While Mitt Romney is taking a hard line on immigration even as the Republican primaries head toward the heavily Hispanic states of Nevada, Colorado and Arizona, the Mormon Church to which he belongs has become a decisive player in promoting policies that are decidedly more friendly toward immigrants…

[O]n immigration, the church actively lobbied [Utah] legislators, sent Presiding Bishop H. David Burton to attend the bill signing and issued a series of increasingly explicit statements in favor of allowing some illegal immigrants to stay in the country and work…

Mormons in Utah who back an accommodating approach to immigrants say they have been disturbed to see Mr. Romney align himself with his party’s anti-immigration flank and with Tea Party members.

For Romney, it seems, it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t, with the Times (naturally) standing in for Divine Justice. Nowhere does the article draw the obvious inference that Romney clearly makes his political decisions — like them or not — independent of church teaching. It would not have been hard to find someone to make this self-evident point.

But instead, the Times cites anonymous “Mormon immigration advocates” who allude to the possibility that Romney is using this issue to fake independence from Mormon teaching. What better way to smuggle his devious theocratic agenda into the White House?

A modicum of self-awareness or fairness in the editing process would have caught and redressed the obvious bias of this piece, but apparently that’s not how the Times approaches political stories these days: any stick will do to beat the man who increasingly looks like the next Republican nominee.

It’s true that Mormons are taught not to flaunt “garments” (as they’re called) for public view, which can feed the impression that Romney’s hiding some dark, cultish secret beneath his well-starched shirts and neatly-creased slacks. But the principle behind Mormon garments would be familiar to any Baptist who’s worn a “What Would Jesus Do” bracelet, or any Jew who’s worn a yarmulke or tzitzit (woven threads Orthodox Jews wear on shawls under their shirts). As the website for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints puts it, garments are worn as “an outward expression of an inward commitment.”

…Mormons are taught that by putting on “the whole armor of God”–a Biblical metaphor regularly employed in LDS discussions of the subject–they are afforded protection from temptation, in that they have a physical reminder not to sin. But there’s no magical guarantee involved. Just as cheating spouses ignore the vows symbolized by their wedding ring, plenty of garment-wearing Mormons sin. The power is in the symbolism of the garments, not any kind of miracles that result from wearing them.

Read the whole thing and learn what the garments look like, their theological significance and even where they can be purchased. As the Republican presidential primary progresses and Romney’s little-understood faith continues to receive greater scrutiny, let’s hope the press follows BuzzFeed’s example of factual, straightforward reporting and not cheap sarcasm and mockery from folks like Dowd (or her colleagues at the NY Times).

There was, of course, a huge media uproar in Turkey over these comments, but after the first shock wore off, something of a debate has erupted among Turkish and American commentators regarding the state of relations between the two countries.

Major Turkish newspapers described the incident as “scandalous,” with distinguished columnists like Mustafa Akyol opining “Rick Perry: What an Idiot.”

US based commentary was also harsh, though there was more sympathy for some of Perry’s concerns, if not the language in which he framed them.  In the National Interest, Ted Galen Carpenter wrote “although Perry’s charges were preposterous, the spin from the Turkish government and media is not especially accurate either,” citing well-known shortcomings in Turkish democracy and a growing “policy estrangement between Washington and Ankara.” Many of Carpenter’s observations regarding press freedom and free speech in Turkey are right on the money, but his comments about secularism in the country miss some distinctions that Turks, whether for or against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), often think are important.

The AKP’s relationship to Islam can’t be understood without some background in Turkish history.  Rising from the seat of the last Caliphate, the 20th century Republic embraced the ideal of “laicism,” a Jacobin secularism straight from the French Revolution in which the state views religion as a competitor for power, not merely as a cultural force that must remain separate from it.  The AKP rejects this kind of secularism, but it is also very far from the clericalism of, for example, modern Iran.

