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How a Pioneer of Branding Invented Christian Fundamentalism

By Daniel Silliman

…y started to understand his relationship with God using the things he knew best, which was his life in business—in sales, specifically. When Moody decided to become a full-time revivalist—without any sort of theological training, mind you—he was God’s salesman, inviting his listeners to enter into a personal relationship with God. He started to conceptualize the authentic believer in terms of being a good Christian worker. What mattered wasn’t wha…

A Recent Local Controversy Reveals the Theocratic Heart of ‘Project Blitz’

By Frederick Clarkson

…enerally referred to as a Christian nationalist, largely because he is the best-known promoter of the idea. But as a former vice chair of the Texas Republican Party and a frequent headliner at Christian right and Republican conclaves, he is also a Dominionist with considerable political reach. (The Jefferson Lies was on the New York Times best-seller list at the time it was withdrawn.) The Christian nationalist appeal is to, what historian Frank L…

Robert Bellah’s Powerful Legacy: A Mixed Blessing for Religious Studies?

By Ivan Strenski

…variants notwithstanding. American civil religion simply mirrored a great deal of American Christianity’s symbolic universe, just as Durkheim’s religion of humanity echoed the French historical experience of the Revolutionary tradition. But, in Bellah’s hands, instead of a meditation on threats to individualism from an aggressive intransigent French right wing, such as Durkheim battled in the hothouse atmosphere of the Dreyfus Affair, Bellah and…

On Death and After-Death

By Amina Wadud

…ode. That is, if you’ve led a good life, done the rights things, tried you best, etc., you’ll get heaven. If not, well; you know what happens then. Now stories about Nakir and Munkar get interesting. So much so that some will even tell you the “questions” that they will ask and what answers are correct! I think that is a stretch, but again, for my purposes here, this is all gender-neutral or gender-inclusive, even in the lore and literature, imagi…

Will Mindfulness Change the World? Daniel Goleman Isn’t Sure

By Jay Michaelson

…ologist for the TED Talk set. And his new book, Focus, is a New York Times bestseller. But before any of that fame, Goleman was a hardcore Buddhist meditator—and remains one today. His early books were about the development of the contemplative path, and throughout his work has run the theme of how meditative practice, in secular or spiritual contexts, can lead to greater happiness and peace—and conversely, how the disconnects in our own minds can…

The Problem with Moral Nuance on Abortion for Democrats

By Patricia Miller

…ed for a measure to give women free IUDs. Perriello, on the other hand, is best know as the co-founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, which came to attention in the WikiLeaks dump of John Podesta’s emails as the organization Podesta backed to foment a “Catholic Spring.” Catholics in Alliance was formed in the wake of the last Catholic panic, after John Kerry lost the Catholic vote to George W. Bush by five points. Officially, the id…

The Left Behind: Why Are White American Christians So Racist?

By Daniel Schultz

…st and white Catholics in the Northeast. You can bet that Jones—one of the best pollsters of American religion at work today—has the data to back his argument up. White Christians, as he notes, are much more likely than the average citizen to buy the “heritage not hate” shtick about Confederate monuments, and much less likely to agree that the repercussions of slavery and institutionalized racism make it difficult for Blacks to find economic succe…

“I Was a Wild Man”: How to Decode Evangelical Testimony

By Eric C. Miller

…asked me about my own affair. I admitted to it and it was decided that the best course of action would be for me to resign.” Though he admits to extramarital sin, Tchividjian is careful to observe that he only had the affair after his wife cheated on him, and only as a result of seeking “comfort” with a female friend. In his telling, he was largely a victim of circumstance, a wounded bird needing a nest. If it is possible to commit adultery in sym…

A Nazi, a Jewish Prisoner, and a “Magic” Bible, Or, Christian Romance Fiction Gone Very, Very Wrong

By Julia Seymour

…received criticism for the book on the grounds that it violates consent at best and allows for a kind of truth of the Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism at worst. Author and blogger Sarah Wendell wrote a letter to the board of directors of Romance Writers of America (RWA) decrying the nomination of the book for RITA Awards in two categories. Wendell, who is Jewish, worries that celebrating such a horrific work creates an environment where writers…

“Religion, O Diabolic”: Lamenting Religious Violence, Then and Now

By Ed Simon

…cularism: the religion of liberty, equality, and fraternity. These are the best of those French values, attacked this weekend. To paraphrase an American poet, there is nothing wrong with France that what’s right with France can’t fix. There is no figure that better embodies the French character than Montaigne, the writer who in many ways invented the modern person. A Catholic, he was horrified by the terror enacted in the Paris massacres. For him…