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No, the Democratic Party Is (Still) Not the Party of God

By Daniel José Camacho

…real world empires in our day. The best we can do is back lesser evils who manage the empire well. Some may say this is a pragmatic partnership. If so, it’s one with little accountability and almost no ability to push back. Obama’s nearly three million deportations (including plans to target Central American women and children once again in 2016) and Clinton’s hawkishness can be forgiven whereas it’s the Republicans who commit unpardonable sins. A…

To Be Christian, Intellectual and Black: A Response to Vincent Lloyd

By Joshua L. Lazard

…tions. But most of the work of academics goes unnoticed. Then one or two or 10 of us manage to break out of the ivory tower just enough to gain public attention in a way that brings institutional and personal resources. We are dubbed thought leaders when most often we are just the best-looking, most articulate thought synthesizers of our age. Specifically, Harris-Perry’s observation about “spaces that are only nominally public” resonates with me….

“Nobody Is Innocent”: David Gushee on Sexual Ethics, Suffering, and Full Inclusion for LGBT Christians

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…rch—and actually of her brother, me. I didn’t know all that. I would say I managed to live the great majority of my life without a lot of exposure to the actual lives and journeys of LGBT people. That speaks very much to what happens in the evangelical world—if you create an environment inhospitable enough you drive people out or underground. That’s how I could manage not to have much exposure until I came to Atlanta and started to be in a seminar…

In Defense of Clerical Celibacy, From a Protestant Liberal

By Kate Blanchard

…e, the New Testament is more ambivalent about it. Matthew’s gospel (chapter 19) recounts a story of when Jesus told his disciples they weren’t allowed to divorce their wives. They were horrified, needless to say, even to the point of concluding, “It is better not to marry!” But Jesus responded that not everyone could manage this: “there are eunuchs who were born that way… and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs… and there are also eunuchs who…

Jesus Goes to the Dark Carnival: Hell House Gets a Makeover?

By W. Scott Poole

…ents of the reality of the last judgment and damnation. Instead of unquiet spirits, vampires, and chainsaw-wielding madmen, the vengeful ghosts of the culture wars haunted these Houses. Abundant Life Christian Center in Colorado created one of the first, most successful, and most controversial Hell Houses. Attempting to be as edgy as possible, Abundant Life actually used animal intestines to represent an aborted fetus in the stock “women’s clinic”…

Neither The Joker Nor Godlessness Drove Batman Shooting

By Jeffrey Scholes

…when asked about the kid they used to know, friends have only been able to manage brief and generic descriptions such as, “quiet, kept to himself.” Admittedly, the same can be said for most of the mass murderers over the last 15 years. However, all of Holmes’ predecessors left behind either notes, confessions to friends, Facebook postings, or blog entries that attempted to justify their future act or simply notify the public of it. These stand as…

A Secret History of Satan

By W. Scott Poole

…e tended to influence one another in very strange, but very real, ways. The 1973 film The Exorcist has had enormous influence over how everyone from Pentecostal “deliverance ministers” to Roman Catholic priests understand exorcism. Billy Graham, in a famous sermon in 1974 where he insisted that demonic presences lived in the very celluloid of the film, went on to describe demonic possession in exactly the same way the film had done. Second, I hope…

Fix the Economy GOD’$ WAY: Dave Ramsey’s Great Christian Recovery

By Paul Harvey

…Depressions of the nineteenth century (those following economic crashes in 1857, 1873, and 1893, to cite three examples) was to call for a spiritual revival that would lead to a “Great Recovery.” The Christian entrepreneur George Pullman preached many of the same ideas as Ramsey in the 1890s, believing that in building his company town of Pullman, Illinois, he would treat his workers fairly and avoid strikes and lockouts. The results: the bloody…

Does Donald Trump Have a Catholic Problem?

By Patricia Miller

…trates the campaign’s overall tone-deafness when it comes to Catholics: https://twitter.com/katrinapierson/status/148442868065894400 Of course, a strong Trump showing in the first two-thirds of the primary calendar would largely make the Catholic-leaning later states a moot point. But if Ted Cruz manages to peel off enough of the evangelical vote from Trump to keep himself, and Rubio, in the race through April, the Northeast and Midwest will have…

Is Criticizing Mitt Romney an Excommunicable Offense? No.

By Joanna Brooks

…to everyday members. While the institutional LDS Church once preferred to manage controversial elements of its own history—for example, the polygamy of Joseph Smith, or questions about the origins of the Book of Mormon—by presenting carefully crafted lessons in its own manuals, leaving more complicated discussions to scholarly journals and progressive magazines known to only a minority of Church members, the internet has now put an array of infor…