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How to Wreck Your Faith: A Theologian Teaches “Outlaw Christianity”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…time. I won’t make people feel ashamed for their tears. In debunking “Law Number Two” about never doubting your faith, you give a wonderful reinterpretation of the “Doubting Thomas” story. Tell me more. I started rereading the story of Thomas while I was writing the book and thought about how all you ever hear is, “Don’t doubt! But believe.” It’s true Jesus says that to Thomas, but this is not really the whole story. There’s also the only other t…

#OccupyWallStreet and the Antichrist

By Sarah Posner

…their ideas. Their think tanks, legal societies, lobbyists, talk radio and best-selling manifestos have trained, educated and financed two generations of writers and organizers. Conservative Christian colleges, both Protestant and Catholic, provide students with a more coherent worldview than do the more prestigious schools led by liberals. More recently, conservatives marshaled media outlets like Fox News and the editorial pages of The Wall Stree…

Peter Beinart’s Controversial The Crisis of Zionism: Right Diagnosis, Wrong Treatment

By Shaul Magid

…It’s not like it’s the only book on this subject written from the left. A number of far more “radical” than books than The Crisis of Zionism have been ignored by comparison: Gershom Gorenberg’s The Accidental Empire (2007), Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People (2009), Oren Yiftaehel’s Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (2006), Baruch Kimmerling’s The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Society, and the…

The Most Forgotten Queer Folks in the US are Fighting Back Against a Powerful — and Publicly Funded — Group That Discriminates With Impunity

By Chrissy Stroop

…t shouldn’t be there” displays a severe lack of empathy and represents, at best, a profound misunderstanding of how socialization works. It seems to imply, wrongly, that the queer kids in evangelical and LDS institutions made a conscious choice to attend those schools with the goal of stirring up trouble—a victim-blaming mentality that couldn’t be further from reality. It’s wrong, plain and simple, to teach children that something is wrong with th…

Netflix’s Iranian ‘Messiah’ Is a Gift to Trump and His Evangelical Base

By Tony Keddie

…d-times fantasies have often followed the path paved by Hal Lindsey, whose best-selling The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970 interpreted a pastiche of biblical verses as proof that the end would begin with a Soviet invasion of Israel. He claimed that the ancient prophet Ezekiel’s warning about Israel being invaded by an enemy named Gog from the North must refer to modern Russia. Even more, this northern enemy could not succeed without the help of I…

Blank Sabbath: Sens. Sponsor Bill to Curb Wage Theft

By Peter Laarman

…anic model of social organization. Theologian Walter Brueggemann is at his best in describing Pharoah’s Egypt—and contemporary America—as a disordered place of unlimited exploitation and exhaustion. In this context the greatest blessing given at Sinai is the Sabbath principle and all of the related instruction about learning to share abundance. But of course the challenge facing those wandering Israelites—and still facing us—is the powerful appeal…

Pope Francis v. Kim Davis: A Vatican Game of Thrones

By Anthea Butler

…ived for his welcoming tone in America, the truth is more complicated. The best explication of what most likely happened has come from Charles Pierce in Esquire, who verified (correctly) that Archbishop Carlo Vigano, the nuncio, is the person who hastily arranged the meeting between the Pope and Kim Davis. Archbishop Vigano is a Pope Benedict XVI supporter involved in the Vatileaks scandal. Vigano has lied about his own brother, with whom he is in…

Is Monsanto Satan? The Pleasure and Problem of Conspiracy Theory

By Alan Levinovitz

…le, because the deceiver is so powerful that any contact risks corruption. Best to avoid it entirely, lest you end up like Bill Nye, the Science Guy, who changed his mind on GMOs after visiting Monsanto. Under most circumstances, the reasonable explanation would be that Nye was persuaded by argument and evidence. But for those who believe in Monsatan, the better—the only—explanation is that Nye was coerced, just as the best explanation for my skep…

Progressive Christian: Wallis “No Longer Speaks for Us”

By Sarah Posner

…r constituency. That’s interesting, since the Believe Out Loud ad could be best interpreted as . . . promoting dialogue. Sojourners, so far, has been silent on the Rev. Robert Chase’s piece we published here. In the court of public opinion Twitter, erstwhile Sojourners supporters watch and wait: “still waiting for @Sojourners to respond to critics about its lack of ability to ‘take a stand’ on welcoming gay families to church,” tweeted Pastor Joel…

Why We Should Ban Oppressive Speech Acts

By Natasha Lennard

…e, when these speech acts are enacted, is not (to paraphrase Wittgenstein) best read through “the language game of reporting,” or the language game we might call the “open exchange of ideas.” The most obvious response is: Why not simply respond with better speech acts? “Speak truth to perlocutionary effect,” if you will. I want to specifically address why racist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-immigrant speech acts—qua speech acts—are best combated…