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Studying Religion is Suddenly Popular

By Mark Hulsether

…t leaves a nasty aftertaste. I prefer an image of struggle to build on the best legacies from the roots of Religious Studies in a current era when these legacies could easily collapse due to the dual dynamic of (wholly appropriate) efforts to diversify and (scandalous) corporate downsizing. This dual challenge now spreads many Religion programs precariously thin. Newsweek’s stress on “do-gooders” is also worrisome. True, Religious Studies is often…

You’re Right, Ross Douthat: Donald Trump Is Kind of Like Islam

By Haroon Moghul

…outhat is reminded of Islam? Strange, yes. I could use stronger words. The best historical analogy Douthat can find to the factionalism rending apart an American political party is a conflict between two great Middle Eastern superpowers, divided by religion, each intent on physically eliminating the other? But it’s not a bad analogy, you see. It’s a Freudian slip of an analogy, revealing what Douthat is really thinking—and offering a surprising in…

Khalifah: We Really Do Have Control Over Our Own Destiny

By Amina Wadud

…believe we live this life according to our own will and trust in the Lord. I just don’t get the idea that unless I get a specific, personal, one-on-one message, then I cannot do the best I can with what God has given me. But then, as all the great Muslim thinkers conclude at the end of their writings: Allah knows best….

The Most Important Religious Category of the Primaries, the Non-Religious, Doesn’t Break Down as Cleanly as You Think

By Daniel Schultz

…dn’t keep up that of older voters. Appropriately enough, Teen Vogue put it best: As expected, Sanders won big with the young voters who did show up, but the youth vote continues to be outnumbered by older voter turnout across the country. Even that might be somewhat generous. As USA Today notes, Sanders won a smaller share of the under-thirty demographic than he did in 2016 in several states. It’s worth noting this shift in a religion-and-politics…

“Islam Is Not a Religion”

By Julie Ingersoll

…n the world, cannot resort to debating which interpretation of the text is best, as though the texts exist independent of the people who read them. So Islam can be violent, and so can Christianity. Thankfully other Muslims and Christians want to say that those folks are not “really Muslim,” or “really Christian.” But if all we have is that which scholars call “insider discourse,” then conversations across religious divides become, at worst, dising…

Come Hell or High Water: How the Melodrama of Disaster Leaves Us Vulnerable

By Noah Berlatsky

…ublic forgets quickly, which means that there’s little incentive to create best practice plans and mechanisms for reducing the scale of disasters, since by election time no one is likely to remember. “Voters reward the delivery of disaster relief, but not investments in disaster preparedness,” the authors bleakly conclude. The problem is that most of us see disaster, and disaster response, through a narrative of melodrama. Melodrama is known for e…

Right Wing Christians and Radical Feminists Form an Odd (Transphobic) Couple

By Sunnivie Brydum

…ly rejected the claim that allowing trans folks to use the facilities that best match their gender identity leads to any increase in reports of harassment or assault in such spaces. It just doesn’t work that way. In fact, if anyone has anything to fear it should be transgender people since they’re actually more likely than their cisgender peers to be harassed and assaulted in sex-segregated spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms. And with high-pro…

“Religion, O Diabolic”: Lamenting Religious Violence, Then and Now

By Ed Simon

…cularism: the religion of liberty, equality, and fraternity. These are the best of those French values, attacked this weekend. To paraphrase an American poet, there is nothing wrong with France that what’s right with France can’t fix. There is no figure that better embodies the French character than Montaigne, the writer who in many ways invented the modern person. A Catholic, he was horrified by the terror enacted in the Paris massacres. For him…

A Nazi, a Jewish Prisoner, and a “Magic” Bible, Or, Christian Romance Fiction Gone Very, Very Wrong

By Julia Seymour

…culled from the countryside to see who would please the king. She made the best of a bad situation and, in so doing, saved her people. For Such a Time is not the same thing. It is “supersessionism porn,” wherein the ultimate happily-ever-after for a Jew would certainly be to become a Christian. Breslin and her publisher, Bethany House, have received criticism for the book on the grounds that it violates consent at best and allows for a kind of tru…

“I Was a Wild Man”: How to Decode Evangelical Testimony

By Eric C. Miller

…g down from a high, and literally fell to the floor. “God, I have tried my best to ignore you and to do things my way,” he remembers praying. “I’m broken. I’m broken and in need of fixing.” A classic prodigal son story followed. Tchividjian recommitted himself to Christ, entered the seminary, became a minister. He married and had three children. He started the New City Presbyterian Church, a 450-member church in Coconut Creek. Tchividjian’s “class…