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Christian Cults and Vampire Zombies: Stake Land is Scary and Smart

By Nick Street

…(where many of the early scenes in Stake Land were shot) to film school at New York University. Unlike other young filmmakers, who often see the horror genre as a stepping stone to what they consider more serious work, Mickle’s ambition in Mulberry Street, his first feature, and now in Stake Land is to prove the horror-film’s value as a medium for old-school dramaturgy. “I see genre as a context for telling bigger stories,” he said. “That means co…

Applaud If You Must, But Let’s Not Forget the Reason Bethany Christian Agreed to LGBTQ Adoption

By Chrissy Stroop

…datory and harmful adoption practices. Now, as Ruth Graham reports for The New York Times, Bethany takes the position that “Christians of mutual good faith can reasonably disagree on various doctrinal issues, about which Bethany does not maintain an organizational position.” This, of course, stops short of endorsing LGBTQ identities or same-sex marriage. Still, it’s a significant positive change, so it’s worth asking what motivated Bethany to take…

David Carr’s Secret to Honesty: Sin

By Daniel Silliman

…ve to be skeptical. Carr died last week at 58. A working journalist at the New York Times, he has been widely honored by the profession he practiced. He was genuinely liked by his colleagues but, more than that, seemed to serve as a walking, working example of what can be great about journalism. Part of that was his commitment to the trade craft of distrust. One thing that set Carr apart was his professional skepticism, which was, primarily, direc…

Southern Baptists Embrace Minorities, but Not Gays

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…highest position yet held by an African-American” in the denomination, the New York Times notes. Fred Luter Jr. pastors a largely black church in New Orleans and is apparently an “overwhelming favorite to be elected president at the assembly next year.” This is great news for the Southern Baptists, who have been predominantly, if not exclusively, white since the denomination’s founding. One might ask why it took the denomination 11 years after the…

“Little Sisters” Being Sold As Face of Contraception Case

By Patricia Miller

…ception is a significant financial burden.” Lori’s piece was followed by a New York Times op-ed purportedly written by Constance Veit, the Little Sisters’ director of vocations, but which sounded an awful lot like the briefs filed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty on behalf of the order. The op-ed argues that requiring the sisters to notify the Department of Health and Human Services that it intends to opt-out of the contraceptive mandate,…

The ‘White Lie’ Connecting Trump’s Pardon of Arsonists, Immigration Fiasco, and Charlottesville

By Jonathan Russell

…Kelley has shown in the example of the destruction of public play areas in New York in the 1990s. As these performative moves reveal, America is a White space, and public spaces are sites of impromptu and systematic ritualized take-backs—land grabs writ small—because Whiteness is anti-public, anti-commons, and privatizing. Indeed, even these “public” spaces are stolen spaces, as is the case in the Malheur preserve, which sits on the Burns Paiute T…

Good (Enough) Christians — Russell Moore in The Atlantic Illustrates the Limitations of ‘Christian Nationalism’ as Category

By Chrissy Stroop

…rian Christians over the last few election cycles aren’t enough to get The New York Times or The Atlantic to question the conflation of “Christian” with “good,” or to grasp that authoritarian Christians cannot be reached at scale by selectively quoting the Bible at them, I don’t know what will. I do, however, have a modest proposal that might help push our discourse about Christianity and power in a more honest direction were enough of us to get o…

Is Coverage of Liberal Religion a Media Fail?

By Sarah Posner

…ewpoint, be it race or gender or sexual orientation or political leaning. Any newsroom in which the black staffer is expected to speak up for blackness while the white staffers only have to speak for themselves is a newsroom that’s failing. Back to Ambrosino, a gay man who studied at and fondly remembers Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and became, for a news cycle or so, a symbol of all that had gone wrong. Once Media Matters posted an unrelent…

Virgins and Vampire Worship: The Religion of Twilight

By Linda Kay Klein

…, for, ahem, “research purposes.” Packed into a sold-out theater in one of New York City’s busiest neighborhoods, I raised my head above the mayhem to get a look at the crowd. Much to my surprise, I didn’t see a single “Bite Me: Vampires Only Please” t-shirt. There were no creepy vampire contacts; no corsets; no capes; even the eyeliner was tastefully applied. I wondered: Where have all the Twi-hards gone? Suddenly, wolf-man Jacob appeared on scre…

Democrats Alarmed Over USCCB Pressure on Obama over Contraceptive Coverage

By Sarah Posner

…der exemption to protect the “consciences” of employers and employees. The New York Times reported this weekend that the mandate was a discussion topic when Obama met recently with the USCCB president, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who “said Mr. Obama was ‘very open to the sensitivities of the Catholic community.’” Democrats, not surprisingly, are alarmed that the Obama administration might back off a requirement approved by the HHS this past summer….