Where Carpenter and some other American critics differ from some (though not all) Turkish analysts is that for many Americans the AKP’s increasingly alarming tendency to crack down on journalists and regime opponents is seen as a sign of a specifically Islamist rather than generically power-hungry agenda. Even for some of the AKP’s domestic critics, these abuses of power look like political moves rather than reflecting a specifically religious agenda.

Many western observers have started to call the AKP an “Islamist” political movement  because of its stand on social issues, its excesses and arrests that seem to suggest a less than total commitment to principles of liberal political order, and because it professes a desire to alter—not to altogether eliminate—Turkey’s founding secular ideals.

The AKP says the third charge is unfair.  In American terms, it claims to stand closer to the position of an Alabama judge who wants a statue of the Ten Commandments on the courthouse lawn than to a raging theocrat who thinks we should repeal the Constitution and put the Bible in its place.  It wants to bring the values and the moral atmosphere of religion into the public square, but it does not want to replace secular institutions with religious injunctions.

This is controversial; many of the AKP’s domestic opponents believe that its professions of liberalism and moderation are intended to deceive, and predict that as the party entrenches its power it will throw off the mask to reveal the Islamic fanaticism just under the surface.  (I’ve sat through some long and passionate expositions of this point of view from some very intelligent and secular Turks.)

Others, including some Americans, argue more subtly that because Islam is so strong in Turkish society (about 99.8 percent of Turks today profess some form of Islam) and because Islam itself is such a political religion, the end result of AKP rule will be an Islamic state whatever the intentions of some party members. The moderates may be sincere, and the party itself may not now be committed to an extreme approach, but the political and theological dynamics will drive it down the Islamist road.

As is common in Turkish politics, the truth swims in murky waters and is often hard to spot. From where Via Meadia sits, it seems too soon to be sure either way. “Reply hazy, ask again later,” says the 8-ball we keep in our office; we will continue to follow Turkish news in hopes of a more definitive take.

Americans concerned about the AKP also point to Turkish foreign policy.  Governor Perry’s remarks were prompted in part by a sense that Turkey is moving away from its historically pro-US foreign policy. There are some who believe Turkey is playing footsie with Iran in ways that threaten the US campaign on the nuclear issue.  As Carpenter expresses the preception, “Ankara and Washington are on rather different pages about how to deal with Tehran’s nuclear program.”

True in some ways, but although Turkey and the US have differed on the role of sanctions, last September the Turkish government announced it would host part of NATO’s new X-Band AN/TPY-2 missile defense system. The radar installation will deter Iranian missile attacks and could discourage Tehran from pursuing nuclear weapons by diminishing their military utility.  Turkey, possibly for sectarian reasons and possibly out of broader considerations, is emerging as a strong regional rival to Iran in its own right. This, plus Turkey’s continuing concerns about Russia (aligning itself with both Syria and Iran) may keep Turkey closer to NATO and its American allies than some observers predict.

Israel is another sore point in the relationship, as the AKP era has seen a rapid and progressive deterioration in once-strong relations between the Jewish state and the Turkish republic. To many Americans, anti-Israel moves by Turkey greatly strengthen the case that the AKP is a full blown Islamist threat.

That Prime Minister Erdogan has capitalized on Israel’s unpopularity with the Turkish masses is clear; his proclaimed solidarity with Hamas and other deeply anti-Israel Islamic and Islamist movements throughout the region troubles many Americans who do not yet see the AKP as just another Middle Eastern party of sectarian throwbacks. Here too Via Meadia wants to keep an open mind; many of the region’s secular nationalists  (like Turkey’s neighbors in Syria) have also been rabidly anti-Israel.  In the Middle East, you can be anti-Israel and also be anything from communist to Khomeinist, and in any cases it is not yet clear how far the new Turks are ready to carry their anti-Israel line. One notes that the Turks have not worked aggressively to send new flotillas toward Gaza.  Again, time will tell.

