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With Election Takeaways Like ‘Too Transgender’ or ‘the US is Shifting Right,’ Dems are Determined to Learn the Wrong Lesson

By Chrissy Stroop

…their predilection for neoliberalism and fixation on the vanishingly small number of ambivalent Republican voters, a widespread media narrative about an electorate moving to the Right all but assures that Democrats will move even further Right in pursuit of those votes. Harris and her surrogates alienated the base and other likely Democratic voters, not only by getting extra cozy with the likes of Liz Cheney and other Republicans who were never re…

The Gospel of Contradiction: An Interview with Mary Gordon

By Nathan Schneider

…mmunity that I can lead them to more familiarity with a very great text. A number of times you bring up Thomas Jefferson’s abridgement of the Gospels. He seems to be someone who, in some ways, you’re identifying with but also making very different choices from. I don’t have the luxury of just snipping out the parts of the Bible I don’t like. Whereas I greatly admire Jefferson and the Enlightenment figures for their courage in blasting through so m…

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

…ese Americans with no historical ties to Orthodoxy, became a majority in a number of Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States and brought with them their cultural baggage—most importantly the Culture Wars. The changes were obvious and immediate, both in traditional Orthodox countries and in the diaspora. Of course, Orthodoxy has never been gay-affirming (despite John Boswell’s eloquent but unsubstantiated claims) and abortion had been cause for…

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

By Kelsey Osgood

…by obsessively remembering it. Freud first posited that the “compulsion to repeat” was the human being’s way of repressing trauma, though it was later seen as a natural, self-soothing response. Smelser, in an interview with Harry Kreisler of the Institute of International Studies, posits that society also feels the repetition compulsion: The idea [of mass cultural trauma] is that certain historical events are so profound in their cultural and pers…

How a Ruling for Masterpiece Cakeshop Could Embolden White Nationalists

By Sunnivie Brydum

…ople (and other marginalized communities) advanced their own religious freedom claims to counter the dominance of conservative Christian lawsuits that paint a narrow picture of who, and which issue, qualifies as a legitimate religious freedom concern? There are as many answers to that question as there are identities within the LGBT community, but many legal scholars and activists I’ve spoken to suggest that, in addition to the faith-based trauma…

Proposition 8—the Rematch?

By Bill Berkowitz

…cember, OneNewsNow, the American Family Association’s online news service, reported that gay activists were beginning to prepare for a recall effort: “Activists want to build a one-million-dollar war chest to defend any judge threatened with recall for ruling in favor of homosexual marriage.” “I don’t know of any recall effort that’s going on, but they might be thinking about Ron George, the chief justice who was the deciding vote in favor of homo…

Do Atheists Belong in the Interfaith Movement?

By Chris Stedman

…nt and CEO of the Center for Inquiry, an organization I have worked with a number of times (I recently accepted an invitation to join their Speakers’ Bureau) and whose “Living Without Religion” campaign I greatly admire. In his blog, Lindsay wrote that “it’s nice that some politicians are finally willing to acknowledge our existence, but are we so desperate for acceptance that we’ll allow others to condescendingly misdescribe us as adherents of a…

Conservative Christianity and Its Discontents

By Karl Giberson and Randall J. Stephens

…, too. Populist historians within evangelicalism, like the prominent Texas Republican, David Barton, promote the idea that America is slouching toward Gomorrah. America is God’s chosen republic, Barton asserts: the nation has been an explicitly Christian country from its earliest days and needs to reverse its sinful migration away from its biblical roots. Professional historians, by contrast (including leading evangelicals like Mark Noll, Nathan H…

Are We Entering the End Times for Mainline Seminaries?

By Elesha Coffman

…ned Episcopal Divinity School’s fate, the (non-voting) student and faculty representatives entreated trustees for more time. This impulse is understandable, but the representatives were well aware of long downward trends in enrollment and funding. When trends don’t change, institutions must. Although the current rate of change in theological education is exceptionally high, seminary identities have not been set in stone. As Andover-Newton’s name i…

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

By Neil J. Young

…olls indicated that 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump. That number represented a shocking measure given who Donald Trump is. But it also fit squarely with the patterns of white evangelical support for Republican presidential candidates in all recent elections. Still, some evangelical leaders are challenging these findings. “No, the Majority of American Evangelicals Did Not Vote for Trump,” reads the headline of an article published…