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Before Black Twitter: How the Early Black Press Shaped American Discourse Around Race and Religion

By Benjamin P. Fagan

…hing you had to leave out? Early on I decided to focus intently on a small number of newspapers, rather than try to tackle the whole range of black newspapers published before the Civil War. I’m still happy with this decision to go for depth over breadth, but it means that there are lots of papers that I didn’t have a chance to include. I would have really liked to spend some time with Frederick Douglass’ Paper, or the Christian Recorder, but happ…

Republicans “Evangelizing” Catholic Voters

By Patricia Miller

…Jeb Bush’s brand of go-to-church-in-polo-shirts, cozy-up-to-powerful-bishops (who then turn a blind eye as you preside over a record number of executions) and occasionally make-noise-about-how-much-you-care-for-the-poor-as-you-gut-social-welfare-programs-type of Catholicism, as detailed by the New York Times, seems positively 20th century. The question now is whether, just as his brother used “compassionate conservatism” to attract Catholics to th…

Forced Cremation of Covid Dead in Sri Lanka Further Marginalizes Muslim Community

By Andrea Malji and Amarnath Amarasingam

…uslim violence once again erupted on the island. With the rise of the pandemic, misinformation about coronavirus has been seamlessly incorporated into existing prejudice against Muslims. The government’s policy of forced cremation during the pandemic will only serve to further marginalize Muslims and create further fractures within the community paving the way for future communal conflict. The government of Sri Lanka, as such, should follow sugges…

Why the Church is Struggling to Hold Onto Millennial Catholics

By Kaya Oakes

…spends time around younger Catholics, whose political and social leanings mirror the open-minded stances of their increasingly non-religious peers. Birth control and abortion, arguably the Catholic church’s most contentious issues, are not always perceived in a negative light by young Catholics. Among those polled, more than half say abortion should be legal in “almost all” or “most” cases, and 31 percent say it should be legal in “just a few” ca…

None Means None (Not Atheist, Agnostic, Unbeliever…)

By Elizabeth Drescher

…c and anecdotal evidence to the contrary. In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, for instance, atheist apologist Susan Jacoby is quick to claim Nones as among the “secularly inclined Americans” whose response to tragedies like the Sandy Hook shootings is not anchored “in the idea that dead children are now angels in heaven.” Her generally thoughtful reflection on meaning-making in the face of tragedy offers insight on the importance of v…

It’s Not Me, It’s You: Catholic Values Dumping Trump

By Patricia Miller

…… millions of White Catholics who had shifted to the GOP since 2009, for any number of reasons, are coming home for this election like prodigal sons and daughters of the Democratic Party. Or, as Tim Kaine put it in a conference call on Friday with Catholic leaders, “Realities do have to be looked at from a faith perspective and we can’t let bad behavior go unpunished.” The call was part of the Clinton campaign’s stepped-up Catholic outreach, and…

Will Pope’s African Tour Change Attitudes on Divorce and LGBTQ Among African Catholics?

By Kaya Oakes

…church has reached the international stage. According to Cardinal Dolan of New York, in the past, African bishops were looked on “as newcomers,” but now, with the African church growing so rapidly, they “have immense pastoral experience.” The African bishops called an intervention during the synod to change language that would have potentially been more welcoming to LGBTQ Catholics, and Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea delivered a speech putting sa…

ABC’s Hit Sitcom Black-ish Does God, Pushes Theological Respectability

By Anthony B. Pinn

…general the episode is marked by affirmation of problematic assumptions limiting the number of those who qualify as “black” by restricting what constitutes an acceptable relationship to dominant religious claims. For example, Dre wrestles with the origins of his daughter’s turn away from God, and concludes, based on a survey of his co-workers, that whites don’t believe and African Americans do. The implication is sure: belief in God is part of th…

Can Mormon Glenn Beck Unite the Christian Right?

By Kathryn Joyce

…ent mix of religious doctrine and social science, the [Christian Right’s] ‘new family theology’ is anchoring its ‘natural family’ politics, domestically and internationally.” The quasi-scientific focus also makes sense as a hedge against interdenominational conflict, as the culture war goals of this coalition are de-sublimated: translated from biblical mandate to scientific instructions for better living through traditionalism. According to Buss a…

Bill Gates’ Comments on Covid-19 Vaccine Enflame ‘Mark of the Beast’ Worries in Some Christian Circles

By Christopher James Blythe

…st’ of state absolutism and dictatorship. Every time we produce a card of any sort we admit to the world we are no longer free human beings. We are crawling, cringing tools of the state, pawns of dictators, slaves of bureaucrats. And every student of history knows that the next event is anarchy, race riots, pillage, murder, bankruptcy, panic, famine – there has been found no other alternative. In more recent decades, commentary of the prophecy of…