What Perry and a number of other America-based observers sometimes scant is the powerful effect on Turkey of both the internal disarray in Europe and the increasingly slim chances that the EU will offer Turkey membership. If Turkey’s long courtship of the West is going to end in rejection (and the French genocide law is one more indication that France will make sure the Turkish application dies), then for reasons of pride and interest, Turkey must turn east and south. To do that effectively under contemporary conditions it must distance itself from the US and Israel and stress the religious bonds between its own people and the neighbors.  A lot of what is happening in Turkey these days has nothing to do with the United States or even with Islam per se, but about the fundamental changes of direction that must take place if Europe, foolishly, is determined to slam shut this door.

To discern the intentions and inner thoughts of Turkey’s new rulers is difficult, especially when in many cases they are, like most politicians, feeling their way forward through events rather than rigidly implementing a finely-honed plan. Turkey’s government is becoming more ostentatiously pious, less dogmatically secularist, and the elements of authoritarianism that defaced the Turkish Republic under Kemalist secularists have not fully disappeared in the new dispensation.  Its foreign policy is less Eurocentric and more Middle Eastern than before, and its relations with Israel have dramatically cooled.

Post-Kemalist Turkey is going to be a more independent force and an even pricklier ally than before, but the time has not yet come to proclaim the end of the US-Turkish alliance. Via Meadia is going to step up its coverage of Turkey and the Turkish press to see what kinds of patterns emerge going forward.  The relationship has been and could still be much too important to cast lightly aside, and Turco-American relations have overcome some severe shocks in the past.

Stay tuned.  The end of the Cold War, upheavals in the Middle East, and profound changes in Turkey itself mean that little can be taken for granted.

It’s as foolish for the left to hyperventilate about the dominionist danger as it is for the right to get its knickers in a twist over alleged Muslim plots to impose Sharia.  America has a lot of problems these days; the imposition of theocracy — whether Catholic, evangelical, dominionist, Islamic, Jewish, Zoroastrian — isn’t one of them.

Fortunately, some writers on the left are also trying to help the overwrought and the panic stricken calm down.  Michael Kazin, for example, co-editor of Dissent, understands that the “Christianists” aren’t taking over tomorrow, and writing in The New Republic, he offers an obituary for the Christian Right:

[W]hatever their influence on the Republican primary, the Christian Right is fighting a losing battle with the rest of the country—above all, when it comes to abortion  and same-sex marriage, the issues they care most about. A strong majority of Americans backs abortion in the early months of a pregnancy. If elected president, it’s exceedingly unlikely that Romney would ever sign legislation that could lead to the indictment of millions of women and tens of thousands of physicians for fetal murder. Last fall, even voters in Mississippi soundly rejected a bill that might have done just that.

Meanwhile, support for gay rights is rising, quite swiftly. Same-sex marriage tops fifty percent in some recent polls, and the remarkably placid response to New York’s recent legalization of the practice will make it easier for other states to follow suit. With over two-thirds of Americans now endorsing the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the debate on that once controversial issue is now a matter for historians to analyze.

Some of the changes in American morals and mores are good and some are troubling, but Kazin is basically right: America is becoming much more of a live-and-let-live society.  The public likes values and for the most part it likes religion, but one of the values that Americans care about is tolerance.

I’ve said it before and I say it again: The Handmaid’s Tale is not coming to a country near you.

When the Arab Spring burst onto the world stage last year, there was a lot of empty chatter about the rise of liberal democracy in the region. Developments since have disappointed the hopes of liberal, secular democrats at every turn. Economic and political grievances helped fuel the popular resistance, but in country after country it was religious activists and parties who capitalized on the discontent. By wide margins, voters in the liberated countries swept Islamist parties into the power vacuum left by authoritarian strongmen; and where the revolutions are still underway, faith is fueling the fire.

