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

By John Wigger

…ical Empire? I was fascinated by how fast PTL grew and how quickly it fell apart. What I really wanted to know was how PTL’s rise and fall were connected. How does deep religious devotion become so entwined with money, sex, and celebrity on a Hollywood scale? A short synopsis might help: Jim and Tammy started the PTL network with half a dozen employees in a former furniture store in 1974. By 1986 PTL had annual revenues of $129 million, 2500 emplo…

The Only Common Denominator of American Conservatism is Anti-Blackness

By Yannick Marshall

…undamentally post-racist country, the racists “are just a few idiots,” not a number tallied in the millions. In “conservatism,” the intellectual legacy of the Confederacy has been normalized and an entire population of Negrophobes is absorbed into society and allowed space to push their anti-Black agenda everywhere from the Senate floor to bank cubicles. It’s been said that politics is the continuation of war by other means. After the surrender at…

Welcome to the Shari’ah Conspiracy Theory Industry

By Sarah Posner

…d former CIA director James Woolsey; the American Enterprise Institute’s Ayaan Hirsi Ali; and the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy—a leading proponent of the conspiracy theory that shari’ah poses a threat to America and that the left, and President Obama in particular, are part of a fifth column that promote, or at the very least, enable it. (Both McCarthy and Woolsey are also affiliated with the FDOD.) Gaffney’s efforts have proven to be quite l…

Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue

By Cody J. Sanders

…en a young person completes suicide in the aftermath of daily torment and harassment. After this, I sat in stunned silence in front of my computer screen as news stories continued to appear about the suicides of 13-year-old Asher Brown, 18-year-old Tyler Clementi, 13-year-old Seth Walsh, and 19-year-old Raymond Chase. Today, it is very clear to me that profound sadness and stunned silence is no longer a suitable, appropriate, or adequate response….

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

“How do I know who the true God is?” Alber Saber Ayad’s question was answered by the Egyptian government last week when the 27-year-old computer science student was convicted for “contempt of religion” in Cairo. Saber was taken into custody on September 13 by the police after an enraged mob stormed his house, beating him and threatening his mother, a Coptic Christian. Saber was rumored to be circulating the Innocence of Muslims film trailer on hi…

Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

By Diane Winston

…nd. An interview with Siviku Hutchinson on the racial politics of atheism, a book review of The Bonobo and the Atheist, and Elizabeth Drescher’s ongoing coverage of nones underline the big tent approach to coverage of American ir/a/religion. But do the Gallup numbers point to new ways we might be thinking about business as usual? Two findings are striking. First: Gallup reported that although Americans felt religion’s influence was declining, many…

U.S. Bishops Reject Pope Francis’ Priorities

By Patricia Miller

…rmal encyclicals and other documents that leave the permanent mark of his papacy on the church. One could argue, therefore, that the lack of alignment between the priorities of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Francis wasn’t a willful rejection of the pope’s agenda, but more of a wait-and-see attitude of exactly what that agenda was and how it could be implemented in concrete detail. But the jig is up. Its been nearly three years. The p…