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Cue the Kool-Aid: Watching Jonestown Docs in the ‘Fake News’ Era

By Rebecca Moore

…ies: Jonestown, Paradise Lost,” slated to air this Friday, September 28. A January episode of “Truth and Lies” featured the Branch Davidians. Muriel Pearson, a senior producer at ABC News, created both programs. Documentaries that come out of news departments are no less sensationalistic than those developed by independent producers. There is one key difference, however: network news departments tend to avoid creative re-enactments—that is, dramat…

Catholic Bishops’ Religious Liberty Fight Enables Anti-Jewish Discrimination (Updated)

By Patricia Miller

UPDATE, January 25, 10:10 a.m.: The Trump administration on Wednesday approved a waiver allowing a South Carolina Christian organization “to participate in the federally funded foster-care program, even though the group will work only with Christian families,” according to the Washington Post. As Religion Dispatches has previously reported, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is seeking a waiver from the Trump administration to allow Miracle Hill…

In Face of GOP’s Shockingly Anti-Democratic Actions, ‘Love’ Is a Moral Failure

By Daniel Schultz

…n are losing complete control over their respective state governments come January. They are not taking it well. In all three states, the Republican legislature is laying down a flurry of bills in a last-ditch attempt to hamstring any sort of change. In North Carolina, they want to all but guarantee the GOP control over elections and redistricting. In Wisconsin and Michigan, they’re trying to strip incoming Democratic governors’ powers over appoin…

Why Natural Disasters Were Perfect Timing for Anti-LGBT Nashville Statement

By Kristel Clayville

…n enjoying a modicum of normalization in American society (at least before January 20). And although the statement was likely in the works long before the latest onslaught of natural disasters, the coincidence of its delivery, on the eve of the one-two punch of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma making U.S. landfall, illuminates precisely the panicked mindset that suggested such a proclamation was necessary in the first place. The Nashville Statement does…

The Story of ‘In God We Trust,’ Our Christian Nationalist Motto [Part 1]

By Andrew L. Seidel

…rs later, in 1863. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1 of that year, conscriptions followed, as did some of the war’s bloodiest battles, including Chickamauga and Gettysburg. Brothers were killing brothers—more than 2 percent of the population, or about eight million Americans today, would die. Families and the country were being torn apart. Three men recognized this time of “national peril and danger” as an opportuni…

Repent, Hillary: Trump’s Evangelical Backers Play the Sin Card

By Hollis Phelps

…ons of faith in public, she stated on the campaign trial in Iowa this past January: I am a person of faith. I am a Christian. I am a Methodist. I have been raised Methodist. I feel very grateful for the instructions and support I received starting in my family but through my church, and I think that any of us who are Christian have a constantly, constant, conversation in our own heads about what we are called to do and how we are asked to do it, a…

Mormon Statement on Feminism is Relevant and Timely… But Only by Coincidence

By Holly Welker

…us statement (four paragraphs, thirteen sentences, 224 words) published in January’s issue of the New Era, a magazine for youth published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The answer isn’t sophisticated; it boils down to “the church approves of feminism that agrees with its values and disapproves of feminism that doesn’t.” Something so anodyne and circular might not seem controversial or surprising. But feminism—along with the “g…

Don’t Let Bigoted Campaigns Sour You to the Revolutionary Idea of Religious Freedom

By Frederick Clarkson

On January 16 we celebrate Religious Freedom Day to commemorate what may be the most revolutionary and liberatory idea in the history of civilization. It was the reason many joined the American Revolution. It’s the first freedom in the First Amendment. But despite all this, we as a society have forgotten or taken its power for granted. Religious freedom was the idea behind legislation in 18th century Virginia that overthrew the tyrannical Anglica…

Is Trying Really Good Enough? ‘The Good Place’ Has a C-word Problem

By Daniel Albert Joslyn

…ce’s fourth and final season, the second part of which begins on Thursday, January 9th. The Good Place is a brilliant show, somehow managing to be much beloved by academics and popular audiences alike. From the second season on, TGP makes clear that the past five-hundred years have witnessed the “complication” of the world (by which the show clearly means the rise of industrial capitalism) and that one person’s actions and consumer choices no long…

Satanic Temple Attorney Discusses Cancelled Scottsdale Prayer Invite

By Joseph Laycock

This week, on the 22nd and 23rd of January, The Satanic Temple (TST) and the city of Scottsdale will meet in court to determine whether TST’s lawsuit over a retracted prayer invitation will proceed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The lawsuit began in 2016 when Scottsdale—which recently voted to spend another $130,000 to fight the lawsuit—scheduled the Temple to give a prayer invocation, only to retroactively uninvite them and change their…