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White Evangelical Leaders Already Distancing Themselves from the “81-Percenters”

By Neil J. Young

…trageous bid for the presidency, Donald Trump has upended many norms of American politics. But the disavowal by evangelical leaders of their political influence after 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for the winning Trump-Pence ticket may be one of Election 2016’s most revealing features. The desire of some evangelical leaders to distance their faith from the atrocity of a Trump presidency is surely understandable, but doing so after white e…

Trump the Totem: Like Other Fascist Leaders, Trump has Turned from Man to Symbol — And That’s the Danger

By Robert P. Jones

…ad of a Republican fundraiser event in Peoria, Johnson said something even more disturbing in his continued defense of Trump. Trump, Johnson said, “is not just our nominee, not just an individual running for president. I think now he’s seen as a symbol, a symbol of one who is willing to fight back against that corruption, the deep state and all the rest.” Given any number of other statements by Johnson, this comment may seem unremarkable. But the…

Right Wingers Say “Gay” is Out, But Try Putting “Unnatural Vice” On a Bumper Sticker

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ices” of their own, like, perhaps, calling long meetings to plan out how best to demonize other human beings. Remember, it was Paul who told the Ephesians to put away all “bitterness and wrath and anger and slander” and to be “tenderhearted” with others (Ephesians 4:31-32). No matter, because that massive 1.7 percent of the population is going to be the ruination of a religious right’s person to be a homophobe. “What are going to be the rights of…

Pope Francis Has Painted Himself into a Corner on Women Deacons

By Mary E. Hunt

…iver some response. Francis has been to enough meetings to know that the fastest way to slow something down is to appoint a committee. So he did, knowing that this slippery slope to women’s ordination is virtually inevitable unless the church wants to persist in contradiction. My guess is that this matter will get fast-tracked for several reasons. First, the Vatican knows it has a huge market-share problem related directly to its treatment of wome…

Are You Rapture Ready?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…le waiting on God to pick us up and Rapture us into heaven because we’re just sure we’re among the chosen. We’re too busy getting ours to worry about whose getting left behind in this lifetime. It reminds me of the bumper sticker that reads, “Jesus is coming, look busy.” We’re so concerned to look busy—to look like we’re about God’s business in the world, that we forget what it means to truly be about God’s business in the world. Jesus isn’t some…

Was Ghana Anti-Gay Scare Just Politics?

By Warren Throckmorton

…h it did not get a vote in the recently expired Eighth Parliament, it will most likely be reintroduced soon in the new session. If passed, the law will make any homosexual intimacy punishable by life in prison, or death if the participants are HIV positive. In the months prior to the bill’s emergence, Muslim and Christian ministers called on the government to crack down on gays. Very similar rhetoric is now being heard in Ghana, with gays being ac…

Transgender and Christian: Finding Identity

By Jori Lewis

…boy who longed for dresses. “I grew up in my mom’s closet,” she said. “For most of my life that was just something I did. It was not who I was. And I understood it as something that was wrong. Then that wrongness became a sin. God was clearly displeased with my need to express myself in feminine ways.” Robinson tried to suppress this desire. She married, had kids and went to divinity school. As a man, Robinson pastored a Baptist church in a small…

Why We Won’t Let Jonestown (Or 9/11 or Sandy Hook) Die

By Kelsey Osgood

…stown would hold until September 11, 2001. In Stories from Jonestown, the most recent addition to the Jonestown library, Leigh Fondakowski has compiled the numerous interviews that she conducted in order to write her play, The People’s Temple, which ran at the Berkeley Repertory Theater from April 15 to June 5 of 2005. Fondakowski, best known for penning the highly regarded play-turned-HBO-movie The Laramie Project, told the New York Times that a…

The Religious Case Against Religious Discrimination in Cakeshop Case

By Patrick Hornbeck

…couple to whom Phillips denied service. Because Masterpiece Cakeshop, like most of the arguments against same-sex marriage that have appeared in our public discourse over the past several decades, has been explicitly, or at least implicitly, religious in nature, we often assume that the fight over same-sex marriage is essentially a contest between religious and secular perspectives. But the story of religious advocacy for same-sex marriage and the…

A Secret History of Satan

By W. Scott Poole

…me the opportunity to trace the background of that fascination. What’s the most important take-home message for readers? I hope readers come away with two things. First, that American popular religion and popular culture have tended to influence one another in very strange, but very real, ways. The 1973 film The Exorcist has had enormous influence over how everyone from Pentecostal “deliverance ministers” to Roman Catholic priests understand exorc…