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Trump the Totem: Like Other Fascist Leaders, Trump has Turned from Man to Symbol — And That’s the Danger

By Robert P. Jones

…f the clan…. [The participant] does not know that the coming together of a number of men associated in the same life results in disengaging new energies, which transform each of them. All that he knows is that he is raised above himself and that he sees a different life from the one he ordinarily leads. However, he must connect these sensations to some external object as their cause. Now what does he see about him? On every side those things which…

Death Without Religion

By Gordon Haber

…ble assertion to make in such a tendentious book. Perhaps there is a small number of Americans losing their lives at the hands of hasty harvesters; even a very small number would be too high. But I had a hard time summoning any outrage. In the end I learned much more from Kagan—ironically because his aims are in a way more modest. He wants to convince you of his physicalist stance; however, he doesn’t want to tell you how to reconcile with death….

RD10Q: The Fight Against Feminism

By Kathryn Joyce

…ind it hard to believe that this movement exists, and there’s certainly a “news of the weird” part of any story about an 18-child family. But whether people approach such news as something freakish or something beautiful, there’s so much more to the conviction than the novelty of such large families. I think most readers would be shocked and surprised, as I was, to read what a dramatic reversal of women’s rights the Quiverfull and patriarchy movem…

Blood and Politics — Christian White Nationalism in the Age of Obama

By Bill Berkowitz

…y became dominant in the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War ushered in a new era. Across the globe, nationalism became a language of opposition to the New Global Order, and racial and ethnic nationalism became more salient than its liberal civic opposition. Books such as Blood and Belonging and Jihad vs. McWorld explored these issues globally. In the United States, racial nationalism meant White nationalism, and the old White supremacist movemen…

Growing Up Cult: A Memoir of Life with Sri Chinmoy

By Brittany Shoot

…into mainstream society. Cults, on the other hand, are commonly viewed as newer, informal organizations that are separate from mainstream society. My personal definition of a cult focuses on a number of key characteristics that cults share. The first is that a cult is centered around a single individual or a small group of leaders that possess total and complete authority over the members. The members cannot question, doubt, or criticize the lead…

Dispatches From the Rhodian Shore: A (Tough) Love Letter to Religious Studies

By Todd LeVasseur

…of future dispatches about religion written from inundated shores, hopefully they will reflect that religious studies joined with the rest of the academy in rising to the colossal challenges of our time. Hopefully they will reflect new hiring patterns, new patterns of engagement with colleagues across the academy and, in our teaching and research, a foregrounding of the natural world upon which our survival, let alone our intersectional flourishi…

My Womb for His Purposes: The Perils of Unassisted Childbirth in the Quiverfull Movement

By Kathryn Joyce

…the babies” themselves, both saving money and demonstrating their faith. A number of Quiverfull families follow a similar arc (as had Garrison) graduating from conventional hospital births—often where mothers felt pushed into a birth plan they didn’t desire—to midwife-assisted births at home, to the final challenge of unattended home births. It’s a logical extreme of the movement whose naturalistic bent actually overlaps with the back-to-the-land,…

Is Obama the Antichrist? Why Armageddon Stands Between the President and the Evangelical Vote

By Matthew Avery Sutton

…ironment—a surge in apocalyptic rhetoric is imminent. The vast majority of American evangelicals interpret the most obscure books of the Bible (Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation) in a very narrow and particular way. They believe that when these three books are read in conjunction with one another and overlaid with a few of Jesus’ statements, a hidden “plan of the ages” emerges. According to their decryptions, a number of events will transpire just b…

Vatican Reverses Anti-Liberation Policies in Mexico

By Ruth Chojnacki and Jennifer Scheper Hughes

…preparation, and visits to the sick. Bishop Ruiz elevated an extraordinary number of Maya men to the permanent diaconate, an ancient institution revived by Vatican II. In 2000, 341 of Mexico’s 800 deacons served the Diocese of San Cristobal, the largest number of deacons in any Catholic diocese in the world. Vatican suspicion of Bishop Ruiz’s liberationist pastoral strategy resulted in a failed attempt to remove him in 1993. The deacon program cam…

After More Mass Shootings It’s Time to Call Out White Supremacy in the Pews

By Peter Laarman

…will talk about the deeper roots of these things or attempt to explain why American culture is “exceptional”—exceptional in its toxicity, that is. A growing number of truth telling historians are eager to help us discover these deeper roots if we are willing to listen. Here I’m thinking mainly of scholars like Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Gerald Horne who focus on the connections between settler colonialism, white supremacy, and an unparalleled level…