a 42-6 vote of no confidence from the faculty shortly after the 2021 school year began.

RELATED: Grace College professor ousted after online commentators flag ‘woke’ social media posts

In addition to the no-confidence vote, 22 full-time faculty members and 19 staff submitted written testimony to Cornerstone’s board at the time that included reports of bullying and intimidation, threats of dismissal, unilateral decisions in hiring and opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The board responded by voicing support for the president.

“Anyone who disagreed with president, or tried to just speak up for dialogue, anyone that had any disagreement or deep concerns, they got either pushed out, fired, or pressured to leave,” said Julia Petersen, a former assistant professor of creativity and innovation at Cornerstone. Though she moved to Michigan for the position in 2019 with plans to stay through retirement, she resigned in June 2022, citing patterns of abuse.

Petersen said she wasn’t surprised by the recent departures. “The list of people who were terminated were all people who were deeply concerned about what the president was doing.”

In October 2023, the faculty senate was reportedly disbanded and replaced by an “academic senate” of approved faculty and administrators and chaired by the vice president for academics.

“I’m concerned that especially over the last few years, we have lost leadership and gained management,” said former chemistry professor James Fryling. He told RNS that though he has loved teaching at Cornerstone, he retired this spring after routinely teaching 16 to 18 credits each semester, rather than the typical 12. He said that in recent years, he has grieved as faculty struggled to feel heard and cared for.

Some former Cornerstone faculty have expressed concern about the recent treatment of their peers. In an April 1 meeting with the professors in the School of Ministry, Media and the Arts, two members of Cornerstone’s executive council reportedly said all contracts would be renewed and anyone who wanted a job next year would have one, according to Cameron Lewis, a former assistant professor of film and video production who resigned this year. Five of the six now-terminated professors, Lewis said, were in that meeting.

In mid-May, Cornerstone released a revised employee handbook that adds tenured faculty to the list of employees who can have their employment terminated with or without cause. Also removed is a statement preventing tenured faculty from being terminated “if non-tenured faculty members are retained in the same discipline to teach courses the tenured faculty member is qualified and capable of teaching.”

The new handbook was sent out on May 14, several sources told RNS, with signed employment contracts due from faculty by June 7. By June 13, the sources said, the six impacted faculty were told they would not be returning.

Cornerstone told RNS the revised handbook was updated with support from academic senate, academic deans and faculty members, and is board-approved.
RELATED: Cornerstone University’s new president is under fire. His former colleagues see a pattern.

John Fea, a distinguished professor of American history at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who has written about Cornerstone, told RNS: “I’m guessing at Cornerstone, the numbers of people majoring in these disciplines was very, very small. So, you know, if the college is driven by a kind of bottom line, we need to keep the doors open and we need to come up with majors that people want, it’s a business decision that these presidents are making.”

But while nursing and business programs are more lucrative, Fea added, “It is in the humanities, and largely the liberal arts … philosophy, English, history, theology, those disciplines are the ones that carry the burden of delivering the Christian mission of a university.”

According to the school faculty directory, the departures leave Cornerstone with no full-time history professors, one full-time music professor and one full-time English professor — a linguistics professor who had been demoted from his position as dean of the School of Ministry, Media and the Arts.

With the departure of Matthew Bonzo, who taught philosophy at Cornerstone for 26 years and told RNS in May he had been pushed out after refusing to sign an oath of loyalty to the president, the faculty directory is also lacking a full-time philosophy professor.

Several humanities division majors, meanwhile, including creative writing, literature, publishing, linguistics, philosophy, music, and history and civic studies, are no longer listed on Cornerstone’s website.

Cece told RNS that the creative writing, literature, publishing and linguistics majors are being merged with the English major, and students will still have the option to concentrate in these areas. History and civics courses are being integrated into the social studies secondary education program, according to Cece, and the general music major has been discontinued, though Cornerstone will offer majors in music production and worship ministry as well as a music minor.

But the students in affected majors remain concerned about who will teach the remainder of their requirements. Several students told RNS they were disappointed by the swiftness of the changes, which barred the community from celebrating the departing professors, who have been teaching at the university for seven to 30 years.

“I get that Cornerstone has to make decisions based on what they can accommodate and what they can do, but I just feel so sad that they had to do it so quickly. They had the whole next semester lined up,” one science student and incoming senior told RNS. “All these specialized classes these professors have handmade from scratch, are they going to just hand it to adjunct and say, teach this?”

