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Christianity Today’s ‘Humble’ Hindu-to-Jesus Conversion Story is Still a Story of Christian Triumphalism

By Murali Balaji

…ed to his next question: would I like to go to a non-denominational church service after the game? When I politely told him I was a Hindu and not interested, he left me—in mid-set—and walked away. The weights fell on my chest, and as I felt the oxygen leave my body, I turned the barbell enough to ask for help. A person nearby came over to help lift the weights off. That memory resurfaced when I read Kamesh Sankaran’s “The Humbling of a Proud Hindu…

Lying in the Name of the War Lord: Jane Roe’s Fake ‘Conversion’ is a Feature Not a Bug of the Extreme Christian Right

By Frederick Clarkson

…a—and lied to Canaanite soldiers who were searching for the spies. For her service, she and her family were spared when Joshua sacked the city and massacred everyone in it. There are a variety of understandings of the meaning of Rahab’s acts—like just about any other biblical figure. But Rushdoony’s interpretation is foundational for the contemporary Christian Right. Rushdoony rationalizes Rahab’s lies as having saved the lives of “Godly men.” He…

Even if Biden Wins Will We Reckon With ‘Virtuous Republic Syndrome,’ the Persistent Belief that America is a Blessed Nation?

By Peter Laarman

…see. You can disregard Biden’s public rhetoric about reining in the billionaire class. The billionaires aren’t worried. Let’s pause to think for a moment about how wealth presides, as it were, in every arena of life. CALPERS, the ginormous public employee retirement fund based in Sacramento, now finds itself short of money needed to pay for future retirement benefits, many of those benefits being owed to unionized workers. The fund managers’ respo…

‘God Made Them Male and Female…and Eunuch’: Why the Biblical Case For Binary Gender Isn’t So… Biblical

By Tony Keddie

…especially for transgender—people in employment, health care, and military service. Mark and Matthew present Jesus’s teaching as a narrowly defined discussion pertaining to the interpretation of a law in Deuteronomy. The texts don’t reject gay marriage; they don’t even address it. Hard-nosed conservative leaders persist in reciting verses from Leviticus and Matthew as God’s Word—and the final word—on the issue. Matthew 19:3–6, for instance, remain…

How U.S. Conservatives Conjured the Jesus of Their Dreams

By Peter Laarman

…eping socialism. Fifield’s contribution overlapped with the equally useful service to corporate power supplied by Abraham Vereide, union-busting founder of The Family (a.k.a. The Fellowship), the shadowy network behind the National Prayer Breakfast that Jeff Sharlet has documented so well. It hardly needs saying that the Trump family’s favorite minister—the positive thinking (and also union-hating!) Norman Vincent Peale—was also very much part of…

Why the Media and Democrats Should Reject the Christian Right’s Pearl-Clutching and Address Problematic Religious Views

By Chrissy Stroop

…mobilized to affect those who do not share them must be on the table in a fair, democratic society: Like freedom of the press, religious freedom is an important First Amendment right. But when believers use their faith as a bludgeon to attack othered groups and to prevent equal accommodation of members of those groups in the public square, we have moved beyond the bounds of a truly democratic approach to pluralism. To be sure, some media coverage…

Before We Scold DeSean Jackson and Others For Anti-Semitism We Need To Talk About ‘Chosenness’

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…endants” of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel—rose to prominence in the 19th century. Anglo-Israelism would go through various manifestations with one of the most prominent advocates, Herbert W. Armstrong, starting the Worldwide Church of God in the 1960s, which served as the foundation of the white supremacist Christian Identity movement during the second half of the 20th century. While it’s easy for organizations such as the Southern Poverty…

Exclusive: Why Did Chicago Public Schools Just Quietly Drop Transcendental Meditation?

By Aryeh Siegel

…t in response that the puja ceremony is exactly the same today as it was in 1977, and that the establishment clause has not changed, Roth responded, “In the nearly 40 years since the 1979 court case you cite, tens of thousands of students have learned to meditate as part of voluntary Quiet Time programs with the full support of school boards and parents.” That may be strictly true, but given what we’re learning about the Chicago case, that support…

On the Erasure of Whiteness in Responses to Convicted Pedophile Jan Joosten, a White Man

By Jae Han

…ul white male scholar, Jan Joosten, had downloaded over 27,000 pictures and 1,000 videos of child pornography over a period of at least six years. Some of these victims were children “originaires d’Asie ou des pays de l’Est” (originating in Asia or Eastern countries). Which is to say that they’re marked as non-white Asian children. We don’t know the proportion of Asian victims to non-Asians, but no other ethnic or national marker is mentioned. We…

Jews Violate Their Own Beliefs, Conservative Christians Say

By Evan Derkacz

…igotry. What is bigotry is opening a business and then denying some people service on the basis of their identities. Second, as members of a minority religion, American Jews have long enjoyed constitutional protection from the Christian majority, which has sought to compel Jews to say Christian prayers, yield to Christian holy symbols in civic spaces, and conform to all sorts of Christian religious practices. To twist the meaning of “religious lib…