A new Evangelism for the US: The terms of engagement in America’s “culture wars” have been subtly changing since the 1990s with the economic, intellectual, social and political coming of age of many Evangelicals in the Bible Belt. This has been brought about by the rise of the oil and real-estate industries, and the occupational and geographical mobility of a considerable part of the younger generation of Evangelicals. They have flocked not only to Evangelical private colleges but also to the Ivy League universities (partly through radical access initiatives after the 1960s) and on to New York, Silicon Valley and even Hollywood as lawyers, bankers, IT professionals, academics and filmmakers. They constitute a new cosmopolitan Evangelical stratum, as concerned with ecology, AIDS (and not with policies exclusively dependent on abstention) and with human rights worldwide as with traditional questions of personal morality. They are also less solidly Republican. [TLS]
The Age of Nonpolarity: The principal characteristic of twenty-first-century international relations is turning out to be nonpolarity: a world dominated not by one or two or even several states but rather by dozens of actors possessing and exercising various kinds of power. This represents a tectonic shift from the past. [Foreign Affairs]
Saudi women jump through many hoops for basketball team: The Jeddah United women’s basketball team trickled onto the court, each player wrapped in a black abaya and head scarf. Within minutes, the women had shed their cloaks and were in uniform – white pants and jerseys with their names in red – practicing layups, passes, and foul shots. The team, made up mostly of Saudi students and housewives, is preparing for a local tournament this month. But what the women would really love to do, many said, is compete internationally and represent their country abroad, something Saudi Arabia does not permit. [CSM]
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