All students in the impacted majors will be able to complete the degrees they enrolled in, said Cece, who added that Cornerstone’s enrollment is growing and is now at 1,800 students.

Moreno-Riaño, meanwhile, told WoodTV in June, “The humanities are still very central to who we are, deeply integrated into our general-ed core program.”

The Washington insiders helping Sean Feucht spread Christian nationalism in Congress

'It is time in America that we take back territory,' Sean Feucht said in a video promoting his efforts to build a base on Capitol Hill.

Musician Sean Feucht performs in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, March 9, 2023, in Washington. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)

July 8, 2024
By Jack Jenkins


WASHINGTON (RNS) — Soon after the sun set in the nation’s capital on an early March day in 2023, Sean Feucht, an evangelical Christian worship leader turned anti-COVID-19 vaccine activist, led a brief worship service in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building. Feucht, who had spent the previous three years performing in front of sprawling crowds, drew only a smattering of members of Congress and their aides to an event that had been promoted as a mobilization of “an army of prayer warriors.” One member, Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, who calls Feucht a “great friend,” knelt and spread her arms wide as he sang.

Other conservative House members — U.S. Reps. Barry Moore of Alabama, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Michael Cloud of Texas and Tracey Mann of Kansas — stood less conspicuously in a loose clump, swaying in time with the music or holding a hand aloft. Lingering at the back was Rep. Doug LaMalfa of California, who had endorsed Feucht when the singer unsuccessfully ran for Congress himself in 2020.

LaMalfa’s presence may have been telling: Years after Feucht was denied by primary voters in California’s eastern 3rd district, he is still vying to build influence on Capitol Hill, looking for allies to help him in pursuit of a nation where, as he puts it, “Christians are making the laws.”

Since that appearance in the Rotunda, Feucht, who has tied himself to Christian nationalism and been connected to political extremists, has created a small coalition of Republican strategists, staffers and lawmakers, meeting with them in a Capitol Hill townhouse known as “Camp Elah,” named for the valley where David slew Goliath.

And while Feucht often frames himself as a Washington outsider, arguably his most powerful ally is a figure who hovered along the edge of his Rotunda concert, hands raised in prayer: a Republican strategist named Timothy Teepell.

Republican strategist Timothy Teepell, rear left with arms raised, attends a Sean Feucht performance in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, March 9, 2023, in Washington. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)

Teepell moved to Washington from Baton Rouge when he was 18 to work for Michael Farris, the leader of the Christian homeschool movement who later became CEO of the far-right legal group Alliance Defending Freedom. Soon he was back in Louisiana, attracting national attention for managing the congressional campaigns of Bobby Jindal, and then Jindal’s run for Louisiana governor in 2008. When Jindal won, Teepell became chief of staff.

After Jindal’s unsuccessful run for president in 2016, Teepell is credited with then-Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley’s ascension to the U.S. Senate in 2018. Teepell’s name later came up in an investigation into Hawley’s Senate campaign, ending in a 2022 ruling by a state judge that Hawley’s staff “knowingly and purposefully” subverted the state’s open records law by concealing emails between Hawley’s attorney general staff and his campaign workers — in particular, Teepell.

The political operative eventually joined the conservative strategy firm OnMessage Inc., which subsequently launched a public affairs firm, OnMessage Public Strategies, featuring Kyle Plotkin, a fellow Jindal and Hawley alum.

Feucht waded into politics about the same time as Teepell’s star began to rise, with the singer kicking off a nationwide “Let Us Worship” tour that featured large worship services to protest pandemic restrictions against churches. Though they were mostly held outdoors, the services tested and often violated local restrictions against COVID-19, making Feucht, with his long blond hair and his ever-present acoustic guitar, a culture war lightning rod with a counterculture vibe.

At a multi-day worship session in early 2021 in West Palm Beach, Florida, Feucht told the crowd, “I’d like to call up Timmy Teepell.”

Teepell, boyish and baldheaded, strode onstage with his then 20-year-old son, Thomas, and other members of his family. Teepell smiled as Feucht launched into a more than 10-minute speech and prayer. “The Lord sent this man of God into my life in a season where I … had just finished running for Congress and just getting beat up,” Feucht said. “God sent me a brother.”

Sean Feucht, right, prays over Republican strategist Timothy Teepell, left, and his family in West Palm Beach, Florida, in February 2021. (Video screen grab)

Feucht recounted calling Teepell for advice after he received criticism during the Let Us Worship tour, to which Teepell allegedly replied, “Man, you can’t back down.”

