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The Audacity of Melancholy: Race, Tragedy, and the Anguish of Progress

By Joseph Winters

…and violence against, blackness. Part of this omission has to do with the timeline and process of publishing. While the book was released in June of this year, I was finishing up some of the final edits at end of 2014 when the second Ferguson uprising was underway. While I briefly address Trayvon Martin’s death and President Obama’s response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal, more time and space would have allowed me to think seriously about BLM an…

First Baptist Church, Sutherland Springs Texas

Can Government Solve The Evil Of Mass Shootings? A Response to Mollie Hemingway

By Daniel Schultz

…he dynamic that humans discern the form of government they think will work best, and God works with it. As it happens, our form of government is not distinct from the people it serves: the government is the people is the people of God, formed in God’s image, which makes the formation of government a godly, even sacramental, endeavor. God invites humans into the business of creation and re-creation. We suck at this work! Humans are selfish, stupid,…

Is Liberalism Islamic?: An Interview with Mustafa Akyol

By Haroon Moghul

…y in unprecedented levels. I also think that today liberalism presents the best medium for Muslims to live Islam in the various ways that they understand it. Let me push you a little bit here. I would argue that most interpretations of Islam place a strong emphasis on the social, the communal, often above the individual—and if we stress the liberation of the individual from larger collectives, does Islam play any role in the great social questions…

Václav Havel: Democracy as Spiritual Discipline

By Peter Montgomery

…selves rather than pander to or inflame their followers’ worst instincts: Time and time again I have been persuaded that a huge potential of goodwill is slumbering within our society. It’s just that it’s incoherent, suppressed, confused, crippled and perplexed — as though it does not know what to rely on, where to begin, where or how to find meaningful outlets. In such a state of affairs, politicians have a duty to awaken this slumbering potenti…

Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism

By Jonathan L. Walton

…casting is new. Again, many regard it as a post-civil rights phenomenon at best, or the co-opting of the black church by the white religious right at worst. But the confluence of mass media and Afro-Protestantism dates back to religious race records of the 1920s and is as “authentically black” as James Brown. From prominent Pentecostal preachers like Leora Ross, F.W. McGee, and Mother Rosa Artimus Horn during the interwar period to C.L. Franklin a…

Why We Should Ban Oppressive Speech Acts

By Natasha Lennard

…e, when these speech acts are enacted, is not (to paraphrase Wittgenstein) best read through “the language game of reporting,” or the language game we might call the “open exchange of ideas.” The most obvious response is: Why not simply respond with better speech acts? “Speak truth to perlocutionary effect,” if you will. I want to specifically address why racist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-immigrant speech acts—qua speech acts—are best combated…

Of Gods and Men Resurrects Martyrdom

By Nathan Schneider

…st. Mercifully, though, their way of life doesn’t allow for a whole lot of time for agonizing. As Trappist monks—the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, officially—they gather in the church several times a day to chant prayers, from before dawn until after dusk. In between, they’re busy with “spiritual reading” and ordinary manual labor like farming, wall-building, and honey-producing. Brother Luc (Michael Lonsdale) also serves as the r…

Pigging Out: What ‘Radically Unkosher’ Jewish Foodies Like Michael Pollan Are Missing

By Jonathan Schorsch

…blind spots. The goal for the food movement must be how to make use of the best of rationalism and the best of traditional ways. Believing that tradition will “save us” is as deluded as believing that its elimination will. Jewish tradition itself acknowledges anxieties over law and restricted behavior. One explanation is often cited to suggest that after the coming of the messiah the pig will change its nature—it will start to chew its cud—and bec…

For Love or Threat: Pro-Life Prayer Includes Names, Photos of Abortion-Rights Advocates

By Alana Massey

…y ran graphic anti-abortion ads he noted that the Super Bowl ought to be a time for family fun. The PLAL website stresses non-violent direct action in contrast to his father’s “by any means necessary” threats, which is perhaps why it’s surprising that they’ve resorted to tactics like displaying the photo and city location of an abortion provider, a tactic once almost exclusively employed by groups oriented to aggressive action. Yet PLAL’s latest a…

Will Trump’s Weakness Threaten White Evangelical Support?

By Kristin Kobes Du Mez

…s who opposed civil rights and other disruptions to the status quo. At the time, evangelical leaders such as Billy Graham, James Dobson, and Jerry Falwell Sr. worked to shore up patriarchal power in order to enforce order at home and abroad. Theologically, this took the form of promoting “biblical gender roles” that dictated unyielding male authority and female submission. Culturally, this resulted in the development of a strikingly militant ideal…