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Heresy, Bad Taste, or Capitalist Adventure: Is it Still Pentecostalism?

By Anthea Butler

…tongues, or glossolialia, has been considered the primary practice of Pentecostals. Today, despite the occasional outbursts of televangelists, a substantial number of Pentecostals do not engage in the practice, as evidenced by the Pew survey on Pentecostalism in 2007. Instead, practices of healing, faith, and exorcism have gained primacy among the “spiritual gifts.” As a result, the long-term emergence and strength of Prosperity Gospel and the New…

Birtherism, Conspiracy Theories, and the “Christian Nation”

By Sarah Posner

…ruth” is not just the Bible, but the supposed “truth” that God ordained America as a Christian nation. And by “Christian,” they mean not just some Christian like Obama who likes gay people. They mean, as Graham said to Christianity Today yesterday, “a true follower of Jesus Christ and not just by name,” someone who will “obey” and not, say, support LGBT rights. Someone like Mike Huckabee, who “no question this man is saved.” Count the ways in whic…

Who Are Michigan Catholic Bishops to Judge?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…oral and political priority list issues like marriage equality, “religious freedom,” and abortion that have nothing to do with the core of teachings of Jesus about feeding the poor, tending the sick, and like that. Indeed, in their 2014 advocacy priorities, even education is not primarily about improving access to learning for children, but rather focuses on shifting limited public funding to private schools. Advocacy for children and families cen…

Pastor of Kentucky Church Severed From Baptists Over LGBT Inclusion: Not Activism, Just Honesty

By Mike Greer

…the spiritual home for many students, staff, and distinguished professors. Today the 800-member church is a diverse community of faith including people of various races, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientation, and world-views. Refugees and immigrants compose roughly one-third of the congregation. The church is heavily invested in a wide array of social ministries in the Commonwealth, the U.S., and the world. Below are excerpts from a conversation…

Why We Should Keep the Devil in Halloween

By Ed Simon

…e long and the air cold, the year turned over for a bit to darkness? In America today Halloween has become commercialized, its noble dark origins coopted by corporate sponsorship. Yet despite the candy and costumes, Halloween—or Samhain, or Allhallowtide—fulfills a yearning we have for embracing the macabre, the grotesque, the morbid, the gothic, the upsetting, the truth. There is great power and importance in a day where storefronts put drawings…

Not Breathing Much Easier … But Still Breathing: A Modest Plea For Hope to End 2020

By Peter Laarman

…opening for the rise of a powerful 20th century Civil Rights Movement. And today there are thousands of clear-sighted organizers, many of them young people of color, who’ve done their homework and understand the basics of movement-making: the need to engage head, heart, and spirit all at once and to fully understand one’s opposition so as not to be sidetracked, blindsided, seduced into a phony peace. As well, there are plenty of elders, some of th…

America, the Mythical: “Mother of Exiles” or Denier of Safe Haven?

By Ed Simon

…a lie which tells the truth. What we say about the pilgrims conveys allegorical knowledge of American character, and as we have refined the story we’ve seen how those settlers embody our own contradictions. America has been variously prefigured as a New Israel and a New Babylon, as Eden and Golgotha, as site of Genesis and Revelation. Formulated honestly, our myths can remind us of these contradictions. Just as the first Thanksgiving celebrated a…

C Street Scandal, the Media, the Future of the Family: An Interview with Jeff Sharlet

By Bill Berkowitz

…deeply about the delicate balance between the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. Respecting a politician’s freedom of religion doesn’t mean ignoring his religion—it means asking smart, sometimes tough questions about its role in his political life. For a relatively brief period you made the rounds, were interviewed in a number of mainstream media venues. Then, nothing! What happened? Actually, as an author, I was lucky. Spurred b…

Romney Steers Hard Right on Immigration; Huntsman Out After New Hampshire?

By Joanna Brooks

Today, Mitt Romney released a new video attacking Rick Perry as being “soft” on immigration. Romney is aiming at Perry’s support for a Texas state policy that permits the young people who came to the United States “illegally” as children to attend public universities paying in-state tuition. It’s not radical policy, but Romney’s criticism is yet another point—like Social Security—he’s using to draw a strong contrast with Perry. But doing so puts…

Police in Ferguson Keep Praying and Preying

By Anthea Butler

…r police actions and violence towards citizen protestors is detestable. America has a history of those in authority invoking Christianity to justify slavery, lynching, and bombings. During the conflict in Ferguson, the local and state police who recite nightly prayers before going out to intimidate and arrest protestors follow this historical trajectory. Perhaps the most galling figure is Captain Johnson, appointed by Gov. Jay Nixon to oversee the…