As he laid hands on Teepell, Feucht declared: “We pray that Timmy would put more revivalists in public office.”

Feucht suggested the strategist was at least informally advising him and hinted that his efforts in Florida received more attention after he told Teepell about his plans. “Immediately, we had state representatives and people retweeting the story of this place because of Timmy,” Feucht said.

Teepell did not respond to interview requests for this story. A representative for Feucht declined an interview request.

In September of that year, Teepell was listed as a speaker at Feucht’s “Hold the Line” conference at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. By that time, Teepell’s political clients had been welcomed into Feucht’s orbit: Hawley, who has increasingly embraced Christian nationalism, appeared onstage at a Feucht event on the National Mall in 2020. Feucht prayed over the senator, calling on God to elevate “men and women of faith” into positions of political power.

Christian musician Sean Feucht, right, prays with Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., left, during a rally at the National Mall in Washington, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Hawley showed up to speak at subsequent Feucht events, in one instance waving a Bible as Feucht declared to God that he and others in attendance “promise to pledge our support” to “men and women just like Josh” in the 2022 midterms.

Three OnMessage clients — Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, Montana U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale and Virginia Senate candidate Hung Cao, according to OpenSecrets — have appeared on Feucht’s podcast since 2021. Cao’s appearance took place just days after he announced his candidacy, with Feucht saying, “We’re going to get behind you, we’re going to support you.”
Though Feucht joked that Teepell is “very expensive” during the Florida laying-on of hands, formally employing Teepell could be tricky, as nonprofits such as Feucht’s are forbidden from explicit electoral political work such as endorsing candidates. It’s unclear if Teepell officially works with Feucht: Neither Teepell nor OnMessage appears on tax disclosure forms of Sean Feucht Ministries, Feucht’s primary nonprofit (he runs multiple). But since 2021, when tax records show Feucht asked the IRS to recategorize Sean Feucht Ministries as a subcategory of nonprofits known as “a church or a convention or association of churches” — which do not have to file public tax disclosures — the organization’s finances have been shrouded.

The organization, according to A News Cafe, raised more than $5 million during the Let Us Worship tour in 2020 — a massive increase over the previous year’s earnings.

Teepell’s connections to Feucht now extend to Thomas Teepell, Timmy’s son, a Senate aide (“I get to do cool things,” says his LinkedIn explanation of the job) who credits Feucht with his spiritual transformation from a self-described weed-addicted frat boy into a dedicated Christian. In a podcast episode recorded in April, Feucht interviewed Thomas, who recounted how the Holy Spirit “hit” him as he and his father were called onstage in Florida years earlier.

Sean Feucht interviews Thomas Teepell at a house Feucht calls “Camp Elah” in Washington, D.C. (Video screen grab)

In the podcast, Feucht said Thomas helps out with services at his Capitol Hill base, Camp Elah. Feucht purchased the property sometime between February and August of 2022. One video asking supporters for donations to maintain the house features Hawley.

In another video, Feucht makes clear his intention in buying the house, which is close to Congress and steps from the Supreme Court: “It is time in America that we take back territory.”

The building’s previous owner was Brandon Harder, chief of staff to Rep. Mann, the Kansas Republican who attended Feucht’s Rotunda service. Harder and his wife, Kristina, a Trump Health and Human Services staffer, were among multiple congressional staffers who were identifiable by their security badges at Feucht’s Capitol Rotunda worship last year. The next day, the couple appeared on Feucht’s Camp Elah podcast.

Harder has also been featured in Camp Elah in videos for Feucht, recalling how he felt a call to ministry after going on a day-long, nearly 35-mile prayer walk through the Capitol grounds in 2015. He has also organized a “staff prayer breakfast” on the Hill, he said, a monthly gathering where staffers “come together and talk about Jesus, and talk about what we need to do in this place.”

As for Camp Elah, aside from worship services held in a living room area, documented on social media, the site hardly buzzes with activity. Last April Feucht announced plans for daily prayer walks from the site to the Capitol, but, despite advance notice, reporters from RNS and other outlets had difficulty spotting prayer walk participants leaving or returning to the house until the last day, when roughly 10 people made the trek. Repeated visits to the house have found no one on the premises, or none who answered the door. Recently the doorbell was removed, its wires left dangling.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Co.), center, raises her arms during a performance by musician Sean Feucht, with guitar, in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, March 9, 2023, in Washington. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)

But it’s clear Feucht is doing his best to build a cohort of legislators and aides around his Christian nationalist fusion of faith and politics, and to advertise his Capitol Hill ties to his followers outside the Beltway. He has repeatedly mentioned the Rotunda worship service on his 50-state “Kingdom in the Capital” tour conducted in partnership with Turning Point USA — a conservative activist group that, like Feucht, has pushed forms of Christian nationalism. Boebert and Mann have spoken at Feucht events in their respective state capitals; LaMalfa and Burchett have appeared on his “Hold the Line” podcast.

