The Conversation

As the 2020 election approaches in the United States, President Donald Trump is adding school prayer to the list of contentious issues up for debate. After Trump promised in early January to “safeguard students’ and teachers’ First Amendment rights to pray in our schools,” his administration announced new guidance on Jan. 16.

Holiday movies are so popular not simply because they are “escapes,” as my research on the relation between religion and cinema argues. Rather, these films offer viewers a glimpse into the world as it is could be.

Thanksgiving presents us with an opportunity to develop one of the healthiest, most life-affirming and convivial of all habits – that of counting and rejoicing in our blessings.

By Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918, Jews, Mormons and Christian Scientists had joined the ranks of the chaplain corps. As I write in my book, “Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America,” this significant change inaugurated a century-long project to redefine what counted as American religion.

What is the significance of these holy days for orthodox Jews, secular Jews and perhaps even for non-Jews?

But the kids are clearly leading on climate change – and they’re changing the way we talk about this global challenge, putting ethics at the center of the debate.

As a scholar of American Jewish history, I view Trump’s tweets as invoking one of the most glaring anti-Semitic tropes in the modern West.