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Holy Hipster Mark Driscoll Continues to Fall

By Becky Garrison

…ary 2012 and later ex-elder Jeff Bettger felt compelled to share his story online in December 2013, other leaders began to come forward and tell their stories publicly, regardless of the repercussions. This shift from outsider voices critiquing Driscoll to insiders sharing their stories is perhaps best exemplified in a recent piece by The Stranger‘s Brendan Kiley. Unlike previous coverage of Driscoll that focused solely on his bad boy persona, Kil…

“Muscular Christianity” Not to Blame For Driscoll: A Response

By Jessica Johnson

…arge screens surrounding the amphitheater issued pronouncements concerning service opportunities, including the need for male volunteers to ‘protect the body.’ What media reports and distant bloggers often miss when they attribute Driscoll’s preaching on gender and sex to a “system” of “male headship” or an “ethos” such as “muscular Christianity,” is how such a system or ethos is circulated and travels well beyond the church’s facilities. Placing…

West Virginia Mayor Enlists Churches To Pray Away Drugs and Crime

By Sarah Posner

…tion to the scourge of drugs and crime in his community. In a video posted online, Williams makes a plea to local ministers for “all the churches within the tri-state” to pray on September 7 for healing of those experiencing substance abuse, for the protection of law enforcement officers, and even for drug dealers. Huntington is a city of about 350,000 that sits near the state’s borders with Ohio and Kentucky. The local news coverage of Williams’…

Is the State a Religious Actor in Deeming Teen’s Crotch-Rubbing of Jesus Statue Illegal?

By Joseph Laycock

…at a teenager “mistreated” a statue of Jesus, even posting violent threats online. But for others, it was likewise upsetting to see a statue of Satan broken by careless workers. For the 1,000 people who signed a petition, the guerilla art installation has significance because it was clever, pointed out the bureaucratic absurdity of an empty pedestal, and because it was art! If the statue was not a “venerated object” it was clearly “special” and se…

Cyclops Baby of the Apocalypse? Another Day in ISIS Fundamentalism

By Joseph Laycock

…e rumors resulting from the fog of war, the rapid spread of misinformation online, or even propaganda intended to inspire further Muslim opposition to ISIS. However, the apparent rise of bizarre beliefs and practices seems to reflect the type of recruits that ISIS attracts. Last month, it was widely reported that would-be jihadists purchased Islam for Dummies before heading out to join terrorists in Syria. Here on RD Mark Juergensmeyer suggested t…

Religion or Insanity? Two Upcoming Murder Trials Will Ask the (Burning) Question

By Joseph Laycock

…that his victims shared his beliefs. The three apparently met through the online organization “Joy of Satan,” and Kolchak argues that murders resembled rituals described on the website. According to Dobson, the three had gone to the hotel room to perform a death ritual so that they could travel to “another galaxy.” “Joy of Satan” promotes “theistic Satanism” and is an extremely fringe group even among Satanic organizations. Its website is rife wi…

Fired GTS Professors Go Back to Work, For Now

By Steve A. Wiggins

…c interest would soon fade, as indeed it has. Last week the Episcopal News Service reported that the eight faculty members who had been dismissed had accepted “provisional reinstatement.” In a letter on October 20, they refer to a “cooling off period,” and add, “If, God forbid, at the end of the academic year we find that the collective process of reconciliation has not worked well, we ask that there be some understanding that appropriate severanc…

Response to Daniel Philpott: the Politics of Religious Freedom

By Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

…a position for or against religious freedom. To assume that it does is a misunderstanding of what is in fact a much broader and more encompassing set of research aims and objectives. We are interested in laying out the kind of work advocacy for religious freedom has done, and continues to do, in various societies, and in exploring the political and legal worlds created by and through religious freedom. Our basic assumption is that, before either c…

Green Candidate Jill Stein Maintains Anti-Vaxxer Cred

By Michael Schulson

…s campaign tried to clarify the issue. Instead, they made things worse. On Sunday, the campaign tweeted that “there’s no evidence that autism is caused by vaccines.” Five minutes later, they deleted the tweet and amended it to a more modest, relativized claim: https://twitter.com/DrJillStein/status/759855955118919680 Armed with screenshots, some savvy Twitter users documented the hasty edit. Why backtrack? In an email to RD, Stein’s Press Director…

Are We Entering the End Times for Mainline Seminaries?

By Elesha Coffman

…s announcement followed the similar, but more startling, May news that the country’s oldest graduate school of theology, Andover-Newton, would sell its campus, phase out most of its faculty, and merge a remnant with Yale Divinity School. It is not news that the Protestant mainline in America has been declining since the 1970s. Yet markers of the tradition’s slide continue to make headlines. Institutional change of this magnitude comes as a body bl…