At least four of the eight members who attended the Rotunda service have hung the Appeal to Heaven flag outside their congressional offices. Feucht often waves the Revolutionary War-era ensign, increasingly associated with Christian nationalism and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, on tour.

As he builds his network in Congress, Feucht appears to be fostering ties to the executive branch should Trump win in November. In late June, Feucht convened a prayer call days before President Joe Biden’s debate with Trump, telling some participants he had convened the last-minute Zoom session in response to texts from his “friend Chris LaCivita,” senior adviser to Trump’s reelection campaign.

LaCivita, Feucht said, asked him for “intervention from the divine” ahead of the first presidential debate. “I think it’s important, man,” he said. “When people are crying out for God to move in their campaign, heaven’s going to respond.”

People attend a “Let Us Worship” tour concert by Christian musician Sean Feucht on the National Mall in Washington, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020. RNS photo by Jack Jenkins

Prominent ‘queer affirming’ theologian facing trial by Church of the Nazarene

The Rev. Thomas Jay Oord is accused of teaching doctrines contrary to the Church of the Nazarene.

The Rev. Thomas Jay Oord. (Photo © Mark Umstot)

July 11, 2024
By Yonat Shimron


(RNS) — A prominent and prolific theologian in the Church of the Nazarene will face a church trial later this month for advocating for LGBTQ affirmation at a time when the denomination is doubling down on its opposition to same-sex relations.

The Rev. Thomas Jay Oord, an ordained elder and a lifelong member of the denomination, is accused of teaching doctrines contrary to the Church of the Nazarene. He is also being charged with conduct unbecoming of a minister for his efforts to move the denomination to affirm LGBTQ people. The church holds that “the practice of same-sex sexual intimacy is contrary to God’s will.”

If found guilty, Oord could lose his preaching credentials or possibly even his church membership. His trial will take place in Boise, Idaho, on July 25.

The trial follows last year’s guilty verdict against a San Diego Nazarene minister who published an essay in a book co-edited by Oord, titled “Why the Church of the Nazarene Should Be Fully LGBTQ+ Affirming” arguing that the church should have more dialogue on LGBTQ issues.

That minister, the Rev. Selden Kelley, who pastored San Diego’s First Church of the Nazarene, was stripped of his credentials and can no longer pastor a church or hold any position of leadership within the Church of the Nazarene.

Oord, who in 2015 was pushed out of his job at Northwest Nazarene University for his progressive views more generally, said the church tried to gag him into keeping silent about his upcoming trial. He has decided to speak publicly about it anyway. Two weeks ago he published a book called “My Defense: Responding to Charges that I Fully Affirm LGBTQ+ People.”

Church of the Nazarene headquarters in Lenexa, Kan. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

“I’m convinced that I won’t get fair treatment going through the trial process,” Oord said. “And I want most of all to make a defense based on theology, not based on the legal nuances of the denomination’s manual.”

ANOTHER AMERICAN PROTESTANT SECT

Oord has written widely that love is the center of what it means to follow Jesus and that love lies at the heart of holiness. Holiness is a critical doctrine of the Church of the Nazarene, which was formed out of the 19th-century Wesleyan-Holiness movement.

The 2.5 million-member global denomination is theologically conservative and has seen more growth overseas. It is declining in the U.S., where it has about 500,000 members in 4,600 churches.

The Rev. Scott Shaw, the district superintendent of the Intermountain District Church of the Nazarene who brought the charges against Oord, declined to comment on trial.

The church, which is governed by six elected general superintendents, last year put out a statement that the church’s positions on human sexuality, along with other positions on Christian character and conduct found in its manual or rulebook, were essentially doctrine.

This tightening of a church’s social policies and elevating them to the status of doctrine has also characterized recent moves in the Christian Reformed Church. The United Methodist Church, to which the Church of the Nazarene is more theologically akin (both trace their origin to John Wesley), underwent a major split over LGBTQ inclusion, losing 25% of its U.S. churches and more recently all its churches in the Ivory Coast of Africa. At its most recent conference, the church voted to repeal the denomination’s condemnation of homosexuality from its rulebook and allow LGBTQ people to be ordained and ministers in the denomination to marry same-sex couples.

