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Beyond ‘Thoughts and Prayers’: How the Christian Right’s Politics of Providentialism Keeps America from Addressing Gun Violence

By Chrissy Stroop

…f the Republican Party is not pretty. In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, a Republican, seemed to place most of the blame for mass shootings on violent video games. This is a position that, while reductionist and deflecting from the fact that gun control is demonstrably effective, I cannot dismiss as quickly as I once might have in the aftermath of Gamergate and what we’ve learned about rampant misogyny and…

Bonnaroo: The Meeting Ground

By E. David Morgen

…e springing from the grass roots upward. No one breaks down barricades for tickets, abandons cars by the side of the highway, or creates spontaneous parades. Like the other events of the festival circuit (Lollapalooza, Coachella, Austin City Limits), Bonnaroo is a top-down affair staged by skilled, professional producers. In 2007, the festival revenues reportedly topped $17 million, making it the highest-grossing event of its kind in the world. Ye…

The Horror Mugabe Doesn’t Want the World to See

By Frederick Clarkson

…ey were quickly dispersed by heavily armed, helmeted riot police (see cell phone photo, top). “If they catch you,” one student matter of factly told Donaghue at the buffet, “you are going to be cut like a goat from head to toe.” The students all knew people who had been beaten or tortured by Mugabe’s agents. Donaghue met one receiving treatment in a hospital, most of which are now closed, partly because even when staff are paid, “it costs more to…

Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong

By Vyckie Garrison

…waste American money to buy their expensive oil when we could have our own cheap oil?” “Why is he trying to make rich people poor?” “How is it right to punish rich people for working hard and realizing the American Dream?” It was late on a Friday night and I was tired, so I half-heartedly responded by explaining that there are other factors to consider in every charged question she’d been armed with. But I wondered, “Why the hell was the Salvation…

Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?

By Lee Gilmore

…llar annual budget is funded almost exclusively by ticket sales, and these tickets are not cheap (ranging this year, for example, from $210-$300 depending on time of purchase). This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various parti…

Did the Pope Embrace the Prosperity Gospel?

By Sarah Posner

…search of property records show James and Betty Robison live in a “modest” Texas home appraised by Tarrant County tax-assessors at $742,800. They also own one or more multi-million-dollar homes in Silverthorne, Colo., and have access to their large Robison ministry ranch and lodge in East Texas built with donor money. As I wrote last year, despite Trinity’s extensive investigation, the results of which it provided to the Senate Finance Committee,…

Religion and Reality TV: Is God Watching?

By Kent L. Brintnall

…king place when running late for a conference, and the ability to convince airline employees to bend regulations so he could store camera equipment in overhead compartments. Oh, and God also helped Osteen in some Texas real estate ventures that, even on Osteen’s superficial account, sound kind of shady. Perhaps a God concerned with lateness and luggage does get invested in televised talent competitions. One final religious dimension to reality tel…

On the Taliban’s Hit List: An Exiled Pakistani Singer’s Plea to Save Music

By Austin Dacey

…are of Mingora town. Journalist Shaheen Buneri has estimated that more than 800 music shops have been bombed or attacked in the Northwest since 2006. I spoke with a man who had personally witnessed Islamist thugs destroying traditional instruments in front of the players whose lives depended on them. It was against this backdrop that I put some questions to the man at the harmonium. Because of continuing danger at home, he wished to remain anonymo…

State as Executioner: Rick Perry Did Not Invent the Death Penalty

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ed statements of his confidence in justice as administered by the State of Texas. The Supreme Court took a slightly different view of Texas justice, and the reason has everything to do with the issue that is intimately bound up in the long history of the death penalty in America: race. In the second, sentencing phase of Duane Buck’s original trial, the prosecutor mentioned a statistical study suggesting that young black felons were far more likely…

Men Without Guns: A Tribute to Larry McMurtry

By Amy Laura Hall

…What’s lost is already gone on the first page: the picture show version of Texas. McMurtry has the boys casually go to the last showing in the theater “an Audie Murphy movie called The Kid from Texas.” “It would have taken Winchester ’73 or Red River” to “have crowded out the memories the boys kept having.” The two best friends are ostensibly fighting over a girl, Jacy Farrow, but they’re also staring into their future in a town where “there aren’…