Evangelicals and Immigration Reform, When Piety Becomes Pathology, and More

Evangelical Christians, at least white Evangelicals, have long made their home in the Republican Party. So why do so many Evangelicals now support immigration reform, as most Democrats do? In the wake of the flood of young migrants crossing the Mexican border, two Evangelicals debate what to do about our nation’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy
Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition

For a woman we’ll call ‘Elizabeth,’ fear of offending God is sparked by the smallest things: cutting off a driver in traffic, failing to hold open a door for someone, thinking bad thoughts about her mother-in-law. Elizabeth is one of thousands of Americans who live with a little-known subset of obsessive-compulsive disorder called ‘scrupulosity,” an extreme fear of sin when there is none. Elizabeth joins us with her doctor, Dr. Jonathan Abramowitz, to talk about the problem with extreme piety.

Jonathan Abramowitz, professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“Elizabeth,” one of his clinical patients

Every Friday morning for two years, Sara Davidson drove to the home of a wise, warm rabbi to talk about a very difficult topic: what it means to die. They talked for hours, often meandering into stories and songs and memories. And this rabbi wasn’t just any rabbi–he was Rabbi Zalman Schater-Shalomi, founder of a mystical branch of modern Judaism called the Jewish Renewal movement. Rabbi Zalman sadly passed away on July 3rd, and so this week we re-air his segment from March, which turned out to be one of his last interviews.

Sara Davidson, author of The December Project: An Extraordinary Rabbi and a Skeptical Seeker Confront Life’s Greatest Mystery
Rabbi Zalman Schater-Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement

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