An entrance to Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho. (Image courtesy of Google Maps)

Oord said he became “queer affirming” in the early 1990s and spent the next few decades helping queer students at Eastern Nazarene College and later at Northwest Nazarene University feel embraced and loved. He now directs doctor of ministry students at Northwind Theological Seminary, an online-only school. His daughter, Alexa, with whom he co-edited “Why the Church of the Nazarene Should be Fully LGBTQ+ Affirming,” is bisexual.

Oord said he believes the majority of scholars in the Nazarene affiliated universities and seminaries are LGBTQ affirming but won’t say so publicly because they fear for their jobs. One of them, K. Steve McCormick, a professor emeritus at Nazarene Theological Seminary, is expected to testify on Oord’s behalf at the trial.

Last year, a dean at Point Loma Nazarene University, Mark Maddix, was fired for siding with a colleague who lost her job, also for siding with LGBTQ rights.


Church trials are a recent phenomenon in the denomination, said Ron Benefiel, an academic and a minister in the denomination. He said he anticipated that if Oord is found guilty there will be an appeal.

Oord said he is speaking out, against the guidance of the church, because he wants to encourage queer people and their allies and because he wants to make a theological case for LGBTQ inclusion.

“I really want to see the denomination live up to the calling of love that it claims that we’re trying to pursue,” Oord said. “It’s my belief that love requires people who are trying to be followers of Jesus to be fully affirming of queer people.”

Hajj in extraordinary heat: what a scholar of Islam saw in Mecca

Despite reports of mismanagement, the 2024 Hajj brought together pilgrims of diverse backgrounds from 180 countries

Muslim pilgrims in Mina, near the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on June 18, 2024.

 AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool

July 9, 2024
By Ahmet T. Kuru
(The Conversation)

 — At least 1,300 people died because of scorching heat during the Hajj pilgrimage in June 2024. It’s not the first time that such a tragic incident hit the pilgrimage. More than a thousand were killed in a heat wave in 1985, and deaths due to stampedes and other crowd-related disasters have been reported in previous years.

But despite the risks, millions of Muslims perform the pilgrimage; this year alone, some 1.8 million participated in it.

I, too, performed Hajj this year by traveling from the United States to Saudi Arabia. This not only allowed me to fulfill my religious duty as a Muslim, but it also gave me the opportunity to observe the diversity of Muslim societies as a social scientist studying Islam and politics.

While the tragic deaths came to be the focus of much of the media coverage, there were many other dimensions of Hajj 2024. Hajj is a personal spiritual journey that also involves meeting Muslims from diverse backgrounds. But, of late, the Saudi government’s management of this gathering has been criticized, particularly regarding its destruction of Mecca’s historical landscape.

Religious significance

Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam – together with declaration of faith, daily prayers, fasting and almsgiving. Muslims who have the financial and physical ability to undertake the pilgrimage are obligated to perform it at least once in their lives.

During most of the Hajj rituals, men wear two pieces of unstitched white clothing, representing humility and equality, while women can wear any articles of modest dress. Together, men and women walk seven times around the Kaaba – the cube-shaped structure believed to be the “house of God” in Mecca. Muslims all over the world turn toward the Kaaba when they pray five times a day.

Hajj has many spiritual dimensions, such as contemplation and asking for forgiveness and supplication, but it also involves physical challenges. For example, an essential requirement of Hajj is traveling to Arafat, which is about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from the Kaaba, for a daylong prayer.

Physical challenges also include sleeping in tents in Mina, which is about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the Kaaba, for three to four days. Pilgrims must also remain under the open sky in Muzdalifah, a place about 8 miles (13 kilometers) from the Kaaba, for a night.

Traveling to all these places, in addition to performing rituals in Mecca, entails a substantial amount of walking. I calculated walking about 80 miles (129 kilometers) during my pilgrimage. And this year’s extreme heat added to the challenge.

Multiracial global Islam

Muslim pilgrims offer prayers at the top of the rocky hill known as the Mountain of Mercy during the annual Hajj pilgrimage, near the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on June 15, 2024.
AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool

Hajj reflects the racial and socioeconomic diversity of about 2 billion Muslims across the world. Hajj’s significance regarding racial relations was famously articulated by Malcolm X, a leading African American activist and intellectual.

