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Fight the Power: How to Read, and Re-Read, the Book of Revelation

By Wil Gafney

…lation offer to the contemporary struggle over religion and politics in America? I do think, as an American, that the separation of religion and politics is very important because we have so many religious groups. But I realize that it’s not enough just to complain when politicians fuse them, because politics and religion have been fused for most of the human race for most of our history. And so I was asking myself, “Wait a minute—when did they ge…

Statement on NAR & Christian Nationalism Answers Few Questions But Exposes Growing Rifts in the Movement

By Frederick Clarkson and André Gagné

…laims that Ephesians 4:11 is only about ministry “functions” in the Church today. The statement turns the nouns into adjectives and defines “apostolic” and “prophetic” leaders according to their “function” (i.e., church planters, networkers, movement leaders, individuals who declare the mind of God, etc.). These “functions” are also said to apply not just to Pentecostals or charismatics. The term “office” isn’t used, despite the fact that Kelly’s…

When Nazi Comparisons are “Civil”

By Sarah Posner

…civil society has always been the prelude to a totalitarian government. Americans today, and Christians in particular, need to fight not just for religious liberty but to preserve the organs of civil society, less we ever fall into the benevolent despotism, de Tocqueville warned of. How different is that from the tea partiers who carry signs comparing Obama to Hitler or Stalin? Or the anti-choice activists who suggest that reproductive rights advo…

Regnerus Ducks Responsibility for Study’s Misuse

By Peter Montgomery

…—something the study unequivocally does NOT provide. In fact, Christianity Today gave him a perfect opening to tell people to stop misrepresenting his findings, and he ducked it: What would you say to religious and political groups that promote traditional marriage and want to use the NFSS results to “prove” that parenting by same-sex couples is damaging to children? I am neither a theologian nor politically oriented, so I wouldn’t presume to tell…

Workers Once Forced the Social Gospel Into Churches—Can It Happen Again?

By Eric C. Miller

…rates of religious affiliation vastly outstrip support for unions among Americans today, there is ample room for such accountability. One other constant bears mention here: because church life in America operates on a voluntary basis, Christian leaders are necessarily sensitive to changes in their membership rolls, which have immediate implications for their congregations’ bottom lines. This sensitivity can render religious communities susceptible…

Forgiveness

By Amina Wadud

…t open because something very human in the act of forgiveness is left out. Today we commemorate the famous march on Washington, let us hope the offense of racism finds such recompense in America. In Malaysia and Indonesia, at the end of Ramadan there is a custom to seek forgiveness zahir and batin for offenses done knowing and unknowingly. We do not know all the time how our actions affect another person. So to keep the level of humanity in forgiv…

Reflections on an Ineffective Negro Leader

By Jonathan L. Walton

…ignifies progress, racial harmony, and, for many, the standard-bearer of African-American leadership. Within the American cultural imagination, Martin Luther King Jr. now sits comfortably among the pantheon of American male civic gods such as Christopher Columbus, John Winthrop, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. Cultural memory, however, can be deceptive. It has the telescopic tendency to look beyond the many valleys along the historical lan…

Christians of Color Are Rejecting “Colonial Christianity” and Reclaiming Ancestral Spiritualities

By Deborah Jian Lee

…ited Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities and professor of ethics and African American religious studies, wrote in an email. “All over Africa you find people dressed as Quakers of a past era, wearing formal Presbyterian robes in the middle of the desert, singing ‘Amazing Grace’ instead of their own drummed invocations. It’s weird and sad.” Across these desecrated geographies, colonizers forbade traditional practices, drumming in particular, bec…

The World’s Most Influential Yoga Teacher is a Homophobic Right-Wing Activist

By Andrea Jain and Michael Schulson

…success of Donald Trump’s nativist rhetoric, with its promise to scrub America free of foreign contagion (and sometimes protect it from actual illness). Or look at the way that American activists have marshaled fear of contamination into powerful movements against vaccines, fluoride, and GMOs. Those same politics seem to succeed in India, the world’s largest democracy, and perhaps its most religious. Ramdev’s rise has been closely tied to the asc…

Extremist Women Want In

By Shabana Mir

…y this notion, the written word—published on the internet—gives them voice today. The change is momentous. Extremist and conservative women have had access to writing before, but due to the nature of publishing, this access was available to a relatively select few. Today, as we know, individuals educated in “textese” have ready access to the internet. Very little moderation blocks them from being “heard” by dozens or hundreds of people. Not only c…