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Amway, Religious Right Pyramid Scheme, Returns to the Motherland

By Bill Berkowitz

…ve 527 groups during the 2004 election cycle. In April 2005, Rolling Stone reported that Amway CEO and co-founder Richard DeVos was connected with the dominionist political movement in the United States, and that DeVos had given more than $5 million to the late D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries. In a piece I wrote in April 2005 for Media Transparency, I pointed out that: Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel’s Amway Corporation has its tentacles…

3 Reasons Catholic Bishops Are Holding Their Tongues on GOP Health Care Debacle

By Patricia Miller

…artment of Health and Human Services, came from the Alliance Defending Freedom, where he represented Conestoga Wood Specialties in its successful challenge, along with Hobby Lobby, to the contraceptive mandate. Bowman argues that there is no evidence that the mandate reduced the number of unintended pregnancies and has disputed that there are any ill health effects related to unintended pregnancy. Allowing Catholic Church-affiliated adoption agenc…

When God and Gender Mix: New Book Examines the Southern Holiness Movement

By Colin Chapell

…ge how they understand their own identity. If academic achievement and the number or type of initials after your name is the most important thing in the world to you, then it will change how you view your own masculinity and femininity. Similarly, if having children matters most to you, then you can only be truly “manly” or “feminine” if you have kids. Is there anything you had to leave out? Historians always want to include every interesting anec…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…of freedom of conscience and more persecution of minority beliefs. The Freedom of Thought 2012 report, which bears a portrait of a manacled Alber Saber on its cover, draws attention to the role of digital and social media in particular, noting that even Facebook “likes” and re-tweets have drawn the attention of some authorities: The trend of prosecuting “blasphemies” shared through social media is most marked in Muslim-majority countries. For exam…

More Than Big Hair and Money: Jim, Tammy Faye and the Media “Holy Wars” of the 80s

By John Wigger

…some of Jim and Tammy’s appeal. PTL was all about images so there were any number of options. Too bad books can’t come with a dozen different covers to choose from. Is there a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? I love the writing style of Lawrence Wright and Hampton Sides. They are both masters at weaving nonfiction into a page-turner. Anything half as good would be fine with me. What’s your next book? I’m not sure yet. Hopef…

The Only Common Denominator of American Conservatism is Anti-Blackness

By Yannick Marshall

…e exhilarated by it. A more reasonable interpretation exists Tom Cotton, a Republican Senator from Arkansas, defended slave masters saying they thought it to be a “necessary evil.” Jeff Sessions, the former US Attorney General “joked” about thinking the Ku Klux Klan was OK. Former Iowa Representative Steve King wondered aloud about how white nationalism and white supremacy became offensive. These and the other racist remarks made hourly by conserv…

How the Study of Evangelicalism Has Blinded Us to the Problems in Evangelical Culture

By Christopher D. Cantwell

…hat that term means to them. There’s a certain irony here, in that an Anglophone movement that once saw itself as uniquely positioned to save the world is now looking to the globe to salvage its reputation. ‘Evangelical’ as metaphor Noll, Marsden, and Bebbington have each retired in recent years, making Evangelicals something of a testament to their centrality to the field. The text concludes with a new essay from each editor that seeks to steward…

Modern Vampires: Your Neighbors and Spouses

By Joseph Laycock

…vampire community such as The Temple of the Vampire, although these groups represent a minority of self-identified vampires. Many vampires even identify as Christians and atheists. Several people expressed concern for my safety while working with vampires. Several journalists who have written on the vampire community, all of them female, describe moments in which they were frightened or made to feel uncomfortable. One of them even employed a perso…

Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue

By Cody J. Sanders

…tic organizations reject notions of the pathological in sexual minorities, dominant religious and cultural ideology is in a state of crisis. It is no longer an unquestioned assumption that heterosexual experience represents the definition of reality for all people. The power to define reality for the masses is at stake and this power comes with all manner of political and ideological implications. Thus, there is a vested interest on the part of th…

Sacred&Profane: Wilco Worship and the “Churn” in American Religion

By Gary Laderman

…en more specifically, seeking signs of religious life among the increasing number of those who self-identify with no religion. In order to pursue that path, we have to do away with one of the most obfuscating, irritating, and limiting words bandied about by too many in public discourse: faith and faith communities. In the land of no religion, faith, as a domesticated catchword for Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus of every stripe and…