Religious forms of ideology and identity have largely replaced secular nationalism across the Middle East.  From Iran and Turkey to Morocco, secularism continues to retreat and religious forces are gaining sway. Hamas is gaining at the expense of secular Fatah; the Sunni-Shiite divide has polarized Middle Eastern countries in a stark and startling way. In Israel, tension between secular and ultra-Orthodox groups is on the rise.

Nigeria, always a country of interest to those following the influence of religion on politics, has fallen into a deep crisis over terror attacks by the radical Boko Haram sect.  Christian retaliation against Muslims for Boko Haram attacks has begun to take place; hopefully Nigeria will muddle through this crisis as it has so many others, but the danger of a spiral of religious and ethnic violence is real.

As we wrote two years ago when describing this trend:

The competing secular ideologies that once held religion in check have melted; the problems of life that demand ideological answers seem more acute than ever. This is why religion is on the march.

Looking ahead, we would only note that trees do not grow to the sky. Hot religion is on the march in the Middle East because (except for Turkey) secular parties and ideologies failed. Miserable economic performance discredited secularism, and religion based parties and ideas were the only alternatives left standing.

Via Meadia’s crystal ball is not completely reliable, but it seems likely that the Islamists also will fail to make Egypt rich. The problems of development in the Arab world and more broadly in a lot of the Islamic world are complicated and difficult. In the short to medium term, relatively moderate Islamist forces could lose ground to more radical groups as economic failure leads to disillusion with the revolutionary governments. But what happens if more radical groups gain power and they, too, fail to bring down the manna from heaven that makes everyone rich?

But meanwhile, in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and much of the rest of the world, the political salience of religion continues to grow, and in many of these places the hotter forms of religion are doing better than the cooler ones.  The hot religion trend will be with us for some time.

Even as estimates for the bombings in Kano rose from 150 to up to 250, new attacks left churches burning in one part of the northern Bauchi state, while 11 people were killed and 12 injured in a separate incident, also in Bauchi.

Most of the dead in the recent church attacks across the country are said to belong to the Igbo people.  The Igbo are a southern, mostly Christian Nigerian group of an estimated 27 to 30 million people.  An earlier attempt at secession by the Igbo led to the establishment of Biafra, a breakaway government that was crushed in the bloody Nigerian civil war.  Since then, the Igbo (a traditionally mobile and enterprising people) have fanned out across Nigeria and the world; their presence in the North is often resented by native Muslim groups. Boko Haram has ordered all Christians to leave the North and the church bombings and other attacks seem to be part of a concerted effort to stampede them into flight.

For their part, some Igbo in their southeastern Nigeria homeland are beginning to retaliate. Chika Unigwe writes in the Guardian about the news she is getting from the Igbo heartland in former Biafra:

An Igbo group, Ogbunigwe Ndigbo, gave all northern Muslims in the region two weeks to leave or face their wrath. In Lokpanta, where my mother is from, the Muslim Hausa community – which settled there many years ago – were seen leaving in truckloads.

The Hausa are the leading Muslim people in most of the North, and as refugees from the South come North with tales of violence and fear, anger will grow.  Boko Haram appears to hope that a series of reciprocal acts of violence and ethnic cleansing will escalate, leading to a crisis that ultimately divides the country. Presumably Boko Haram would try to use that crisis to get control of the North and impose its own radical and extreme views on Muslims in the country.

Worse, the government seems hopelessly, helplessly overmatched at this point.  A suspect was arrested in the case of the Christmas church bombings; within 24 hours the suspect somehow managed to escape, still handcuffed, from his guards.  There are widespread suspicions, right up to President Goodluck Jonathan himself, that members of the security forces and the military (historically strongholds of northern influence) are secretly helping Boko Haram.

Treason might not be to blame; the Nigerian government is one of the world’s most corrupt organizations, and it is perfectly possible that prisoner escapes can be arranged if the right palms are crossed. But whether it has been hollowed out by secret terrorist sympathizers or simply eaten away by conventional corruption, Nigeria does not seem able to do much about its worst security threat in a generation. Muddle at the top; violence at the grassroots; religion, ethnicity and oil revenue in a toxic brew: Nigeria is not in a good place.

