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Religion Dispatches - Religion Dispatches Religion Dispatches
  • Racial Justice
    • Making Muffins and Troops for Spiritual Warfare: The Godly Women of Instagram
      Making Muffins and Troops for Spiritual Warfare: The Godly Women of Instagram
    • Because We Dared to Exist: After Generations of Trauma Black Gun Ownership is on the Rise
      Because We Dared to Exist: After Generations of Trauma Black Gun Ownership is on the Rise
    • Does Biden’s Inauguration Signal a ‘Third Reconstruction’?
      Does Biden’s Inauguration Signal a ‘Third Reconstruction’?
  • Politics/Law
    • Making Muffins and Troops for Spiritual Warfare: The Godly Women of Instagram
      Making Muffins and Troops for Spiritual Warfare: The Godly Women of Instagram
    • How the Pro-Life Movement Gave us Donald Trump — and Why It Could Bring Worse
      How the Pro-Life Movement Gave us Donald Trump — and Why It Could Bring Worse
    • Because We Dared to Exist: After Generations of Trauma Black Gun Ownership is on the Rise
      Because We Dared to Exist: After Generations of Trauma Black Gun Ownership is on the Rise
  • Religious Liberty
    • The Inauguration’s Beautiful Call for Unity Was Undermined by the Invocation of Religion
      The Inauguration’s Beautiful Call for Unity Was Undermined by the Invocation of Religion
    • We Can’t Have Religious Freedom Without Reproductive Freedom
      We Can’t Have Religious Freedom Without Reproductive Freedom
    • As We Survey the Damage of Yesterday’s Violence, What Will Christian Nationalist Politics Look Like in 2021? New Report Offers Clues
      As We Survey the Damage of Yesterday’s Violence, What Will Christian Nationalist Politics Look Like in 2021? New Report Offers Clues
  • Sex/Gender/Justice
    • It’s Time for Democrats to Read the Bible Verses on the Wall and Stop Courting White Evangelicals
      It’s Time for Democrats to Read the Bible Verses on the Wall and Stop Courting White Evangelicals
    • We Can Finally Put the Lie to Trumpism: 5 Myths Debunked By a Biden Victory
      We Can Finally Put the Lie to Trumpism: 5 Myths Debunked By a Biden Victory
    • 11 Election Tweets to Amuse, Infuriate, Enlighten, and Amuse You
      11 Election Tweets to Amuse, Infuriate, Enlighten, and Amuse You
  • New Books
    • Watch: Is The Religious Left a Mirage or Are Journalists Just Missing the Story?
      Watch: Is The Religious Left a Mirage or Are Journalists Just Missing the Story?
    • Pulitzer-Prize Winning Historian’s Latest Reveals the Problem with Today’s ‘Religious Freedom’
      Pulitzer-Prize Winning Historian’s Latest Reveals the Problem with Today’s ‘Religious Freedom’
    • ‘God Made Them Male and Female…and Eunuch’: Why the Biblical Case For Binary Gender Isn’t So… Biblical
      ‘God Made Them Male and Female…and Eunuch’: Why the Biblical Case For Binary Gender Isn’t So… Biblical
spencerdew@gmail.com'

Spencer Dew

Spencer Dew is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Centenary College of Louisiana. He is the author of Learning for Revolution: The Work of Kathy Acker (Hyperbole, 2011), and is currently writing a manuscript on the role of law in three related black ethnic religious movements: the Moorish Science Temple of America, the Yamassee/Nuwaubian movement, and the Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah.

(A)theologies, Archive, New BooksOctober 25, 2017

“Giving Godhead”: A Bloody Vision of Religion’s Deepest Influence

By Spencer Dew

Dylan Krieger writes of the prophets who eat scrolls and insist the parchment tastes just like the honey of that many-mansioned heaven in the by-and-by sky.

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(A)theologies, Archive, Beyond Belief: Election 2016, Culture, Politics/Law, Remapping American ChristianitiesOctober 18, 2017

“Almost Like Praying”: The Religious Work of “Hamilton” Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda

By Spencer Dew

In the wake of catastrophic destruction in Puerto Rico Lin-Manuel Miranda, the force behind Hamilton, has used…

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(A)theologies, Archive, Politics/LawOctober 12, 2017

Puerto Rico Prays for Truth: Reporter David Begnaud’s Sacred Mission

By Spencer Dew

Even as Trump threatens to withdraw federal aid from storm-devastated Puerto Rico, ranting on twitter…

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(A)theologies, Archive, Remapping American ChristianitiesSeptember 20, 2017

Status Updates at the End of the World: The Religious Imagination and Our Latest Apocalypse

By Spencer Dew

Revelations abound. Hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires crowd the news, alongside genocide, terrorism, and rogue state…

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(A)theologies, ArchiveSeptember 7, 2017

Oh Say, Can You See?:  9/11 Flag Displays and the Flag’s Symbolic Power

By Spencer Dew

As the sixteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, communities from Utica, New York to…

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(A)theologies, Archive, Politics/Law, Remapping American ChristianitiesAugust 29, 2017

What Happens When An American President Believes He is Above the Law?

By Spencer Dew

 Americans like to talk about law as if it something real, something outside the thoughts…

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(A)theologies, ArchiveAugust 14, 2017

Public Shrines to Treason: Charlottesville and the Cult of Confederate Memorialization

By Spencer Dew

Just as no American, after Charlottesville, can doubt that the current US president remains deferential to an extremist white supremacist base that rallies in his name, so too no American can pretend Confederate memorials don’t serve as public shrines to a treasonous worldview

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(A)theologies, Remapping American ChristianitiesAugust 7, 2017

The Lady Vanishes: Trump’s Communications Team Tries to Topple a Monument

By Spencer Dew

The dustup between Stephen Miller and CNN’s Jim Acosta reveals American civil religious ideals in a colossal clash with administration policy.

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(A)theologies, Archive, Culture, Remapping American ChristianitiesAugust 1, 2017

Unmasking the “Veiled Prophet” Behind a 135-Year-Old St. Louis Tradition

By Spencer Dew

The Arch City Religion Project is one of the latest digital means of mapping (and remapping) American Christianities and American religions more broadly.

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(A)theologies, Archive, Politics/LawJuly 24, 2017

How Trump’s Assertion of “Power to Pardon” Tramples the American Sacred

By Spencer Dew

Only a tyrant pardons himself.

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