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Why We Stay: What the History of Mormonism Reveals About the Origins of “Race”

By Max Mueller

…rratology. As I write in the book, race “is less about skin and more about stories—stories about how racial differences came to be in the past and how such racial differences can be overcome in the future” (34). 3. Relatedly, that the Book of Mormon isn’t worth studying. Race and the Making of the Mormon People contains the most sustained analysis of Mormonism’s foundational text of a history of race and religion published to date. Yet my book com…

Why Are We Drawn to Horror?

By Mathias Clasen

…vre. McCammon’s horror writing is brilliant—evocative and touching and sometimes deeply disturbing, sometimes utterly awe-inspiring. I would’ve loved to have included an interpretive chapter on one of his novels. Maybe in another book. Image from promotional materials for The Cabin in the Woods (Lionsgate, 2012). What are some of the biggest misconceptions about your topic? Well, both the subject and the approach seem to attract misconceptions lik…

Jeff Sharlet’s Weird Religion, in 13 Chapters

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…tly; in descriptions of Ron Luce’s BattleCry crusades, the greedy gurus of New York/New Age mysticism, media tycoons, or late night apocalyptic radio preachers. The practitioners of weird religion aren’t all ones that we (liberals anyway) want to welcome into our homes, but in these essays Sharlet is careful to notice the humanity of the people he is writing about. In good liberal fashion, there would seem to be no one beyond redemption (though so…

The New Normaal: “Black Pete,” Muslims and Whiteness in the Netherlands

By Suzanne van Geuns

…. Although Dutch Muslims are generally peripheral to the anti-Black Pete struggle, the move Rutte’s letter makes to align them is insightful. Rutte’s letter reinforces that all Dutch people should aspire to be ‘normaal,’ and thus aligned with a socially progressive state that looks, talks, and acts white. Simultaneously, the letter renders anyone who is not white (Muslims, or all who might have reason to accuse normaal Dutch people of racism), and…

You’re Using It Wrong: Rachel Held Evans Returns to the Bible

By Eric C. Miller

…he Bible be used by the Resistance? I didn’t want to write too much about Trump because I knew it would date the book. But I think his election is significant to the story of American religion. One thing I’ve done is to compare his presidency to the reign of Xerxes in the story of Esther. Xerxes was a misogynistic, fragile, pathetic racist who had been entrusted with this huge empire and relied on his advisors to tell him what to do, who took the…

Decoding Scalia’s Secret Hunting Society, From Jägermeister to Medieval Heresy to Buddhist Legend

By Joseph A. P. Wilson

…the presence of the majestic deer, and witnesses a radiant vision of the crucifixion in the animal’s enormous horns. In repentance for his sins, he renounces his worldly ambitions, is ordained, and subsequently lives a pious life of solitude in the forest where he then has his faith repeatedly tested. Icon of Hubertus (Wikimedia Commons) Virtually the same legend is attributed to an earlier Roman saint, Eustace (née Placidus), set in the second c…

Eat, Pray, Kill: The Basic Brutality of Eating

By Beatrice Marovich

…speaking, vegetables get all the glory,” Ariel Kaminer lamented in the New York Times, playing the role of the paper’s esteemed Ethicist. And so, in an attempt to buck this trend the paper launched an essay contest in March of this year: in search of the ethical argument for meat. Essays were judged by a star-studded panel that included vocal vegetarians like Peter Singer and Jonathan Safran Foer as well as more cautiously omnivorous foodies such…

Religion in Real Time on CNN’s “Believer”: A Conversation with Reza Aslan

By Kaya Oakes

…e two significant ones here just in Los Angeles. There’s a very big one in New York, and there are lots of them throughout Arizona and Nevada and Texas. So for those people out there who want to write a PhD in religion, pick this one: you’re watching in real time the creation and spread of a new global religion primarily due to shifting migration patterns. That’s how Christianity became a global religion: people left the confines of the Roman Empi…

It’s Complicated: When “None” Doesn’t Even Begin to Cover It

By Tucker FitzGerald

…hip with evangelical Christianity itself. A deep sense of knowing that the world of Hebrew and Christian scriptures are, in a consequential way, true. An angry, stumbling, ancient G-D. Bewildered community. Mysterious hope that defies logical explanations. Tent pegs through the skull. Innocent animals cut to pieces. Cities laid waste. A burning tower of fire that won’t go out. There is the haunting sense of these stories being more real outside th…

Gay Suicide and the Ethic of Love: A Progressive Christian Response

By Eric Reitan

…s actually doing. No loving person would endorse this prohibition if they knew the truth. Is the traditional prohibition on homosexual intimacy like that? I think so. And the reason I think so is because, for many years now, I’ve been listening to my gay and lesbian neighbors. I’ve listened to their stories and tried to put myself in their shoes. I’ve heard how the prohibition on “homosexuality” cuts deeper than a mere condemnation of a specific a…