A lot of people only care about Nigerian politics when oil is involved. At the moment, production is not under threat. But while violence in the oil patch can have a direct and disturbing effect on world oil prices, the increasing stress on Nigeria’s somewhat fragile and artificial national unity ia more serious in the long run. If the center doesn’t hold in Nigeria, few sub-Saharan countries divided by language, religion and ethnicity have much hope of hanging together. If ethnically charged religious violence begins to spread in Nigeria, wider confrontations across the volatile Christian-Muslim divide across Africa cannot be ruled out.

At the moment, the Nigerian center looks distressingly weak.

Theologically, this is a tricky question.  On the one hand, a serious monotheist has to accept that everything that happens is God’s will at some level.  From that perspective it is hard to argue that Mr. Tebow is winning games against God’s will.

More profoundly, it’s not at all clear, either from scripture or theology that God rewards those he loves with successful careers and public victories on earth.  That certainly isn’t how things worked out for Jesus, and a great many of God’s favorites seem to have gone through some rough times. The Bible tells us repeatedly that God has a special love for the poor and many of us know from personal experience that it is through our defeats and our failures that we have come closest to God.

A truly advanced Christian would be as thankful for the interceptions and failed plays as well as he was for the touchdowns.  All presumably are manifestations of the divine will, and the faithful should strive to be grateful in and out of season.

But Mr. Tebow is a young athlete not an old monk, and Via Meadia is inclined to be indulgent. A man who bears witness that true manhood consists in acknowledging your dependence on a higher power and that even rich and famous athletes need to regulate their conduct by something other than their own wishes and whims is someone to respect.

And for those who twist themselves into knots of chagrin over Mr. Tebow’s habit of public prayer, we advise some deep breathing and calm reflection. Mr. Tebow is not forcing anyone to join him in these moments of devotion; supporters of his opponents remain free to invoke divine assistance for their own cause.  And as a role model for youth, an athlete who neither beats women nor takes drugs seems, well, not too bad.

About Mr. Tebow’s skills as a quarterback or his chances for a championship ring, Via Meadia has nothing to say.

He warned his audience that Boko Haram, the pseudo-Islamic fanatical sect that believes all modern knowledge should be banned, has sympathizers within the Nigerian government itself, including the military and the police. The sect has stunned Nigeria by demanding that all Christians leave the historically Muslim north, killing hundreds of people to back up its threats.

President Jonathan has his own reasons to play up the threat. The government’s decision to drop fuel subsidies has Muslims and Christians enraged across the country; for many ordinary people, cheap gas is the only benefit they ever see out of the country’s vast oil wealth. Many believe that generations of Nigerian politicians, not excluding the current rulers, have grown rich on oil money and corruption. President Jonathan would just as soon Nigerians change the subject, and civil war is even more interesting than the price of gas.

Also, as a Christian whose succession to the presidency is seen by many Muslim northerners as a violation of the compromise by which Christians and Muslims rotate the presidency (Jonathan’s Muslim predecessor Umaru Yar’Adua died before completing his term and many Muslims think Jonathan, vice president at the time, should not have run for a full term on his own), Jonathan needs to keep the base happy.  Boko Haram’s attacks have frightened and enraged Christians across the divided country; Jonathan needs to show that he cares or the reaction could get out of control.

Yet it would be wrong to dismiss President Jonathan as an alarmist. There are Muslims in Nigeria who have nothing but contempt for Boko Haram’s ignorance and fanaticism, but who are genuinely worried that power is slipping out of the north’s hands. Since the Biafran War the Christian population of Nigeria has exploded, with many practitioners of traditional African religions embracing Christianity.  (At independence there were about twice as many Muslims as Christians in Nigeria. Today the numbers are roughly even.) Meanwhile, the oil rich south has developed faster than the north, and the more entrepreneurial and globally savvy southern Nigerians are moving ahead faster than the more conservative north.

