Religion Dispatches
…s a topic, by the way, that the author and numerous others have taken up on RD, going back to 2009, and again in 2010, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023… and this is far from an exhaustive list – eds…
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…have come to call the ‘Juneteenth conundrum’ is who is greeted by whom? In 2021, while at a summer solstice festival that happened to coincide with Juneteenth I recall with sheer amusement as two well-meaning, culturally sensitive White women approached tepidly to ask if they could wish me and my companions (all Black) a “Happy Juneteenth.” Our collective response, “sure,” and to their surprise I uttered with a straight face, “Thank you. You too….
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…of Christianity, the Bible, and, by implication, White evangelicals themselves: “Christians are under siege but must protect content that is pro-God. We love God, and we have to protect anything that is pro-God. We must defend God in the public square and not allow the media or the left-wing groups to silence, censor, or discriminate against us.” He also threads a similar knot around the founding documents of the US, warning his audience: “The Co…
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…igious anti-trans rhetoric can still be compelling to people who see themselves as supporters of LGBT rights is because we haven’t confronted the ways in which we continue to organize ourselves around the gender binary. The concept of social contagion, as understood by British anthropologist Mary Douglas, may help explain why these lawmakers want to keep trans people out of the social order. In Purity and Danger, Douglas claims that social boundar…
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…participation in the violent insurrection he himself incited on January 6, 2021, calling them “persecuted Christians” and “hostages.” He calls his political opponents “very evil people.” Before Trump spoke, his campaign set the stage for his remarks by playing a version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by a group he has dubbed “the J6 prison choir,” comprised of 20 men who have been arrested, convicted, and incarcerated because of their role in…
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…e 2022 GOP gubernatorial candidacies of state Sen. Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and State Sen. Brian Dahle in California. “When we are born again,” says Sheets, in a 2021 “Daily Prayer with Dutch” video, “we are no longer simply humans… we are a new race of supernatural beings called Christians.” NAR is about the organization of this supernatural race into the Ekklesia, whose purpose he says is “managing and governing the earth.” In fairness, Sh…
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…re strikes me as a form of millennialism—a hope for a form of collective salvation. The documentary features an impressive cast, including legendary Ufologist Jacques Vallée, Andrea Perron, whose experiences formed the basis of the film The Conjuring, and Dr. Steven Greer, the inventor of the CE5 protocols. We Are Not Alone is what Serena calls a “follow doc,” in which the audience is invited to follow her as she interviews experiencers, explores…
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…y highlighted the salacious details in this riveting tale of how Romney evolved from the GOP’s “standard-bearer” to “party pariah,” and what that decline says about the fate of American conservatism. But given Romney’s significant place in the broader story of American religious history—he was the nation’s first Mormon to be nominated for president by one of the two major parties—it’s also an important text for the nation’s story of religion. Romn…
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…oor & you and your loved ones will have ZERO capability of defending themselves. That’s the future the left is creating for you.” The Right’s culture war pivot reads as intentional and strategic. Right-wing pundit Christopher Rufo, who helped craft the Right’s anti-CRT talking points in 2021, called on conservatives to “create a strong association between Hamas, BLM, [Democratic Socialists of America] and academic ‘decolonization’ in the public mi…
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…ked closely with members of the America First/groyper movement. (In July of 2021, invoking a central Nazi rallying cry, he claimed “our blood and soil is what produced America.”) Jesse Hughes, chairman of College Republicans of Liberty University, who also retweeted Pearson’s ‘you guys’ warning, responded to Miller with an impressively succinct expression of both the deicide accusation and the supersessionist argument, tweeting that “the Jewish pe…
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