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Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue

By Cody J. Sanders

…sed, if my sister’s mark of culture must be repressed, then we are not the flesh of Christ. For, it is through and in Christ’s own flesh that the ‘other’ is my sister, is my brother; indeed, the ‘other’ is me… If anti-gay bullying is a theological issue, perhaps what is called for is a creative theological response. A theological response that challenges the systematic violence that upholds an oppressive religious and cultural ideology will not be…

More Than Big Hair and Money: Jim, Tammy Faye and the Media “Holy Wars” of the 80s

By John Wigger

…haracters—Jim and Tammy Bakker, Richard Dortch, David Taggart, John Wesley Fletcher, and of course Jessica Hahn—seem almost too improbable for a novel. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Entertain them? Piss them off? All of the above! The story ranges from sincere faith to fraud, secret affairs, and the allure of television cameras. I interviewed dozens of people for the book, some of whom thought PTL was the best thing they had ever been inv…

The Only Common Denominator of American Conservatism is Anti-Blackness

By Yannick Marshall

…damentally post-racist country, the racists “are just a few idiots,” not a number tallied in the millions. In “conservatism,” the intellectual legacy of the Confederacy has been normalized and an entire population of Negrophobes is absorbed into society and allowed space to push their anti-Black agenda everywhere from the Senate floor to bank cubicles. It’s been said that politics is the continuation of war by other means. After the surrender at A…

How the Study of Evangelicalism Has Blinded Us to the Problems in Evangelical Culture

By Christopher D. Cantwell

…of the whole. Noll even ends the collection with yet another metaphorical flourish, suggesting that scholars no longer think of evangelicalism as a religious “World Series,” where events in the United States determine a victor, but as a “World Cup,” where an international diversity of teams are on display. There’s a certain irony here, in that an Anglophone movement that once saw itself as uniquely positioned to save the world is now looking to t…

Modern Vampires: Your Neighbors and Spouses

By Joseph Laycock

…that some readers may be “awakening” themselves, and that this book may influence the continuing emergence of this community. It is naïve for a modern ethnographer to imagine that their research “leaves no footprints.” Finally, I think that the family, friends, and neighbors of vampires may find this book helpful. I increasingly encountered stories of people learning that their significant other was a vampire and spouses who were confused by thei…

Welcome to the Shari’ah Conspiracy Theory Industry

By Sarah Posner

…te being shunned at CPAC, Gaffney’s views are shared by Rep. Allen West (R-FL), chosen by CPAC to give its closing keynote address, an honor that in the past has been bestowed on Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Adding to his numerous inflammatory statements about Islam, West recently said that the values of Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who is Muslim, are the “antithesis of the principles on which this country was established.” West, whose position on…

UPDATED: Religion Has Been Framed; Covering the Aga Khan’s Visit

By Hussein Rashid

…uslims. A cycle is created between reporting on religion as a source of conflict and those who want to make religion a source of conflict. I marvel at the fact that seven years after 9/11 the US media doesn’t understand how complicit it is in supporting this cycle of violence. A short course on Islam may have been a poor ROI before, but now it seems like a necessity. In England, an avowed atheist, writes almost 2 years after the London subway bomb…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…o “blasphemous content.” The IHEU reports being contacted by an increasing number of secularist groups organizing on Facebook, including groups in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, and Sudan. In all of this, the United States is an anomaly since it rejects even laws against religious hate speech, which were found in 36 of 45 European states in 2011. It’s the best place in the wo…

Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

By Diane Winston

…, community cohesion, and traditional values—raised appreciation for its influence. The upshot? The perception of increased religious influence on American society is just a cataclysm away. Religion’s saliency for political machinations, cultural inspiration, and social movements is a separate reality from the growing number of nones. Both need coverage. But the Gallup data raises questions that I’ve rarely seen addressed in recent years. What doe…

Sacred&Profane: The Living Dead

By Gary Laderman

…oked. There are ghosts and graves in the yards of my neighborhood, and the number of skeletons—reclining on lawn chairs, sprouting up from the ground, beckoning from the shadows—has transformed the suburban landscape into a set for a George Romero film. In addition, and beyond bland suburbia, monsters, ghosts, skeletons, vampires, and other playful dead inhabit stores and sell products, entertain across the television dial, and instill a dreadfull…