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Dieting, Sex, Jesus: The Body as Moral Battleground

By Lynne Gerber

…inform, or to piss people off? Sociologists often talk about making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. I’d be happy if readers came away from the book seeing dieting as more complicated, and more problematic, than they had previously thought and efforts at sexual reorientation more akin to popular self-help culture than they would assume. If evangelical readers found Christian practices somewhat strange and non-Christian readers found…

Single, But Married To Jesus

By Anthea Butler

…t out: he became a megachurch leader with “Woman Thou Art Loosed.” But many black women are anything but “loosed.” A March 2010 study by the Closing the Gap Initiative found that the median wealth for single black women ages 36-49 is five dollars. Five dollars. Damn. The wealth of a single white woman in the same age range is $42,600. If a black woman marries, it doesn’t help that disparity much either. A married black woman’s net worth is $31,5…

Rick Warren Busts a Gut Over Cultural Revolution

By Rob Shryock

…eacted by blaming his followers for having no sense of humor: People often miss irony on the Internet. It’s a joke people! If you take this seriously, you really shouldn’t be following me! Did you know that, using Hebrew ironic humor, Jesus inserted several laugh lines – jokes – in the Sermon on the Mount? The self-righteous missed them all while the disciples were undoubtedly giggling! Warren, possibly America’s most influential evangelical, clea…

‘Cult’ Is an Inaccurate, Unhelpful and Dangerous Label for Followers of Trump, QAnon, and 1/6

By Catherine Wessinger

…. In the 1980s and 1990s in the United States, white people, especially farming families and people living in rural small towns, felt that their way of life and ownership of land and property were threatened by their inability to keep their farms and agriculture-related businesses due to government lending practices; their inability to repay loans and pay their taxes; and resulting seizures of their property. This provided impetus to the Euro-Amer…

The Harlot Shall Be Burned with Fire: Biblical Literalism in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

By Sarah Sentilles

…seldom known for their courageous stands, but the caption could have said any number of things. The Woman Against Rape or The Woman Who Kicks Ass or The Woman Who Fights Back—I’d even settle for A Girl Who Fights Back. But nipple piercing? Really? When there’s all that other material? Which sums up the problem with Dragon Tattoo, the movie: not only does it participate in the sexualization of the violence it seems to resist, but it also asks the v…

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

By Patricia Miller

…ly “pertain to preventing diseases and not to … preventing birth.” But, as New York Times reports, under Trump a number of anti-contraception activists have been given prominent roles in the administration. They are moving not just to finalize a rule that would allow any entity to opt-out of the contraceptive mandate for any reason, which has long been on the bishops’ wish list, but have a history of attacking contraception in general. Katy Talent…

Mormons Prepare to March in Seven LGBT Parades this Weekend

By Joanna Brooks

…ampaigning against the civil rights of same-sex couples and fostering in many a new commitment to supporting full equality under the law for LGBT people. Just this summer, since the Mormons Building Bridges contingent in the Salt Lake City LGBT Pride parade, we’ve seen a wave of Mormons come out to friends and family, including Mormons in mixed-orientation marriages and parents of gay LDS children. Their telling of personal stories has an impact…

As Psychedelics Experience a Renaissance, Emory’s New Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality Seeks a Novel Approach

By Hollis Phelps

…sion, PTSD, and substance abuse disorders—as well as in palliative care. A number of prominent institutions in the United States currently host centers devoted to studying the mechanisms, effects, and efficacy of psychedelics, including NYU’s Center for Psychedelic Medicine, Johns Hopkins’s Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, and UC Berkeley’s Center for the Science of Psychedelics. In addition, and anticipating the legal and socioc…

Gen Z’s Religious Affiliation Stats Are Confusing … But Only When Viewed From a Christian-Centric Perspective

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…much in the world at large. Why then do we persist in trying to count American religion? My goal isn’t to get rid of these surveys, but to look at them differently. They are indeed “data,” but not in the way they purport to be. There may not be any solid, observable referent for the numbers of young people who say they “believe” in some kind of “higher power.” But that does not mean we shouldn’t ask. Any survey is a snapshot of a moment, in which…

Harry Reid vs. Islamic Cultural Center

By Joanna Brooks

…tion on the matter. It’s not a proud day for freedom of religion when a prominent member of the number two most disliked major religion in America effectively sides against a honest project by the number one most disliked major religion in America. Especially when Mormons have just recently come through our own years-long struggle to build an LDS temple in Center City Philadelphia after Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter tried to extract a six-figu…