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‘Pure White’ Examines the White Supremacist Origins of Evangelical Purity Culture

…be a strong nation, it needs to have a moral core. And that moral core is best defined by evangelical Christian teachings. So, there you have this formula that allows White evangelicals to demonstrate their right to political power: If we don’t have political power, everything’s in trouble. So again, this is the White Christian nationalism that works, not just on the popular level, but also on the political level—and this has been so firmly ingra…

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Atheists Gather in Burbank: A Humanist’s Response

…with their inability for critical self-reflection and critique are not the best champions of healthy life orientations. I remain hopeful that collaboration and partnership will be difficult to achieve but not impossible. I am not calling for a naïve stance marked by blindness—either to the deep dimensions of our differences, or to the great harm that theistic (and atheistic) perspectives can produce when they nurture bad ethics. I left Burbank thi…

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“Ex-Gay” Common Ground More of a Killing Ground

…point is that people can leave whatever it is that God calls less than His best and move into something that is His best, becoming more like He is. Honestly, this isn’t news. So-called “ex-gay ministries” have long given up the promise of turning homosexuals into heterosexuals. True, some who say they’ve “left homosexuality” have married opposite gender partners and had children. Here we can begin the long argument over Alfred Kinsey and his conti…

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Undercover at Falwell’s Liberty University, Finding Common Ground

…enthusiasm, despite praying and proselytizing and Bible-thumping with the best of them, Roose didn’t give in all the way. He didn’t get “saved.” His interior monologue never got too comfortable with the endless homophobia that passes for ordinary conversation among Liberty students, though he also fell short of speaking out against it at the time. When he returned, he was still a happy, post-everything Brown student. But he was still praying, eve…

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Irony Repeats Itself: Reconsidering Reinhold Niebuhr in the Trump Era

…mocracy necessary.” Liberal democracy is worth defending because it is the best way to restrain human egotism and will-to-power, not because it fulfills an ideal. In 1944, Niebuhr still believed that political democracy needed to grow into economic democracy to attain social justice and protect democracy itself. But he was almost done with saying so, and he no longer believed that his country was capable of socializing the economy, unlike what his…

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Toward a Richer Ethical Discourse in Trumplandia: A Response to Harper’s “Trump: A Resister’s Guide”

…im Barker, and Sarah Schulman. Robin’s “The Dream of the Enemy” may be the best of the lot. In just eight compressed paragraphs, Robin reminds us that today’s multicultural neoliberalism, epitomized by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, is essentially backward-looking and fear-based. The gist of Robin’s argument: A liberalism that needs monsters to destroy can never politically engage with its enemies. It can never understand those enemies as political a…

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In Defense of Clerical Celibacy, From a Protestant Liberal

…echoed this idea in 1 Corinthians 7, saying that he saw singleness as the best, most hassle-free way for Christians to serve God, “But if [people] cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn.” The message here is pretty clear: a few folks are gifted with the call and the ability to live lives centered on something other than married life, but most of us will need to marry if for no other reason than to kee…

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The Bible Says… and Other Myths About Scripture

…what became virtually a second wave of translation-and-reform, symbolized best by Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Woman’s Bible, published in 1898. The ERV was not popular in England, and across the Atlantic it fared little better; all it accomplished here was to make its readers mindful of the need for a truly Americanized Bible. The American Revised Version was finally published in 1901, yet it was no more popular in the New World than the ERV was in…

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Of Personhood and the Pill: What’s at Stake?

…r. In a typical cycle, two embryos are transferred, to give the mother the best chance at getting pregnant at all without risking high-order multiples. However, this isn’t an exact science. There is no way to know in advance how many eggs will fertilize, or how many embryos will develop. If a woman has more embryos than can be transferred, doctors pick the two best, and freeze the remaining embryos for later use. However, the sad fact is that abou…

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Despite Vastly Different Values, Evangelical ‘Hamilton’ Connects Secular Left and Christian Right

…r point was that art may not survive democracy. Borders are necessary. Our best art and our best ideas ought to be kept out of reach if they’re to do any real work in the world. As it goes with art, so it is with religion. Give your beliefs a tough shell or skin and the uninvested (some say undeserving) will pass it by. Thick skin protects what’s inside by sometimes repulsing even those willing to give it a try. Thin-skinned ideas on the other han…

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