For most of its history, Nigeria has been dominated by the north. That era may be ending, and this is what makes Boko Haram such a problem. Many northerners who care nothing about Boko Haram’s eccentric theology feel threatened by the power shift to the increasingly Christian south. Poorly educated young men with a sense of grievance and few economic prospects are the fuel for civil war; both northern and southern Nigeria are rich in this combustible human material. Mix ethnic and religious tensions in with economic competition, and you get a situation where a small match can set off a huge fire.

Boko Haram aims to be that match. In Nigeria today, religion is hot.

Gombe is the capital of Gombe state, one of Nigeria’s smallest and least populated states with about two million people. Like most states in northern Nigeria, it was historically a Muslim-majority state with strong links to pre-British Islamic emirates, but Gombe also has a large and active Christian population.  When sharia law was introduced, there was more resistance in Gombe than in some other parts of the north, and sharia has been restricted to those parts of the state where Muslims are in the majority. The religious tension, as is often the case, has ethnic and economic overtones as well.  There are predominantly Christian tribes who resent the historic power of the leading Islamic tribes and traditional authorities, there are Christian ‘immigrants’ from the south, and in some cases Muslims perceive their positions of power as threatened given the gradual tilt of power in the country toward the more developed, oil rich and increasingly Christian south.

One church attack in Gombe is not necessarily news in a country where religious, ethnic and plain old fashioned criminal violence is depressingly common.  But I have met a number of Nigerian Christians over the years, and in a country in which even the Anglicans are militant, religious hostility can spread. The Gombe shooting may or may not be related to Boko Haram, a fanatical sect which capitalizes on the credulity, insecurity and ignorance of troubled souls and has ordered all Christians to leave the north.  But Christians in Nigeria are both angry and worried about what looks to many of them like a trend of rising extremist attacks.

Nigeria has about one fourth of sub-Saharan Africa’s population and is one of the world’s major oil producers.  Its population is young and restless, and its governance is appalling. It bears watching.

Nigeria had been spending 1.2 trillion naira ($7.3 billion) a year—about a quarter of all government spending in the 2012 budget—to keep petroleum products within reach of its deeply poor population of 167 million people. […]

Many of the 70% of Nigerians who live on less than $2 a day, however, view the subsidy as the only windfall the nation’s poor have enjoyed from the more-than-two-million barrels of oil the nation exports daily.

Nigeria’s top two labor unions called for “strikes, street demonstrations and mass protests across the country,” starting Tuesday, according to a statement quoted by Vanguard, a newspaper based in the commercial capital, Lagos.

Nigeria may be one of Goldman Sach’s “Next Eleven” developing economies, but it remains a laggard. It lacks the consistent stability, good governance and civic infrastructure to maximize its potential. It suffers from a combustible mixture of youth (the median age is 19.2), endemic poverty, acrimonious (recent) history, rapid  population growth, ethnic rivalries, linguistic divides, limited education and hot religion. Throwing fuel on the fire, so to speak, is dangerous.

Sporadic but fierce violence is a staple of Nigerian society. The oil-rich Niger Delta is infamous for kidnappings, militancy and human rights violations. Even more worrying is Nigeria’s religious violence. Annual death tolls are in the low thousands, and incitements and reprisals are common among Muslims and Christians alike. Boko Haram, a pseudo-Islamic sect, may be the most fearsome combatant,  charged with church bombings, mass prison breaks and indiscriminate slaughter.

Nigeria is riven with stark divisions: rich and poor, Christian and Muslim, 250 distinct ethnic groups and double the number of languages. But Nigerians have long been united in their universal dependence on cheap gas. Now that this commonality has become yet another source of conflict, President Goodluck Jonathan will need more than just his first name to navigate Nigeria through the New Year.