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Dear White Evangelicals: A Black Square Ain’t Gonna Cut It

…a quota of how many black students it would accept) proved to be the most damaging to my psyche. For the subsequent three years, in a million PTSD-inducing ways, I would be regularly reminded that my Black life was either worth very little or that it was, in no uncertain terms, altogether “sinful.” Obviously it wasn’t always the overt-racism that communicated such idiocy, like being called a nigger to my face by white men who claimed to have a clo…

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Jesus Christ and Super Stars: How The Holy Rolled Mainstream in Pop Music

…n which play-by-plays of the Transfiguration of Jesus and the Binding of Isaac are thoroughly detailed and not declare it either pedantic or preachy is a deep dissonance indeed. Sufjan Stevens plays like, seven hundred instruments. He composes for ballets. The dude likes his details. Why couldn’t critics just let Sufjan Stevens bear prophetic witness? Perhaps it’s that the aftertaste of the aforementioned politicized religious right is still too b…

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Debate Heats Up Over “Francis Effect”

…about the church than in the darkest days of the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal, which had Boston at its epicenter. That’s a pretty low bar, but of course no one denies that Francis is a change for the better. As Jon O’Brien, head of Catholics for Choice, told The Guardian, Francis isn’t so much “a breath of fresh air as someone who has gone into the Vatican with an oxygen tank strapped to his back. He’s got the church out of a very difficult spo…

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8: The Mormon Proposition Gets It Right

…d film 8: The Mormon Proposition has left the film festival circuit and is available through on-demand cable—with some rumors of technical difficulties in the Salt Lake / Provo areas—reaction is filtering back from Mormon viewers of the film.   LDS Church spokespeople have dismissed the film as blatantly false.   But what I’m hearing from a number of Mormons deeply familiar with the Proposition 8 campaign is that the film gets it mostly right. [Se…

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Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

…nd. An interview with Siviku Hutchinson on the racial politics of atheism, a book review of The Bonobo and the Atheist, and Elizabeth Drescher’s ongoing coverage of nones underline the big tent approach to coverage of American ir/a/religion. But do the Gallup numbers point to new ways we might be thinking about business as usual? Two findings are striking. First: Gallup reported that although Americans felt religion’s influence was declining, many…

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What Do ‘The Christians’ Believe? Easter Reflections from a Non-Christian

…be stockpiling guns, teaching people how to use explosives, planning a war against the government, and initiating a final battle with the Antichrist. It appears they planned to kill local police officers with hopes this would bring others to the violent religious war. What do the Christians believe? We are witnessing what could be one of the most destructive scandals ever in the Catholic Church. A flurry of reports and allegations have been in the…

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An Unholy Holy Week: Is the All-Male Rule of the Roman Catholic Church Self-Destructing?

…o ring hollow. “Call no man father,” warned Jesus in a passionate diatribe against “those who love the place of honor” and like to be called rabbi or teacher (Matthew 23). “Woe to you!” he repeated, describing the leaders of his day as whitewashed on the outside but inside full of “all kinds of filth.” In fact, deference to “Father” is at the heart of this mess. Nuns now report not challenging priests when they spent unusual time alone with childr…

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The Year of the Abusive Priest

…buse, from Wisconsin to Munich, has put the Vatican in a defensive posture against the media, circling the flaming wagons around its impervious leader. Making matters worse, the Pope tried to deflect from the mounting worldwide criticism with a stab at his detractors during his Palm Sunday homily, stating “Jesus leads us toward the courage not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion.” I beg to differ, but this se…

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Why Don’t White People Show Up For Juneteenth The Way They Showed Up For George Floyd?

…ul discussions of race and slavery, Americans by and large are woefully incapable of coming to terms with what slavery was and what slavery wrought upon America’s descendants of slaves and slaveholders (and all those in-between). So, the surrealness of people essentially greeting each other “Happy End of Slavery Day” is almost like a skit from Chappelle’s Show. A second observation from my Juneteenth sojourns is that White people do not attend Jun…

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

…ious freedom” laws that would allow them to discriminate. When President Obama mouthed platitudes during the funeral of the slain Rev. Clementa Pinckney at Emanuel AME, activist Bree Newsome took it upon herself to scale a flagpole and take down an instrument of hate and bigotry. Pope Francis is a rock star, but Americans are still leaving church in droves. This and other powerful juxtapositions are just part of the reason many of us now refer to…

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