A. James Rudin
A. James Rudin is an author at Religion News Service.
All Stories by A. James Rudin
Americans have a long history of negative policies toward refugees, immigrants (COMMENTARY)
By A. James Rudin — November 18, 2015
(RNS) We're a nation of immigrants -- who tried to keep out Catholics, Jews and now Syrian refugees.
On 50th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, a glass half full (COMMENTARY)
By A. James Rudin — October 26, 2015
(RNS) Today some historians and religious leaders believe Nostra Aetate did not go far enough. I see Nostra Aetate differently.
Where clergy need to tread: Helping make end-of-life medical choices (COMMENTARY)
By A. James Rudin — September 29, 2015
(RNS) Even a perfunctory visit to a hospital ward, ER, home for the aged, hospice or medical clinic brings a clergyperson face-to-face with the staggering ethical problems our health care system is creating.
God and politics: 4 famous voices on religion, society (COMMENTARY)
By A. James Rudin — August 21, 2015
(RNS) The views of Catholic activist Dorothy Day, Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides, Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and Rabbi Stephen Wise largely contrast with the 2016 GOP presidential candidates.
What the queen’s Nazi salute says about British high society in the 1930s (COMMENTARY)
By A. James Rudin — July 28, 2015
(RNS) While the short film doesn’t make Elizabeth, who was just a child, an anti-Semite, it does remind us that in pre-World War II Britain, hatred of Jews and admiration of Nazism were rampant.
Add study of sexuality, ethics at U.S. seminaries (COMMENTARY)
By A. James Rudin — June 26, 2015
(RNS) Future clergy need to learn what contemporary physical, social, historical, psychological, literary, legal, biological, and racial forces say about human sexuality -- not just what their religion preaches.
On his 100th birthday, Herman Wouk’s guidebook to Judaism still a classic (COMMENTARY)
By A. James Rudin — May 27, 2015
(RNS) More than 55 years since its publication, Henry Wouk's “This is My God” retains its place as a guidebook to Judaism.
Pining for 1950s religiosity and missing the bigger picture (COMMENTARY)
By A. James Rudin — May 15, 2015
(RNS) "People prayed, people went to church. I remember on Sundays the stores were closed," said an Arizona state senator.
The promise of the Good Friday-Passover overlap (COMMENTARY)
By A. James Rudin — March 26, 2015
NEW YORK (RNS) Good Friday has often been a day of dread and death for many Jews, but it doesn't need to be that way.
Onward, Christian Soldiers: The complicated legacy of the Crusades (COMMENTARY)
By A. James Rudin — February 19, 2015
(RNS) The term "Crusades" is not some sort of benign, even quaint, historical reference.
Pope Francis and America’s shifting views toward Catholics (COMMENTARY)
By A. James Rudin — January 23, 2015
(RNS) With a Catholic vice president and a Catholic speaker of the House looking on behind him, Pope Francis' speech will serve as a vivid reminder of how far Americans have come in overcoming deeply embedded anti-Catholic bigotry.
Mario Cuomo’s overlooked contributions to bioethics (COMMENTARY)
By A. James Rudin — January 6, 2015
(RNS) Through the New York state's Task Force on Life and the Law, he helped shift the center of the medical universe to the patient.
My top 10 religion stories of 2014 (COMMENTARY)
By A. James Rudin — December 19, 2014
(RNS) Rabbi A. James Rudin offers up his annual list of the year's top religion stories.
Is nonviolence a solution to all the world’s conflicts? (COMMENTARY)
By A. James Rudin — October 31, 2014
(RNS) There remains a thin line between nonviolence and martyrdom.
The dark legacy of Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism (COMMENTARY)
By A. James Rudin — October 10, 2014
SANIBEL, Fla. (RNS) Henry Ford "really has a very dark history as far as the Jewish community and Jews are concerned." Indeed.
