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American Christianity Is Changing Fast: Five Stories to Watch in 2016

By Richard Flory

…f parish model, although the independence of most of these churches (as compared to the Catholic model) sets them apart. How long will this trend continue, and in what ways will it develop over the coming years? One of the drivers of this effort is related to the desires of younger Christians to live and work in urban areas. But with the influx of mostly younger and white members, what happens to the city, and the Christian voice that remains? 5….

Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

By Lisa Miller

…commonly held notion of heaven is that when we die, we’ll see our beloved parents, grandparents, spouses, friends. Our songs and our dearest hopes are built around this notion. But as Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang point out in their wonderful book, Heaven: A History, this idea of a social, or domesticated heaven, is a relatively recent invention—an idea that really took root around the time of the Civil War. From the beginning, heaven was a…

Top Five (Less Sensational, But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson (1930-2023)

By Mark Hulsether

…case dramatizing his centrality to the NCR and the NCR’s centrality to the Republican Party. The moral of this story is not to retell embarrassing campaign anecdotes, but to bear in mind that NCR leaders have worked with considerable success to take over the Republican Party. In With God on Their Side (New Press, 2004), Esther Kaplan estimated that in 2002 the NCR dominated the Republican organizations of eighteen states and controlled at least a…

Haiti and the Push for Theological Questions

By Paula M. Cooey

…others’ views. Blaming the Victims In spite of all caution against drawing parallels between past and present events, the resonances between Lisbon and Haiti are irresistible. The idea that sin produces natural devastation reigns in the land of Pat Robertson. The move to blame the victims is just too tempting. Like the Wesleys before him, Robertson issues a call for repentance in the face of divine judgment. Like the Wesleys in their anti-Catholic…

Aasif Mandvi on Islamophobia, Acting, and the Long Shadow of Jon Stewart

By Haroon Moghul

…me, and it was an issue I thought I could lend my voice to in a satirical space. Were there any particular misconceptions or fears you wanted to address? There was a lot of stuff about Shari’ah Law, the protests against the mosques, the standard stuff—the stories that kept coming up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJQr1Go9ldw&t=2s You work as an actor, a writer, a comedian, in a lot of creative spaces. What’s the line between free speech and bigo…

Another Manufactured Outrage: Rep. Ilhan Omar Did Nothing Wrong in Listing Hamas, Israel, and U.S. Together

By Joshua Shanes

…ction to a straightforward question evoked an avalanche of outrage by both Republicans and some Democrats. Sen. Tom Cotton, like many other Republicans, went so far as to question her American bona fides and almost literally told her to go back to where she came from, exposing the racist emotion underlying so much of this outrage. This is a dance we’ve seen before. So what exactly is their concern here? Whenever outrage explodes against Rep. Omar,…

The 17th Century Roots of Roy Moore’s Refusal to Concede the Election

By Karen E. Park

…crowd by saying: But we also know that God is always in control. You know, part of the thing—part of the problem with this campaign is we’ve been painted in an unfavorable and unfaithful light. We’ve been put in a hole, if you will. And it reminds me of a passage in Psalms 40. I waited patiently for the Lord. That’s what we’ve got to do. And he inclined it to me, heard my cry, brought us out of a horrible pit out of clay and set my feet on the roc…

Diplomatic Suckerhood: Why Israel Is Fighting Toward its Own Demise

By Ira Chernus

…. Instead Israeli leaders play on the voters’ fears (what Rosenblum calls “paranoia”) by promising the other side of the coin: a more aggressive stance. They insist on expanding settlements, for example, even though Israel stands to lose far more than it can gain. Two Israeli academics now have statistical data to confirm that fear has largely muted the Israeli public discourse on peace. The study, by Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal and Dr. Eran Halperin, sh…

The Sacred and the Dead: Truckin’ as a New American Pilgrimage

By Varun Soni

…, “For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part.” For Garcia, the Grateful Dead’s music could serve as a “signpost to a new consciousness” by challenging the listener to become “an understanding molecule in evolution, a conscious tool of the universe.” As the world’s most popular cult band, the Grateful Dead developed an extremely loyal and devout fan base that literally spent t…

Modern Vampires: Your Neighbors and Spouses

By Joseph Laycock

…e? Why? Yes, The Re-Enchantment of the West, Volumes I & II by Christopher Partridge. I first discovered Partridge because he has written on the modern vampire community. The term “re-enchantment” appears with increasing frequency, but it is usually invoked rather than defined. Partridge convincingly argues that secularization has actually created the conditions for new and meaningful forms of religiosity. This theory points to a common phenomenon…