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Feeding on the Faithful: How Supernatural Thinking Empowered the Third Reich

By Eric Kurlander

…itate “alt-right,” racist, illiberal, anti-democratic politics? What’s the most important take-home message for readers? The message is that the Third Reich would have been highly improbable without a widespread penchant for supernatural thinking—exacerbated by military defeat and social crisis—which Hitler and the Nazi Party rushed to exploit. Nazism was not the first movement to take advantage of people’s faith for political purposes. But Hitler…

Conservative Hardliners at Synod Prompt Question: “What Are We Doing Here?”

By Patricia Miller

…wo-year-long, two-part synod process, he won’t do anything. That makes the most likely outcome, according to Douthat, “simple ambiguity,” with Francis issuing a post-synod exhortation that: 1) officially reaffirms the indissolubility of marriage, 2) doesn’t endorse any specific pastoral approach for the divorced and remarried (or for the cohabitating, or gay couples, etc.), but 3) also doesn’t condemn any propositions or approaches to these issues…

Dispatches From the Rhodian Shore: A (Tough) Love Letter to Religious Studies

By Todd LeVasseur

…ate also tracks closely to worst-case sea-level- rise predictions from the most recent IPCC report for ice sheets, suggesting a minimum 16 inches of sea level rise by 2100 from just this one source, with more to come after that. (For those of you employed at campuses or institutions near the coast, like I am, this should be adding to feelings of alarm.) 4. Another group of scientists are very worried that the Earth will soon lose its ability to ca…

Is Abortion No Longer Significant for Evangelicals — or Has it Just Become Like Water?

By Bradley Onishi

…munications, and outreach are all woefully off base concerning the party’s most cherished and loyal constituency. Asking white evangelicals about abortion in 2018 may have been like asking vacationers how important it would be for a fancy resort to provide running water in all their rooms. Most would assume that such establishments would provide this amenity by default. Thus, when asked if it were a priority over, say, a private hot tub or an ocea…

A Twisted Love Story: How American Evangelicals Helped Make Putin’s Russia and How Russia Became the Darling of the American Right

By Katherine Kelaidis

…NATO is a good idea or not. How did this ever happen? The answer, as with most things wrong with the contemporary GOP, lies in the party’s almo*]}*st complete takeover by evangelicals that began during the Nixon era. Throughout the Cold War, the official atheism of Communist countries and the suppression of religion behind the Iron Curtain became a rallying cry for the American Right in general and American evangelicals in particular, who made it the…

How a Ruling for Masterpiece Cakeshop Could Embolden White Nationalists

By Sunnivie Brydum

…book Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal. “Those most powerful in society have always been able to wield religious freedom arguments for their own interests,” Wenger explained in a recent conversation with RD. And although conservative Christians (particularly white evangelicals and conservative Catholics) are going to great lengths to paint themselves as a minority oppressed by creeping secularism and liberalism, “they n…

Proposition 8—the Rematch?

By Bill Berkowitz

…to do that. He has called us to be faithful. And that we can do.” From its modest beginnings—an office at his “kitchen table” in 1977—“to a national platform for traditional family values,” Wildmon’s AFA has been on the frontline of the nation’s “culture wars.” Over the years, it has grown and prospered. In his report-back to supporters, Wildmon pointed out some of the organization’s successes during the past year. He noted that the AFA had grown…

Do Atheists Belong in the Interfaith Movement?

By Chris Stedman

…re is some disconnect when those who criticize the interfaith movement the most also seem to have had little to no actual experience with it. I could be wrong, but I’d be surprised if someone who had been involved in interfaith work would suggest, as prominent atheist blogger P.Z. Myers did, that it “cheerfully and indiscriminately embrace[s] every faith without regard for content.” Present in almo*]}*st every atheist blog I’ve read opposed to interfa…

Conservative Christianity and Its Discontents

By Karl Giberson and Randall J. Stephens

…ity figures seemingly aligned in condemnation, and unavailable when needed most. But the so-called “reparative therapy” such youth are steered toward has been shown to be not only utterly ineffective but also psychologically damaging. The American Psychological Association has stated definitively that “homosexuality is not an illness. It does not require treatment and is not changeable.” The American Medical Association and the American Academy of…

Are We Entering the End Times for Mainline Seminaries?

By Elesha Coffman

…duate school of theology, Andover-Newton, would sell its campus, phase out most of its faculty, and merge a remnant with Yale Divinity School. It is not news that the Protestant mainline in America has been declining since the 1970s. Yet markers of the tradition’s slide continue to make headlines. Institutional change of this magnitude comes as a body blow to seminary constituencies. Tenured faculty lose their jobs or, if they’re lucky, merely the…