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What the Conservative Christian “Fake-Trans Bathroom Creeper” Has To Do With Suburban Anxiety

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…heartland might express surprise that a SOGI ordinance could ever pass in southwest Missouri, much less in the city that hosts the headquarters of the Assemblies of God, a major conservative evangelical denomination. But Springfield has nearly 200,000 people, several universities, and a thriving LGBT community center. Opposition came from Christian Ministries Church, among other places, though CMC is not in the city limits of Springfield, it’s in…

Taking the Economy Back From the Elites: Blessed Are the Organized

By Nathan Schneider

…cade earlier. I don’t pretend to have done a full-scale ethnography of the Southwest IAF network. How could one do that in a summer and a winter? Rather, the book is an exercise in public philosophy. It is meant to resemble classic works of traveling theory like Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and Martineau’s Society in America. I wanted to bring the philosophy of democratic citizenship down to earth. How has your thinking evolved about your ea…

Polygamy, Genius, and the Origin of Religion

By Michael Schulson

…streets of 21stcentury Tokyo, 19th century rural Paraguay, and Paleolithic southwest France? Do you understand human nature by finding fixed laws? Or do you grasp it by understanding the rules of humankind’s incredible un-fixedness? Shortly after finishing Barash’s book, I read a new essay by the photography critic Teju Cole. Reviewing photographer Steve McCurry’s new collection of photos of India, Cole makes a distinction between an individual pi…

Racial Justice Will Be Top Priority for New Prez of the United Church of Christ

By Frederick Clarkson

…Associate Conference Minister in Missouri and a Conference Minister in the Southwest. Dorhauer has been active in social justice concerns throughout his career, most recently focusing on immigration, private prisons, the environment, and marriage equality. Dorhauer earned a Master of Divinity degree from Eden Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Ministry from United Theological Seminary. He will now lead one of the most iconic Christian churches i…

Thoroughly Modern Mormons

By Joanna Brooks

…their own messages about Mormonism, preaching the importance of Christian service, forgiveness, and obedience, and offering spiritual encouragement to families caring for children with disabilities. Which image is correct? The sharp split between two reflects a persistent divide in representations of Mormons. Nineteenth-century stereotypes depicting Mormons as secretive, deluded, and possibly dangerous persist, while contemporary Mormon efforts h…

Wal-Mart Faces a New Round of Historic Strikes… But Why Now?

By Sarah Jaffe

…an extension of the evangelical “family values” that they held dear. As a service employer, Moreton told RD, Wal-Mart learned that paying public obeisance to the value of “service”—a concept transplanted neatly from Christian good works to working hard in the checkout line—made good business sense. “Everyone wants to feel that what’s important to them can be serviced in their labor,” Moreton said. Wal-Mart, she noted, “managed very cannily” to a…

Dispatch from Charlottesville: “It Was a War Zone. It Felt Like There Were a Million Nazis.”

By Sunnivie Brydum

…m were gathered outside the church. So in the middle of a peaceful worship service, a prayer service for the city of Charlottesville, I was unable to be present in the work that I had been brought in to do because of safety concerns. Along with that, a member of the so-called alt-right had infiltrated our worship service. And so there were lots of things happening at one time. Security became a real concern; not just for those of us who were in cl…

The Very Idea of “Gay Church”

By Mark D. Jordan

…y, as if describing a vanishing art form.) In fact, the date for the first service in October was set not because of some liturgical calendar—say, not because October contains Reformation Sunday, but because of the magazine’s publication schedule. Twelve people showed up in Perry’s living room—new disciples, new apostles. With that entirely appropriate number, a church began. At the first service, Perry tried to describe the church. He announced t…

Scientology: All-American or Aging Hoax?

By Gordon Haber

…he articulate grip who calmly explained the religion’s tenets at the craft services table. And then there’s the stylist who has so many run-ins with proselytizing Scientologists that she calls it “getting Sci-Tied.” What’s interesting is that all these experiences were related as momentarily discomfiting but ultimately harmless. Of course, the perception of Scientology is something else entirely. The church is seen as a scam, as a fake religion,…

Will SCOTUS’s New Zeal for “Neutrality” Affect its Decision on the “Muslim Ban”?

By Elizabeth Reiner Platt

…ke with an anti-gay message) and refusal to sell a product to a particular customer (a wedding cake to a same-sex couple). Of course, the Court didn’t seem so concerned with clearly biased government religious expression in Town of Greece. As Justice Kagan’s powerful dissent outlines, in that case “the Town Board select[ed], month after month and year after year, prayergivers who will reliably speak in the voice of Christianity” and thereby “infus…