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Don’t Blame Black Voters: The Obama Non-Effect

By Jonathan L. Walton

…bility on Sunday morning? Have not black Christians often looked beyond the, err, “covert indulgences” of prominent clergy and gender ambiguities of choir directors? And last I checked, a critical number of black folk just love them some Tyler Perry Mable “Madea” Simmons (image right). The difference, historically and culturally, is that being black in America has proven to be enough of a social impediment. So the fact that many African Americans…

‘Cult’ Is an Inaccurate, Unhelpful and Dangerous Label for Followers of Trump, QAnon, and 1/6

By Catherine Wessinger

…mpist version of the Republican Party. Some people may carry out revolution, or, if lacking a critical mass of participants, take terrorist actions in their attempts to create their desired collective salvation. On January 6, 2021, it probably seemed to a number of participants and supporters in the Euro-American Nativist Millennial Movement that they had finally achieved the critical mass of adherents to overthrow Congress. There are many varieti…

Religion and Other Animals

By Paul Waldau

….” That the dog’s actions might not have involved praying of the human kind, as it were, is signaled by the quotation marks around “praying,” and by quotes from various people that suggest alternative explanations for the dog’s behavior. Yet the story closed on a note that underscores humans’ continuing deep fascination with the idea of animals as potentially religious: “Jigenin temple now gets 30 percent more visitors than it did before Conan joi…

No Conspiracy Theories Needed: Abortion Foes Cry Racism

By Kathryn Joyce

…s a race-conscious update to the anti-abortion message. Since late December, a number of anti-abortion organizations have made public and prominent hires of activists who frame their anti-abortion work in such terms: Pro-Life Unity hired a vice president, Samuel Mosteller, from the ranks of the “black genocide” faction of the anti-abortion movement; Georgia Right to Life announced the hire of Catherine Davis to lead outreach to African Americans b…

Evangelical Pastor Argues for Full LGBT Inclusion: “I Think It’s Inevitable”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…rve the Sabbath could easily be regarded as a sin against nature. Of course, then, this issue would certainly qualify as a disputable matter. Paul’s answer in the matter is acceptance. If anything, Paul was siding with those he called “strong” on these issues. But, the “weak” side, if anything, had more biblical support for its argument. Sabbath keeping and not eating meat sacrificed to idols was clearly forbidden in scripture, so it makes a great…

Growing Catholic Resistance to Bishops’ Crusades

By Peter Montgomery

…“we didn’t feel competent to speak on women’s issues.” In Washington State, meanwhile, “A growing number of Seattle’s Catholic parishes are saying ‘no’ to Archbishop J. Peter Sartain’s offer that churches become signature gathering points for Referendum 74, the ballot measure to roll back Washington’s recently passed same-sex marriage law.” Notably, among the parishes declining to participate are St. James Cathedral, the seat of the archdiocese,…

Dispatches from the Workplace: Postville: Ground Zero for the Intersection of Immigrant and Workers’ Rights

By Kim Bobo

…ville, roughly 200 miles northeast of Des Moines, is home to Agriprocessors, Inc, the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant. No one knows definitively how the company’s workers (not to speak of the animals) have been treated over the years, but the firm’s public relations problems began in 2004 when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) released a video showing animals in distress being slaughtered at the Postvi…

The Internet Is Not Killing Religion, Religion is Killing Religion

By Elizabeth Drescher

…eople like me—“Someone who has taken an introductory statistics class” (But, ha!, some of us had to take it twice! So there!)—“might insist that correlation does not imply causation.” My statistically muddled insistence be damned, however, because Downey doubles down by arguing that “correlation does provide evidence in favor of causation, especially when we can eliminate alternative explanations.” Like pipers, for instance. What is missed, howeve…

The Catholic-Evangelical (Non-)Coalition

By Patricia Miller

…National Opinion Research Center, by about seven percentage points. However, “in 1982, for the first time, support for abortions for social reasons, such as poverty, not wanting to get married or not wanting more children, was as high among Catholics as among Protestants.” The tendency for Catholics to mirror general public opinion on abortion has held over time. A 2007 Pew Poll found that 51% of Catholics think about should be legal in all or mos…

Leper Messiah: A Jesus Freak’s Search for the Meaning of Bowie—A Critical Novella

By Mark Dery

…Dear Leader he insisted his fear-sickened people love him…or else, booming, “I, the LORD your God”—always with the screaming CapsLock, like some online whack job—“am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me…” (Exodus 20:5). Happily, Yaweh was safely chained in the basement of the pop-Christian unconscious, the Old Testament, which most Jesus kids I knew seemed to view…