Malcolm X’s Hajj in 1964 played a major role in his transformation from being a Black nationalist to adopting the mainstream Islamic notion of embracing all races. In a letter to his followers, Malcolm X explained how his interactions with white pilgrims were very positive: “There are Muslims here of all colors and from every part of this earth. … I could look into their blue eyes and see that they regarded me as the same (Brothers), because their faith in One God (Allah) had actually removed ‘white’ from their mind.”

This year, pilgrims came to Hajj from 180 countries, where diverse Islamic schools of theology and law have been practiced.

It is difficult to differentiate between pilgrims following Sunni, Shiite or other interpretations of Islam, since there are no substantial differences between their Hajj rituals. I had conversations with pilgrims from the U.S., Norway, Finland, Albania, Turkey, Mali, India, Malaysia and Indonesia without knowing their religious schools.

Nonetheless, one can still observe some differences. During the circling around Kaaba, for example, I saw a dozen Iranians reciting out loud “Jawshan”– a prayer book of Shiites rarely embraced by Sunnis.

Critical perspectives

Islamic scholars generally encourage pilgrims to focus on personal devotion and the rituals. But this cannot prevent some pilgrims from criticizing the Saudi government’s management of Hajj, including its attempts to commercialize this devotional gathering.

In his 2014 book based on his multiple pilgrimages, British Muslim intellectual Ziauddin Sardar critiques how the Saudi government destroyed historical tombs, shrines and other buildings in Mecca, replacing them with towering hotels and malls, including the Clock Tower, the world’s fourth-tallest building. The Clock Tower is located right next to the Kaaba and dwarfs the sacred structure.

The Saudis’ destruction of historical buildings in Mecca was based on their fear that these historical sites, rather than God, would become objects of worship. As a result, no historical buildings remain in Mecca except Kaaba.

Interestingly, the House of Saud seems to have finally recognized the error of its ways. In both Mecca and Madina, I saw recently opened museums, signaling a new attitude toward historical preservation.

However, many pilgrims disregard these problems and concentrate on the spiritual dimension of their journey. Hajj is a unique experience allowing one to meet and even live together with people from radically diverse backgrounds. It reflects the racial, ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of the global Muslim community. And this year even the extraordinary heat couldn’t prevent it.

(Ahmet T. Kuru, Professor of Political Science, Director of Center for Islamic & Arabic Studies, San Diego State University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Iranian American wrestling champion leads effort to develop singlet for conservative Muslim women

Afsoon Roshanzamir Johnston, the first American woman to medal at the world championships in freestyle wrestling, formed a committee to design a wrestling outfit for international competition that respects religious and cultural traditions.

Jordan national women’s team member Balqis Cail Taaibin, in red, wrestles Kazakhstan’s Shugyla Omirbek during the U23 Asian Championships in Amman, Jordan, in June 2024. (Photo courtesy of Jordan Wrestling Federation)

July 11, 2024
By Daoud Kuttab

(RNS) — On a trip to Jordan in February, Afsoon Roshanzamir Johnston, the first American woman to medal at the world championships in freestyle wrestling, met and coached a team of young Jordanian female wrestlers, some of whom have to decide between competing and violating their religious commitment to cover their heads and shoulders in public.

One young woman, she recalls, set her on a quest to change that.

“I saw myself in her,” said Roshanzamir Johnston. “She loves the sport of wrestling and I wanted to provide the opportunity for her and others in the world.”

On her return to the U.S., Roshanzamir Johnston assembled a committee of designers and manufacturers to come up with a proposed uniform that meets the requirements of the organizations that govern wrestling competitions internationally, as well as those of observant Muslim women.


A computer image of the Cultural Religious Compliance Gear women’s wrestling uniform prototype. (Courtesy image)

Any design would have to achieve two basic goals to get past regulators at United World Wrestling, in Switzerland. “The gear had to be tight” so as not to allow a finger of the opposing wrestler to be caught in looser fitting cloth, said Roshanzamir Johnston. At the same time, it was crucial that there not be multiple layers of loose fabric to cause slippage, allowing the covered wrestler an advantage in working out of wrestling holds.

Working with Tim Pane, CEO of MyHouse Sports Gear, a Scranton, Pennsylvania, company that makes conventional women’s wrestling singlets, and former clothing designer Melissa Veselovsky and Usman Shahbaz, My House’s head of manufacture in Pakistan, Roshanzamir Johnston soon produced a prototype, which she calls Cultural Religious Compliance Gear.

Mohammed Awamleh, head of the Jordan Wrestling Federation, told Religion News Service that the Arab Wrestling Federation is hoping to be able to present a final version of the singlet in August, when the under-17 world championships will be held in Amman, and that some women might practice in one of the three draft versions that have been created.

