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Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

By Lisa Miller

…houris, dark-eyed women. We all know that Mohammad Atta, who flew American Airlines flight 11 into the Twin Towers on 9/11, was inspired by this promise. But among progressives, the sex promised to the righteous in the Qur’an isn’t sex as we know it, but something mysterious and sublime for which sex is a poetic stand-in. Second, what happens to our bodies in heaven? This is my favorite part of the heaven conversation. For if you believe in heaven…

Top Five (Less Sensational, But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson (1930-2023)

By Mark Hulsether

…hment from God for Satanism—the same episode that Chrissy Stroop ranked as number one on her own top 10 list, and a worthy contender, no doubt! But since Robertson liked to say outrageous things like this on a regular basis, I created a list more attuned to underlying structural aspects of his resume: less about preposterous provocations and more about his work as a cog in the everyday banality of evil in the Republican coalition. It’s interesting…

Haiti and the Push for Theological Questions

By Paula M. Cooey

…nine on the Richter scale. It devastated the population. Estimates of the number of people killed range from 10,000 to 100,000. At the time the quake struck, worshipers filled the churches honoring their dead. The churches, the worshippers, and the city around them were effectively destroyed. Not long after the major quake hit, a tsunami followed that killed those who had rushed to the beaches in fear to avoid the havoc of the earthquake. The cat…

A Debate Rages in India Over Conversion, Secularism, and “Spiritual Violence”

By Murali Balaji

…disappearing tradition is stoked primarily by demographics. Indian census numbers show that the percentage of those identifying as Hindus dipped below 80 percent for the first time. But while there is much talk about a rising Muslim population, the actual spikes have come among Christians, where the mass conversion of tribal groups and Dalits has been part of a sustained and systematic effort of “Great Commission” movements such as the Joshua Pro…

The 17th Century Roots of Roy Moore’s Refusal to Concede the Election

By Karen E. Park

…clear violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment and any number of Supreme Court cases. He was removed again last year for refusing to uphold federal law on same sex marriage, on the grounds that it was in violation of God’s law as found in the Old Testament. Like Winthrop, Moore believes that the Old Testament should order American society, whether Exodus or Leviticus. The ancient Israelites in these societies either adhered, or…

Sex and the Chosen People: Be Fruitful and Multiply, Etc.

By Mandy Van Deven

…of innovative thinking about gender, sex, and sexuality, who could marry a number of different lenses to create something new. It’s not a strictly academic work by any means; it’s meant to be accessible to people with all sorts of (and no) Jewish backgrounds—hence the glossary in the back. But yeah, there are footnotes. For someone not well-versed in Jewish feminist theory, how transgressive or radical are these essays? Some of them push the envel…

When God and Gender Mix: New Book Examines the Southern Holiness Movement

By Colin Chapell

…ge how they understand their own identity. If academic achievement and the number or type of initials after your name is the most important thing in the world to you, then it will change how you view your own masculinity and femininity. Similarly, if having children matters most to you, then you can only be truly “manly” or “feminine” if you have kids. Is there anything you had to leave out? Historians always want to include every interesting anec…

Modern Vampires: Your Neighbors and Spouses

By Joseph Laycock

…uard. However, I never once had even a vague sense of danger during this research. There is a trope in American horror of the dedicated researcher who uncovers too much. The power of this trope played out in 1996, when a reporter in New York vanished while doing a story on the vampire community. As I describe in the book, she was almost certainly killed by the Russian mafia. There is a certain romance in imagining that she was taken by vampires, b…

Yet Another Survey Shows ‘Nones’ Growth at Record Levels

By Elizabeth Drescher

…spirituality, meaning-making, and self-realization in my Nones Beyond the Numbers narrative survey.* *The survey results will contribute to three intertwined research projects I am currently conducting on the meaning-making practices of Nones. The first, sponsored in part through the Social Science Research Council’s “New Directions in the Study of Prayer” initiative, will explore the plurality of Nones who say they regularly engage in prayer….

‘Pro-Life’ Theater, Open White Nationalism, and Virility Fear — Day 3 of NatCon

By Annika Brockschmidt and Ben Lorber

…ates, Talento declares that women control access to sex. If they “value it cheaply”—meaning, sex outside of marriage—no man would ever want to marry them, because he wouldn’t have to. In this view, men marry for sex, while women marry for economic security—a deeply depressing glimpse into the gender and marriage politics this movement seeks to impose on the rest of the nation. Have more children, but have them my way—A rift in the pronatalist-coal…