Religion Dispatches
Every so often, economist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz crunches Google search data for the New York Times and comes up with some fun statistics about, say, the anxieties of pregnant women (“can pregnant women eat shrimp?” is a popular search query in the US) or the ratio of heart-related to penis-related searches (67:100 for those keeping score). This Sunday, Stephens-Davidowitz turned his attention to God. Some of the patterns he documents are predi…
Read MoreIn Monday’s New York Times, I wrote a fairly innocuous sentence that was upsetting to some: “Islam is as American as the rodeo.” The comments I received would not surprise anyone who writes about religion (among the printable: “Why don’t you go see ‘American Sniper’ and model yourself after a man who understood the reality of radical and not-so-radical Islam…”), but they did provide a window into the violent notions underlying the rising tide of…
Read More
One of the funnier developments in the ongoing drama around the “He Gets Us” campaign that aired pro-Jesus ads during the Grammy Awards and the Super Bowl has been the attacks from numerous evangelicals on social media who berate the PR messaging for being so “woke” it’s “unbiblical”: https://twitter.com/5Solas2/status/1625001170681962496?s=20 https://twitter.com/AdamPage85/status/1624972051084713985?s=20 https://twitter.com/TrustJesusAlone/statu…
Read More
This coming Saturday, March 25th—one week after a hysterical all-caps social media post in which he declared that he “will be arrested on Tuesday” and called on supporters to “protest, take our nation back!”—Trump will host his first formal rally of the 2024 presidential campaign season at the Waco Regional Airport. The location is, in theory, all about the positive Trump vibes in Texas. As his campaign staff wrote, “It is undisputed that Texas i…
Read More
To quote the apparent president elect: Wrong. That’s for all the white evangelical commentators so eager to protect the evangelical brand they argued time and again that evangelicals, “real” evangelicals, evangelicals who attend church regularly, etc, wouldn’t support Trump. According to exit polls, white evangelicals supported Trump in similar or greater numbers than Romney (even evangelical pastors were poised to vote for Trump): In fact, if th…
Read More
There’s a reason Tim Keller, Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) in New York, enjoys a greater degree of public respect than many conservative evangelical leaders who clearly crave respectability. When you take a mild jab at Tim Keller on Twitter, instead of blocking you like snowflake Ed Stetzer, Keller trolls you back—in ways that are admittedly funny. https://twitter.com/timkellernyc/status/1009845279640768512?s=20 https://twitter.com…
Read More
The three and a half minute clip below, exclusive to RD, is from Bradley Onishi’s opening monologue of the March 17 episode of Straight White American Jesus, a podcast hosted by Onishi and Daniel Miller. RD will be collaborating with SWAJ to regularly bring you audio and transcripts on Christian nationalism, “conversion therapy,” purity culture, and more. — eds https://religiondispatches.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Anti-Asian-Hate-and-Purity-C…
Read More
…Women for stalking and the attempted kidnapping of a 14-year-old boy since 2021. DePape’s association with Taub and his voter affiliation with the Green Party in 2013 form the basis for claims that he experienced a rapid swing from left-wing to right-wing, with a crucial pivot around 2014 due to Gamergate. Some commentators have felt comfortable labeling DePape “a far-right extremist.” Others have called this impulse to label based on a digital t…
Read More
…nce since 2010, the torrent of bills introduced this year is staggering and 2021 is on track to be the most hostile year on record toward women. These laws are not just interfering with women’s access to abortion care (which would be bad enough!) but are actively harming women by shutting down clinics; using scare tactics to threaten and pressure them into not having abortions; and codifying narrow, theologically-driven ideas about when life begin…
Read More
…itutional right to fly the Christian flag over Boston City Hall. On Jan. 6, 2021, Christian Nationalists proudly flew this flag at their rallies and marches, and insurrectionists even paraded the flag on the floor of the U.S. Senate after they breached the Capitol. It marked their territory on January 6th and will do the same flying over the seat of government in one of our oldest cities. This term’s likely decisions, along with a host of other de…
Read More