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Newsweek’s Strange Faces of the Christian Right List

By Sarah Posner

…ren’t associated with the Christian right. Ten is a pretty small number to best represent a movement Newsweek describes as “changing and growing more diffuse, even as it remains a potent force in American politics.” While some of the picks seem obvious (Marjorie Dannenfelser of the anti-choice group Susan B. Anthony List, or Jim Daly, the new head of Focus on the Family, or Robert George mastermind of the Manhattan Declaration) legal scholar Melis…

Conservative Christians Insist the Toxic Theology Portrayed in the Duggar Family Doc is ‘Fringe’ — But is it Really All That Different?

By Caroline Matas

…es between the two. In fact, The Gospel Coalition (TGC) itself platforms a number of pastors whose views seem more or less in line with Gothard’s. TGC contributor Voddie Baucham, for example, is a strong proponent of early and often corporal punishment for children, even going so far as to advocate “all-day sessions” of physical punishment for toddlers in order to “wear them out.” Baucham, who helped popularize the Stay-at-Home-Daughter Movement,…

Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

By Lisa Miller

…good and we have things in abundance. Heaven, then, is an extension of the best of this life. When ideas of heaven were first cohering, life for believers was not at all good. The Jews who first conceived of heaven as we know it today were under assault, literally, from their Greek rulers. Christians, at the beginning, were a marginal band, derided by the pagan majority. Islam was established in a uniquely inhospitable part of the world by people…

Replacing Godless Hollywood with Bible-Based “Cultural Dominion”

By Julie Ingersoll

…nclude a female member). Phillips and others, in discussions on his own website have argued (in keeping with other Reconstructionists), that women should not be allowed to vote since they are “represented” by their husbands in the voting booth. Phillips’ patriarchal “family vision,” with its rigidly proscribed gender norms that homeschooling is designed to reinforce, is described in detail by RD contributor Kathryn Joyce in her book Quiverfull: In…

God and the Gay Christian: An Interview with Matthew Vines

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…for why same-sex marriage should be legal. That requires synthesizing the best arguments and letting them percolate and mainstreaming them. I think we’re a bit behind in the religious conversation. It’s not that this research and arguments aren’t out there, it’s that they haven’t yet been mainstreamed in a clear, accessible, consistent way, especially for the most key constituency, which is conservative Christians. So, in the book, I’m not trying…

Note to David Brat: Free Markets Are Not Calvinist

By Kate Blanchard

…rnment is the decentralization of authority into the distinct spheres; the best check on the depravity of human beings in the economy is the decentralization of the market created by competition. But this is nothing like John Calvin’s own thinking. Despite his love of freedom, Calvin also had what we might call “Talibanesque” tendencies, since he believed in the sovereignty of God and the total depravity of humankind; humans are so sinful that eve…

Originalism Needn’t Always Result in Abortion Bans — Just Ask al-Qaʿida?

By Nathan French

…rt to consider state-level bans of abortion—or laws on fetal personhood—as best interpreted, from an originalist perspective, as matters of ensoulment or quickening. This, they may argue, would make the private decision on abortion best understood as a question of a constitutional right to religious free exercise. Such debates, held before, are already emerging again. And, when they do, it’s far better to learn from the voices—including Muslim voi…

Rites, Rituals, and the King

By Amina Wadud

…kah. Each prayer will have from 2-4 rakat. Clearly in sajdah we have the best expression of our status as ‘abd-Allah. But we also stand; in fact, we begin the performance at the stand: the best expression of our status as khalifah of Allah. The bow, or ruku’, after standing, acts to put the whole of the performance in motion, and to point in the direction of that motion, towards God (metaphysically, and the Kaaba in Makkah, physically). The fina…

What We Need to Understand is that Fascism is Intersectional and Erotic—’Thy Rod is Thy Gun,’ With a Hip-Thrust

By Annika Brockschmidt

…my own reporting about The Family, which nobody gave a damn about until a number of Family members started getting caught in affairs. You know, did they care [that The Family was] providing lists of communists to Suharto for the genocide? Or about total war in Somalia? I remember a producer saying to me, and I kid you not: “What’s a Somalia?” What’s a Somalia? But! Oh, he had sex with someone he wasn’t married to! Who? Tell us more! We all have t…

Religion, Morality, and the Death of the American Soap Opera

By Katy E. Shrout

…in the context of reaffirming that bad situations will be resolved for the best. Characters who claim not to believe in God are aberrations, usually identified as gravely troubled—perhaps grieving a deceased loved one—and will often be depicted as recovering their faith in the end. Clergy make appearances as minor characters, but sometimes, as was the case with an Episcopal priest on One Life to Live in the 1990s, have been major players, too. It’…