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The Myth of ‘Voodoo’: A Caribbean American Response to Representations of Haiti

…gies, philosophies, languages, medical therapies, diets, rites of passage, codes of conduct, aesthetic norms, artistic conventions, and technologies furnish entire communities with a shared sense of identity and the ritual/theological grammars required to guide their common life and transmission of humanity from one generation to the next. If God’s good nature is reflected in the slave trade, what was the Devil up to? American ignorance of Vodou b…

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Modern Vampires: Your Neighbors and Spouses

…(Praeger, release date: May 30, 2009). What inspired you to write Vampires Today? What sparked your interest? Some people think I study vampires simply because they are unusual. I’ve even been asked if I am a vampire myself. The reality is that I became interested in the vampire community when I learned of a massive survey being conducted by the Atlanta Vampire Alliance (AVA). Their project was relevant to the sociology of knowledge: instead of de…

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Police in Ferguson Keep Praying and Preying

The Greater St. Mark Church was raided today as St. Louis County Police thought that protesters were spending the night in the church, which has been used as a staging area for protestors. Police have since closed the building and stated that if anyone congregates on the premises at night, there would be arrests. One member of the Dream Defenders said “what [the police] did today is tell us, what? There is no safety here.” The Pastor of the churc…

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Sacred&Profane: The Living Dead

…rits, it seems perfectly natural to dwell on the ghostly dead who haunt us today in this political season—what some have labeled the season of the witch. Surely this reorientation to mortal and immortal matters is not surprising considering this election’s campaign cycle has not only resurrected the memory of Robert Kennedy’s assassination in the democratic primaries, but also identified the accidental death of Joe Biden’s wife and daughter in the…

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A Catholic’s Eulogy for the Harvard “Black Mass” Controversy

…of anti-Semitism and white supremacy, no matter where you are in the world today). Unlike these symbols that are based in reality, however, a thoughtful investigation into the “black mass” would have revealed that this is actually a symbol in search of a reality. Boston University professor David Frankfurter, in his award-winning 2006 book Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History, argues that, when we apply the mos…

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When Corporations are “Persons” Under the Law: The Real Problem With Health Care

…me Court to release audio recordings of their questioning, but they did so today, and the revelations were revealing. The answer to my question became clear in the course of Chief Justice Roberts’s insistent questions. The question he kept pressing on those arguing incampaign finance laws and against the (anti)Clinton video was a strange one: “Isn’t a corporation really like an individual, under the law?” And it occurs to me that it is this very c…

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Facing White Christianity’s Role in the January 6th Insurrection

…lgamation of white supremacy and American Christianity that lives among us today. These unsettling connections among white supremacy, white Christianity and support for the former president are not confined to the extremists who attacked the Capitol. There is a strong correlation between voting for Trump in the 2020 election and median scores on the Racism Index—a composite measure of attitudes about systemic racism I developed in my recent book,…

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The American Media’s Longterm Ambivalence About the Papacy

…eeklies’ born-again fondness for religious authority has not endured until today. Since the explosion of the clergy sex abuse scandals in the media, a curious trend has emerged on the covers of news magazine. In four Time covers—April 1, 2002, November 27, 2006, June 7, 2010, February 25, 2013—the familiar figure of the pope appears, but altered. Unlike the scores of previous covers featuring the Bishop of Rome, the pope now stands either with his…

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A Scholar Responds: Scripture as a Weapon

…ertainly would have been appalled by the size and scale of the US military today, with its extensive and continually growing branches. And that great octopus, the Pentagon, would have represented everything they despised about Britain and her aggressive imperial reach. That is why the Constitution is maddeningly vague about whether and how we should have a standing military at all. Article 1, Section 8 clearly lays responsibility for all military…

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Why the Women’s Ordination Question Will Shape the Future of Mormonism

…and a more equitable role for women in LDS Church leadership and service. Today, the global operations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are governed and directed by an all-male organizational chain of command.  Mormon women may participate in some decision-making at the congregational level.  But at all levels most forms of institutional power—from the power to shape the church’s global policies and finances to the power to bles…

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