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Religion Dispatches - Religion Dispatches Religion Dispatches
  • Racial Justice
    • Breaking Up With Marilynne Robinson Over Her Refusal to Acknowledge the Dark Side of Puritanism
      Breaking Up With Marilynne Robinson Over Her Refusal to Acknowledge the Dark Side of Puritanism
    • Racialization Meets Purity Culture: Abortion Criminalization Cases Confirm That It’s Always Been About Controlling Women’s Bodies And Protecting the ‘Ideal’ American Family
      Racialization Meets Purity Culture: Abortion Criminalization Cases Confirm That It’s Always Been About Controlling Women’s Bodies And Protecting the ‘Ideal’ American Family
    • Embryo Men — Decades of Conspiracy, Christian Nationalism, and Fear Led Us to The End of <em>Roe v. Wade</em>
      Embryo Men — Decades of Conspiracy, Christian Nationalism, and Fear Led Us to The End of Roe v. Wade
  • Politics/Law
    • Crossing the Rubicon? Mar-a-Lago Raid Enflames Right Wing Fantasies of Christian Caesarism
      Crossing the Rubicon? Mar-a-Lago Raid Enflames Right Wing Fantasies of Christian Caesarism
    • The Right is Using the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Search to Martyr Trump and Maintain the Violent Myth of the Big Lie
      The Right is Using the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Search to Martyr Trump and Maintain the Violent Myth of the Big Lie
    • New Apostolic Reformation Faces Profound Rift Due to Trump Prophecies and ‘Spiritual Manipulation of the Prophetic Gift’
      New Apostolic Reformation Faces Profound Rift Due to Trump Prophecies and ‘Spiritual Manipulation of the Prophetic Gift’
  • The End of Roe
    • Despite Vastly Different Values, Evangelical ‘Hamilton’ Connects Secular Left and Christian Right
      Despite Vastly Different Values, Evangelical ‘Hamilton’ Connects Secular Left and Christian Right
    • What a Turn-of-the-Century Anti-Abortion and Contraception Crusader Reveals About GOP Efforts to Ban Abortion Pills by Mail
      What a Turn-of-the-Century Anti-Abortion and Contraception Crusader Reveals About GOP Efforts to Ban Abortion Pills by Mail
    • Orthodox Church’s Authoritarian Anti-LGBTQ Statement Poses Serious Threat to Academic Freedom
      Orthodox Church’s Authoritarian Anti-LGBTQ Statement Poses Serious Threat to Academic Freedom
  • Christian Nationalism
    • Crossing the Rubicon? Mar-a-Lago Raid Enflames Right Wing Fantasies of Christian Caesarism
      Crossing the Rubicon? Mar-a-Lago Raid Enflames Right Wing Fantasies of Christian Caesarism
    • The Right is Using the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Search to Martyr Trump and Maintain the Violent Myth of the Big Lie
      The Right is Using the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Search to Martyr Trump and Maintain the Violent Myth of the Big Lie
    • New Apostolic Reformation Faces Profound Rift Due to Trump Prophecies and ‘Spiritual Manipulation of the Prophetic Gift’
      New Apostolic Reformation Faces Profound Rift Due to Trump Prophecies and ‘Spiritual Manipulation of the Prophetic Gift’
  • Russia Invades Ukraine
    • Unprecedented Anti-LGBTQ Statement By Orthodox Church in America Should Be Christian Nationalist Warning Sign to US Orthodoxy
      Unprecedented Anti-LGBTQ Statement By Orthodox Church in America Should Be Christian Nationalist Warning Sign to US Orthodoxy
    • With This Largely Overlooked Shakeup is the Russian Orthodox Church Looking to Westernize? Yes and No
      With This Largely Overlooked Shakeup is the Russian Orthodox Church Looking to Westernize? Yes and No
    • Moscow Suffers its Most High Profile Defection Yet
      Moscow Suffers its Most High Profile Defection Yet

Peter Laarman

Peter Laarman is a United Church of Christ minister who served as senior minister of New York's Judson Memorial Church and then as executive director of LA's Progressive Christians Uniting before retiring in 2014. He remains deeply involved in national and regional social justice projects touching on race, class, and religion.

(A)theologies, Archive, OMFG, Politics/Law, Racial JusticeMay 4, 2021

How the Right’s War on ‘Critical Race Theory’ Taps into the Powerful Religion of American Innocence

By Peter Laarman

I would never pick a fight with the formidable Michelle Goldberg, but I must pick…

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(A)theologies, Archive, OMFG, Politics/Law, Racial JusticeMarch 31, 2021

The Radical Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Left’s Challenge Today

By Peter Laarman

A dream shared by many will finally come to fruition Sunday night when the April…

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(A)theologies, Archive, Politics/Law, Racial Justice, Sex/Gender/JusticeJanuary 20, 2021

Today’s Inauguration Was a Reconsecration of Sacred Space

By Peter Laarman

C’mon, admit it: you had the Kleenex handy while you watched the swearing-in of the…

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(A)theologies, Archive, Politics/Law, Racial JusticeDecember 27, 2020

Not Breathing Much Easier … But Still Breathing: A Modest Plea For Hope to End 2020

By Peter Laarman

Especially for people deemed “too political” (a label I’ve worn proudly for decades), this has…

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(A)theologies, Archive, OMFG, Politics/LawDecember 2, 2020

Robbing Peter to Give Charity to Paul: The Dirty Secret Behind American ‘Giving’

By Peter Laarman

Just about every year at this time we’re invited, even hectored, to participate in the…

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(A)theologies, ArchiveNovember 24, 2020

Why America’s Whitewashed Thanksgiving Needs to Go: A Short Study in the Power of White Christian Mythmaking

By Peter Laarman

Readers of RD don’t need to be told that the image of “The First Thanksgiving”…

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Archive, Politics/Law, Sexuality/GenderNovember 4, 2020

Record Numbers Voted for More Death and More Racism; Can We Really Just Come Together as a Nation?

By Peter Laarman

In July I wrote in these pages about the necropolitics revealed by the actions of…

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Archive, Politics/Law, Sexuality/GenderOctober 29, 2020

Even if Biden Wins Will We Reckon With ‘Virtuous Republic Syndrome,’ the Persistent Belief that America is a Blessed Nation?

By Peter Laarman

Most white Americans of a certain age hew to a civil religion that holds that…

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(A)theologies, Archive, New Books, Politics/Law, Racial Justice, Sex/Gender/Justice, Sexuality/GenderOctober 20, 2020

How U.S. Conservatives Conjured the Jesus of Their Dreams

By Peter Laarman

It seems that when Donald Trump and his Republican enablers are able to seat a…

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Archive, OMFG, Politics/Law, Racial JusticeSeptember 3, 2020

And the Violent Bear It Away? Disciplined Nonviolence and the Coming Election Emergency

By Peter Laarman

A few weeks back I reached out to around 60 friends and colleagues whom I’ve…

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Religion Dispatches

Religion Dispatches

Religion Dispatches is your independent, non-profit, award-winning source for the best writing on critical and timely issues at the intersection of religion, politics, and culture.

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