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What in the Name of the Crusades are Tennessee Evangelicals Doing in Kurdish Iraq?

By Bill Berkowitz

…can evangelicals into Northern Iraq. Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, a number of fundamentalist Christian organizations announced plans to participate in the future rebuilding effort. At the time, the Rev. Franklin Graham indicated that his organization, Samaritan’s Purse, would lead the way. Graham, the son of the Rev. Billy Graham, who shortly after September 11, got himself into a bit of a pickle by lashing out at all Muslims, famously call…

Gun Ownership as Sin—A Strategic, Secular Proposal for Gun Reform

By Ira Chernus

…borne that name. Guns have always symbolized “the frontier.” And for vast numbers of Americans, the cultural idea and ideal of the frontier have symbolized what they think their nation is all about. Out on the frontier, the classic story goes, a man simply must have a gun and the freedom to use it. He couldn’t survive without it. He needs it to get food for his family and to defend them in times of danger. But as long as potential enemies out the…

The “One True Christian” of His Age?

By Susan Stinson

…y refreshing. All of my previous books had been set mostly in Colorado and Texas, but I had lived in Massachusetts for decades, and my brother, Don Stinson, a landscape painter, suggested that I write a book set in the east. So, I was looking around, and it was literally the landscape, the earth in the cemetery with its small rises and falls, graves and markers, that led me to Jonathan Edwards and other people in Northampton in that time. He’s n…

Are the Culture Wars Over? Look at the States

By Sarah Posner

…urch and State. Similar bills are pending in Arkansas, Kansas, Nevada, and Texas, according to Elise Helgesen, AU’s State Legislative Counsel. After the bill passed, the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation put out a statement praising the veto override, and charging, “There is a concerted effort to dismantle our First Amendment rights and redefine freedom. As a result, elected leaders across the nation are realizing the importance of preserving…

Graeme Wood on ISIS: No Such Thing as Objective Critique

By Eric M. Gurevitch

…ation of a dystopian alternate reality in which David Koresh or Jim Jones survived to wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some 8 million. Scholars of religion like Catherine Wessinger have spilt much ink over the events that lead to the tragic deaths at Jonestown and Waco, Texas. What has become clear in the years since those tragedies is that the true horror of them was avoidable, but only if those in power had both taken…

Netanyahu’s (Republican) Esther Moment

By Sarah Posner

…ves as head pastor of the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, hosts his own television program that is seen twice a day on TBN. He argues that the United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West. Shortly after the release of his book last January, he launched Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a lobbying organization intended, he says, to be a Chr…

Evangelicals Looking for Walker to “Do Nothing” in 2016 Election

By Sarah Posner

…as his running mate served to assuage evangelical doubts. In 2011, former Texas governor Rick Perry’s first campaign move was to host a massive prayer rally, The Response, in Houston’s Reliant Stadium, bankrolled by the sine qua non of the culture wars, the American Family Association. This year, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal replicated that strategy—even though for Perry it apparently reaped no real electoral benefits. For Huckabee, who may we…

Evangelical Islamophobia as American as Apple Pie

By Shalom Goldman

…Thomas Kidd, an American religious historian at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. In his timely and perceptive book, American Christians and Islam, Kidd insists that there is something unique about American antipathy to Islam that differs substantially from earlier American Protestant campaigns against Catholics, Jews and other religious minorities. Arguing that “the recent American Christian hostility towards Islam derives from a long historical…

Before We Scold DeSean Jackson and Others For Anti-Semitism We Need To Talk About ‘Chosenness’

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…s the “children of Israel” or, as in W.E.B. Du Bois’ poem “Jesus Christ in Texas,” against Black people as allegorical Christ figure. Simply put, African Americans have constantly interpreted Black suffering as a type of Black chosenness. This chosenness is a type of redemptive suffering or theodicy that explains how an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity could allow the continued suffering of Black people. It’s reasoned that this suffering is for…

The David Lane Effect

By Sarah Posner

…ations have supported Perry, dating back to 2005 and his leadership of the Texas Restoration Project, which boosted Perry’s reelection race for governor. As the emails Coppins obtained make clear, he’s anti-Mormon. But there’s no evidence that he coordinated with the Perry campaign to put Jeffress front and center at the Values Voters Summit on October 7 as the face of evangelical anti-Mormonism, just that he was quite pleased with the outcome. Th…