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More Than Big Hair and Money: Jim, Tammy Faye and the Media “Holy Wars” of the 80s

By John Wigger

…fore PTL could become a front-page scandal it had to have an outsized presence in American culture. That largely happened through innovation, including the Christian television talk show format, which Bakker pioneered with Pat Robertson at the Christian Broadcasting Network in the 1960s, PTL’s private satellite network, launched in 1978, a year before ESPN, and the theme park, Heritage USA. The Bakkers signature television show, the PTL Club, was…

The Only Common Denominator of American Conservatism is Anti-Blackness

By Yannick Marshall

…le to admit that millions of their compatriots can not only stomach the stench of concentration camps and strange fruit but can also inhale it deeply and be exhilarated by it. A more reasonable interpretation exists Tom Cotton, a Republican Senator from Arkansas, defended slave masters saying they thought it to be a “necessary evil.” Jeff Sessions, the former US Attorney General “joked” about thinking the Ku Klux Klan was OK. Former Iowa Represent…

How the Study of Evangelicalism Has Blinded Us to the Problems in Evangelical Culture

By Christopher D. Cantwell

…tainable. Writer Fred Clark makes this point explicitly in his short, but incredibly trenchant contribution to the collection. For too long, Clark points out, scholars like Marsden, Noll, Bebbington, and others have written about evangelicalism and thought that their work described “someone who likes Billy Graham.” In reality, their portrayal of evangelicalism as intellectual and orthodox more accurately described “someone who likes George Marsden…

Modern Vampires: Your Neighbors and Spouses

By Joseph Laycock

…family, friends, and neighbors of vampires may find this book helpful. I increasingly encountered stories of people learning that their significant other was a vampire and spouses who were confused by their wife or husband’s “awakening.” One of my lectures on the vampire community was attended by a woman and her young son: Her son’s friend had announced that he was a vampire, and the mother wanted to know what this meant. This book is not intende…

Welcome to the Shari’ah Conspiracy Theory Industry

By Sarah Posner

…C’s organizers. Although he was banned as a speaker, he did make an appearance in the audience of “The Shari’ah Challenge to the West” panel. Indeed, the views of the panelists were virtually indistinguishable from Gaffney’s. Moderated by Cliff May of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, panelists included former CIA director James Woolsey; the American Enterprise Institute’s Ayaan Hirsi Ali; and the National Review’s Andrew…

UPDATED: Religion Has Been Framed; Covering the Aga Khan’s Visit

By Hussein Rashid

…slan says, “The Isma’ilis are Shi’ah who broke off from the main Shiite branch of Islam.” The fact that there is a larger number of non-Isma’ili Shi’ah does not make them the main branch. If the central belief of Shi’ism is the belief of Imamah, then the only group with a present, living Imam are the Isma’ilis, making them the main group. The point is that there are many ways to claim superiority, but the reality is most Muslims have lived with va…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…jections to “blasphemous content.” The IHEU reports being contacted by an increasing number of secularist groups organizing on Facebook, including groups in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, and Sudan. In all of this, the United States is an anomaly since it rejects even laws against religious hate speech, which were found in 36 of 45 European states in 2011. It’s the best place…

Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

By Diane Winston

…lues—raised appreciation for its influence. The upshot? The perception of increased religious influence on American society is just a cataclysm away. Religion’s saliency for political machinations, cultural inspiration, and social movements is a separate reality from the growing number of nones. Both need coverage. But the Gallup data raises questions that I’ve rarely seen addressed in recent years. What does faith look and feel like in flyover co…

Sacred&Profane: The Living Dead

By Gary Laderman

…justice. In our enlightened, scientific age, we don’t believe in the existence of ghosts or spirits or the dead come back to life to haunt, inspire, or teach the living. Halloween is not a time for serious reflection about the presence of the dead in our lives, or obligations owed to them before they move on in their postmortem journeys. Or is it? The presidential election is about life, today, now and especially in the short term. Or is it? What…

The Real Goal of Pro-Life Movement Support for Scott Brown: Kill Health Care Reform

By Sarah Posner

…nies the will of the people of Massachusetts. . . . Elections have consequences and the Democrats must understand that the consequences of a Sen. Brown victory mean it’s time to put a stop to the flawed government-run, pro-abortion health care program that’s been on a fast-track. For a movement with pretensions to ideological purity, the religious right’s support for Brown is calculated for the short term: hijack health care reform and push the na…