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Celebrate Jesus with Weird Merchandise!

By Gwynne Watkins

…of Easter, and the church-service version. Merchandisers are wise to define Easter by marshmallow chicks and colorful baskets, rather than bring theology into it. But there are always exceptions. One is the Oriental Trading Company. Founded to create cheap plastic toys for carnivals, OTC is now a leading supplier of cheap plastic stuff for church groups and Christian schools. Their party supply catalog always contains a small section dedicated to…

Memo to David Brooks: Francis Is Not Naïve For Criticizing Capitalism

By Peter Laarman

…credit: the man has balls to say this. Yes, fracking gives Americans more cheap carbon energy—for a while. And then we’re left with ruined landscapes, ruined aquifers, and our same old dependence on foreign energy sources, having failed to turn to renewables while mindlessly pumping more cheap petroleum into our veins. Like other critics of the new encyclical, Brooks chalks up the pope’s hostility to capitalism as the product of naivete or perhap…

“Reconciliation” With Indigenous People is Comforting For Many Canadians, But is a Christian Concept Up To The Task?

By Pamela Klassen and Joseph Wiebe

…then it has to begin by tackling the question of land. Swampy, virgin, and cheap Canadians who tell stories about land in a public setting can no longer do so while ignoring that they (we) are treaty people—that Canadians live in nation-to-nation relations with Indigenous peoples. As treaty people, part of the responsibility of settlers is to know and tell stories that acknowledge Indigenous land is the very same territory that they also call home…

The Economy is Racism: Ending Race-Based Economic Violence is the Real Challenge of This Moment

By Peter Laarman

…itter attack. Liberals rightly demonize Richard Nixon for playing the race card while forgetting that it was a liberal Democrat—Bill Clinton—who achieved the long-sought GOP goal of ending “welfare as we know it.” Today you can chart exactly how miserly each state’s Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) grants will be by charting the percentage of TANF recipients who are African American. For over 400 years, the vast majority of African Am…

Updated: My Work on Confederate Monuments Leaves This Christian Ethicist Distrustful of Calls for Reconciliation and Healing

By Ryan Andrew Newson

…cause of “healing.” That is, Confederate monuments stood as trophies of a cheap reconciliation where white people of “both sides” of the war could celebrate each other’s mutual valor. Perhaps they would never agree on who was in the wrong, but for the good of the nation, (white) Americans should put their feelings of ill-will behind them. This act of “reunion” was often symbolically performed by veterans meeting on a battlefield and shaking hands…

The Woody Allen Problem: How Do We Read Pacifist Theologian (and Sexual Abuser) John Howard Yoder?

By Stephanie Krehbiel

…do. But you can look at this body of evidence. “You” meaning everybody who cares. What changes if we care? What changes if we make respect for the humanity of survivors our first priority? Protective Gossip The reemergence of Yoder’s case is a powerful reminder of the consequences of ignoring or dismissing survivors. Linda Gehman Peachey, a writer and survivor’s advocate involved with the Yoder case, told Oppenheimer, “Physically he died, but his…

Does Traditional Christian Marriage Just Mean “Not Gay”?

By Daniel Silliman

…he Hitching Post? According to the company’s website there are two wedding packages, each of which includes a minister, music, a venue for the wedding, use of a changing room, and legal documentation. The whole thing costs under $90. Six to 10 digital photos cost $12 extra. The Hitching Post offers three venues for the wedding: a chapel, mostly free of religious symbols but adorned with flowers and foliage; a “Western room,” with cowboy-boot-and-g…

Paul for the People: John Dominic Crossan Imagines a “Letter to the Americans” In His New Video Series

By Peter Laarman

…way to ask this: Can you envision a time when more than a relatively small number of Christians will actively challenge and oppose the imperial project? Or is not so much a matter of numbers as it is of intensity? At this point we have to take with equal seriousness both human evolution and the core of the biblical tradition—or either one separately, as I take the same message away from each. For Jesus and Paul, it is never just about being agains…

Clarion Fund Claims Times Square Bombing Attempt Proof of “Coordinated Jihad Against Western Values”

By Sarah Posner

…rious issue, and a serious threat — that of Islamism — and makes it into a cartoon.” At the web site Jews On First, which follows the religious right, a number of analysts contributed to Rebutting Obsession, which as the name suggests, cuts through the film’s ahistorical, conspiratorial, and propagandistic claims. Writing around the same time in the London Review of Books, Adam Shatz described the Clarion Fund as: a front for neoconservative and I…

Yoga Guru or CEO? Saving the Brand When Scandal Strikes

By Andrea R. Jain

…ly, Friend put his employees at legal risk by arranging for them to accept packages of marijuana for his personal use. In the last few months, four of Anusara’s most senior teachers—Christina Sell, Darren Rhodes, Elena Brower, and Amy Ippoliti—resigned one by one, citing “professional differences.” On February 12, two additional senior teachers, Noah Maze and Bernadette Birney, resigned, and Maze stepped down from his position on an interim commit…