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Mitt, Moochers, and Mormonism’s “Other” Legacy

By Mary Barker

…the Apostle and Prophet Ezra Taft Benson, who continues to be read and re-read today. A tireless anti-Communist crusader and admirer of the John Birch Society, Benson’s packaging of the message parallels Skousen’s right down to the racial affronts (he claimed that the civil rights movement was a “tool of Communist deception”). And while the Church could distance itself from Skousen, it could not (and still cannot) from Benson. Moreover, Benson’s…

The War Within: Religion and Our Tangled Relationship with Our Bodies

By Michelle Lelwica

…blacks continues to shape the pervasive racism that structures our society today. As I read this brilliantly heart-breaking and challenging text, which is written in the form of a letter, it occurred to me that young women in the U.S. today (female youth of all ethnic, cultural, and racial backgrounds) need a similar book that explains through a mix of storytelling, history, and critical reflection how the misogynist religious/cultural legacies of…

Why It’s Heresy to Read the Bible Literally: An Interview with John Shelby Spong

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…s into the mystery of a life that is frequently messy and often downright brutal. That, Spong says, is the real Good News. Candace Chellew-Hodge: You say in this book that reading the Bible literally is a Gentile heresy. What does that mean? John Shelby Spong: It means that the gospels, and especially Matthew [is written by] a Jewish disciple of Jesus, part of a congregation of Jewish disciples of Jesus. [Matthew] assumes certain things that Jews…

The Progress of Christ in Commercial America: A Review of Chris Lehmann’s The Money Cult

By Peter Laarman

…nctified capitalism of our financialized, upward-skewing, and uniquely destructive market order.” Author Lehmann is neither a professional historian nor a religion specialist. He’s a brainy journalist, part of the Baffler set. His subtle treatment of complex subject matter reminds us that it’s always deep reading and a capacity to write clearly that matters most. His achievement reminds me of other significant historical works by “uncredentialed”…

SoulCycle Looks to Sell its Soul

By Michael Schulson

…practice to show his riders how to be the best versions of themselves…Get ready for a spiritual journey disguised as a rock concert! And here’s James J., an instructor at studios in and around New York City: Since starting his journey at Soul, James has discovered what can be done together—as a family—with the lights down low, the music up high, and our hearts wide open. Many riders seem to buy in. From a customer’s Soul Story on the SoulCycle bl…

Conservative Catholics Try to Domesticate Laudato Si

By Patricia Miller

…. “The bishops are manufacturing their own truth so they can sell it to the political establishment,” he said. The bigger question in the long run is whose truth will win out: the pope’s or the bishops’?…

David Brat, Theological Conundrum

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker and Bridget O'Brien

…ng about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world” as expressing a “crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.” While Brat is concerned about the “good hard-working banker” who must charge high interest rates to guard against exploitation by the borrower who “may not like work and may sleep all day and eat snacks while watching television,” Francis…

How America’s Charismatic Christianity Helped Fuel the Fantasyland Presidency of Donald Trump

By Eric C. Miller

…ical that this fully explains America’s peculiarity. If the religious free market was responsible for such widespread and extreme and fervent beliefs in the United States, then why now, when a very similar degree of freedom exists throughout the developed world, are charismatic churches not popping up in Australia or Canada or Denmark at the rate that they do in the United States? It suggests to me that there is something different about the Ameri…

Waiting for Lightning to Strike: A Wobbly Agnostic among the Atheists

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…why we know more than they do. You need to tell your Christian friends to read the Bible. Reading the Bible makes atheists. Christian education makes atheists. I’ve given the Bible to my fourteen-year-old daughter and I’ve asked her to read it.” I picture his daughter taking the Bible out of his hand. Did she roll her eyes? Did she want to please her dad by reading it? If she started to read, what did she make of it? Those genealogies, oy vey. I …

Death of a Self-Proclaimed God-Man: Sai Baba’s Controversial Career

By Andrea R. Jain

…o did his financial worth. In 1972 the Satya Sai Central Trust was set up. Today the trust is estimated to be worth at least $8.9 billion. It has funded water supply projects in poor areas of southern India as well as ashrams, hospitals, universities, and several schools across India and globally. Sai Baba was most famous for his miracles—mainly materializations of valuable objects. He is believed to have had the power to conjure jewelry as gifts…