The effort is being supported by USA Wrestling as well. “USA Wrestling is proud and honored to work alongside such a strong wrestling ambassador as Afsoon Johnston on purpose of making our sport accessible to all,” said Rich Bender, the organization’s executive director, in a statement.

Afsoon Roshanzamir Johnston, right, greets Shahed Al Sharif. (Courtesy photo)

Roshanzamir Johnston was born in Iran, where her father, the Iranian wrestler Manu Roshanzamir, taught her the moves she was not allowed to even watch under the Islamic Republic’s modesty rules. After the family fled the repressive regime in 1983, she joined the wrestling team at her high school in San Jose, California. She was a member of the first women’s team to wrestle internationally, at the 1989 World Championships, taking home a bronze. The next year, she won silver.

By the time women’s wrestling became an Olympic sport, in 2000, she had retired, but she has stayed involved in the sport. (She coached the USA women in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.)

Her February visit to Jordan, in the company of other past U.S. champions, was aimed at kickstarting interest in women’s wrestling in the Arab region and was the result of hard work by Dan Russell, executive director of Wrestling for Peace. Russell, who lives in Amman, said wrestling provides tools to help navigate life’s larger challenges, for both girls and boys.

“We believe everyone should have the opportunity to learn and grow through wrestling,” said Russell. “Our project is dedicated to supporting the inclusion of appropriate clothing and covering options which adhere to cultural and religious values, enabling more girls to participate in the sport.”


A social media post by the Jordan Wrestling Federation. (Image courtesy of Jordan Wrestling Federation)

The Jordan Wrestling Federation honored Russell at the close of the 2024 Asian championships on June 30 for his work in helping find solutions to the inclusion of women in world wrestling.

Wrestling for women has been burgeoning in Jordan, whose King Abdullah was also a high school wrestler. The country’s wrestling federation, which had been dormant for 15 years, reestablished a national team for girls and women in 2022, providing the opportunity for them to participate in local and international competitions.

Awamleh said that since then the number of female wrestlers in Jordan has increased to almost 40, including the 10 women on the national wrestling team.

If the new singlet is successful, it will be a second time Jordan has been behind a sports breakthrough for Muslim women. In May 2012, at the inaugural Muslim Women’s Sport Foundation Ambassador Awards in London, FIFA, the world soccer federation, honored Jordan’s Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein for his efforts to overturn the sport’s ban on the Islamic headgear.

Opinion
The church is radicalizing over Gaza
Islamists, Zionists and conservative evangelicals are strange extremist bedfellows indeed.
Palestinians displaced by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip walk through a street market in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Saturday, June 29, 2024.

 (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

July 12, 2024
By Scott Gustafson


(RNS) — As a religious extremism researcher in the Middle East, I have been alarmed by the dynamics since Oct. 7 both in the region, but also, with growing concern, in my own backyard.

The Hamas attack and subsequent Israeli offensive in Gaza and the West Bank, launched with a fervor perhaps unmatched in modern history, is radicalizing a whole new generation of Israelis and Palestinians and, along with it, many in the West. And that radicalization is bearing the fruit of extremism, not just among Hamas militants or Zionist settlers but also in the Christian church.

Radicalization happens as individuals and groups ratchet toward more extreme and hostile positions. Symptoms include increasingly strident rhetoric, broadening lanes of permissible action and demonization of the other in conflict.

Experts agree that extremists and even terrorists are inherently rational, normal people responding to external events out of strong beliefs and passions. Mutual radicalization happens as groups inflame each other through dehumanizing rhetoric and revenge narratives. Then through us/them posturing and the urgent alarm bells of apocalyptic, existential threat, members of these groups shift toward ever more extreme positions calling for violence.

Radicalization dynamics are at work all around us, from Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East to American culture wars between the left and right. Senior Research Fellow J.M. Berger’s diagnostic statement is jarring: “If you think only the ‘other guys’ can produce extremists, then you might be one yourself.”

A Hamas cleric called for the annihilation of Jews from the land, calling them “filthy animals, apes and pigs.” An Israeli official called Hamas “human animals,” and Netanyahu likened Israel’s military campaign to a fulfillment of prophecy, citing the divine command to “not spare the Amalekites.” Leaders propagate these social contagions through bestializing words, giving implicit permission to their followers to act.

