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5 Key Moments From the Year of the ‘Exvangelicals’

By Chrissy Stroop

…a woman named Beverly Russell Bell, who praised God for sparing her sister-in-law’s Bible when the sister-in-law herself died in a fire, went viral in 2016. When the “Beverly meme” appeared in the Exvangelical Facebook group, a support group and intersectional safe space that now has nearly 4,000 members, then-member and now moderator Anne Weaver suggested we refer to tone-deaf evangelicals as “Beverlies.” As of late 2018, Urban Dictionary has ad…

What’s Wrong with Wright’s Words

By Andrew Murphy

…he voiced but in the response he evoked from his most famous parishioner. That would be a call and response worthy, not just of the African-American religious tradition, but of all Americans….

A Muslim Reflects on Christian Theologian (and UCLA Coach) John Wooden

By Amir Hussain

…lim role models. One of them was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Coach Wooden’s 7-foot-2-inch center at UCLA. In learning more about Kareem (born Lew Alcindor), I came to appreciate the influence that Coach Wooden had had on him during the racially and politically charged period of the late 1960s. I wrote to Coach Wooden as an undergraduate asking for a copy of his famous Pyramid of Success. About a month later I received an autographed copy, along with a ni…

Milquetoast Liberal Religion Won’t Challenge Conservative Values: A History Lesson

By Sheila D. Collins

…rything else in social ethics. Faced with mass unemployment, social workers-turned-government administrators like Harry Hopkins, head of Roosevelt’s Federal Emergency Relief Administration, and his assistant, Aubrey Williams, held the view that unemployment was caused by a lack of jobs, not by the failure of the unemployed to seek or accept work, which was the view (supported by the teaching of classical and neo-classical economists) on which the…

Something So Broken: What’s Frightening About Beasts of the Southern Wild

By Michael Pasquier

…the applause is directed at the film’s heroine, Quvenzhané Wallis, the six-year-old non-professional actor who grew up in a Louisiana bayou town and who may soon become the youngest Academy Award nominee of all time. Sharing much of the admiration, and the object of much of the criticism, is the film’s director, co-writer, and composer, Benh Zeitlin, a Queens native and graduate of Wesleyan University, where he formed a filmmaking collective call…

Violent, Genocidal Anti-Palestinian Rhetoric Moving to US?

By David Sheen

…York Board of Rabbis, David-Seth Kirshner made this same assertion at a pro-Israel rally of 10,000 people a few blocks from the UN (which had just issued a statement expressing concern over “the deteriorating situation). In a video posted to Youtube, he is heard saying: “When you are part of an election process that asks for [Hamas]… you are complicit and you are not a civilian casualty.” Kirshner then proclaimed that the Israeli army is “the most…

Gingrich Downplays Adelson Money, Stokes Fear of “Second Holocaust” at Florida Church

By Sarah Posner

…lls showing him significantly behind both Romney and Gingrich. For this one-of-19 daughter of a reality show that depicts a fundamentalist Christian view of the role of women, motherhood, and reproduction, supporters look at Santorum and say, “hey, he’s like us, he’s a man of character, he’s a humble guy, he’s on our level, he’s somebody we can relate to. He’s somebody who can make a difference for America. And that’s what we want to do, we want a…

An Open Letter to Black Clergy on the Disdain for Protest

By Rev. Osagyefo Sekou

…egations in the palm of your hand with rhetorical flourishes, giving a beat-down-people strength to live another day. Your words helped to re-constitute an assaulted black self—with respectability, dignity and self-determination. I studied how you mounted the sacred desk. The way that you ‘took and walked’ a text was a dissertation in performance and homiletical studies. I took avid notes. Elegant mothers wearing peacock hats; disciplined ushers,…

Despising the Holidays: When Christians Led the ‘War on Christmas’

By Ed Simon

…record as surely as creationists misread biological evidence. Contemporary American fundamentalism, from its pre-millennial dispensationalist eschatology to its free-market economic ideology is at odds with the actual ideology of American Puritanism. The reductionist ‘culture wars’ obscure the nuances of history and culture, while failing to recognize the full complexity of both secularism and religion. This year’s tempest in a coffee cup has prov…

American Supports Ugandan Anti-Gay Bill

By Michael Wilkerson

…ing with a controversy they never wanted.” He then pivoted to the blame-the-West assertion so popular among the bill’s Ugandan supporters. “What I found out was that NGOs, the UN, and UNICEF were coming in and promoting an agenda that the church of Uganda did not want to be in this nation.” Engle was careful never to explicitly call for the passage of the bill itself, and to avoid being accused of inciting violence. “We are not standing with viole…