Israeli soldiers stand next to the bodies of Israelis killed by Hamas militants in kibbutz Kfar Aza on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

And act they have; thousands are now dead from Kfar Aza and Gaza to the West Bank, Haifa and Lebanon.

U.S. conservatives have also invoked Holy War. Sen. Lindsay Graham said, “We’re in a religious war here. I am with Israel … Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.”

Extreme tactics and rhetoric force a binary choice: choose a side, there is only one right cause.

Leading Christians have also followed the pattern. Many, including John Hagee and Greg Laurie, have said this war will usher in the end times. Wayne J. Edwards, a pastor in Georgia, wrote, “It’s obvious that Israel’s enemies do not recognize that God has given the land to the Jews.” Peter Leithart suggested it was time to “dust off imprecatory Psalms” and “ask Jesus to pursue justice … purge (the Amalekites) from under heaven” and to smash the “nations like pottery.”

Florida state Rep. Michelle Salzman, who is active in faith-based initiatives, called for the killing of “all of them” in response to a colleague’s lament asking “how many (dead Palestinians) will be enough?” during floor debate.

Evangelical Jim Fletcher, a member of the executive committee for the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel (NCLCI) and director of Prophecy Matters, called Hamas the latest in the “pantheon of barbarians” and cited Isaiah 49 as prophetic about their end: “I will feed those who oppress you with their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own blood …”

The most common Christian response I hear is an appeal to self-defense or Just-War. But, as Lebanese theologian Elie Haddad recently lamented: “I don’t know the context where just war theology was formed, but I live where it is implemented … and it is anything but just.”

The church is radicalizing on a dangerous trajectory. Eschatological debates and end-times fascination in part fuel zero-sum scenarios of mutually desired destruction. Islamists, Zionists and conservative evangelicals are strange extremist bedfellows indeed.

Some Christians see all Palestinians and Arabs as a keffiyeh-wearing monolith and paint anyone who criticizes Israel as part of the antisemitic global left. They forget that the Arabs are co-descendants of Shem and sons of Abraham. Others see everything through the narrative of oppressed and oppressor, colonized and colonizer, good and evil. They forget that humans and human systems are complicated jumbles of motives, history and evil. It is rarely simple.

Jesus called his followers to be peacemakers, to love their neighbors and enemies, to employ an alternative to the radicalized partisanship of the day. They were to be an embodiment of human flourishing, of shalom.

Western Christians are concerned about many things in the Middle East, but the work of peacemaking seems very far down the list.

(Scott Gustafson is the Ambassador Warren Clark Fellow for Churches for Middle East Peace. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Groups try to save Africa’s only penguin species

Experts warn that the African penguin could be extinct in the wild by 2035. That’s why two environmental groups are taking legal action against the South African government to help save the species. Reporter Vicky Stark in Cape Town, South Africa, has the story.

 

Unilever to axe a third of European office jobs as part of growth plan

As many as 3,200 roles will be cut in Europe by the end of 2025.

Copyright Luca Bruno/Copyright 2020 The AP. All rights reserved.

By Eleanor Butler

Published on 12/07/2024 -

British consumer goods firm Unilever is slashing a third of its office positions across Europe in an attempt to regain competitiveness and drive growth.

The regional job losses, earmarked to be completed before the end of 2025, are part of a plan to cut 7,500 roles worldwide.

Unilever currently employs 128,000 people globally, and it has said that as many as 3,200 office workers in Europe could be made redundant. This is out of a total of 10,000 to 11,000 office personnel based in Europe.

"We are now, over the next few weeks, starting the consultation process with employees who may be impacted by the proposed changes," said a spokesperson for Unilever.

The exact locations of the job cuts have not formally been decided, although it has been suggested that centres in London and Rotterdam will be particularly affected.

• Unilever creams off specialist unit as it cuts 7,500 jobs
• Unilever shares drop on Kraft withdrawal

The cuts are part of a programme announced in March, designed to boost productivity at Unilever.

CEO Hein Schumacher, appointed last year, is facing pressure from shareholders to build back market share following a series of disappointing results.

Sales figures have recently been improving, although Schumacher said in April that the company's transformation was still "at an early stage".

In March, the firm announced that it would be splitting off its Netherlands-based ice cream division to streamline operations.

This includes brands like Ben and Jerry's, Magnum, and Cornetto.

The cost-cutting changes, along with Schumacher's appointment, are partially being driven by pressure from American billionaire Nelson Peltz, who bought a stake in the company in 2022.

Redundancy estimates, first reported by the Financial Times, have since been confirmed by Unilever.