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The Question of Evil: Politicians Weigh In

By Mark Gstohl

…McCain and his audience, comprised of persons who could afford to buy $500 tickets, would frame a discussion about evil in terms of America versus Islam. McCain’s response contains several problematic assumptions. The first assumption is that America is good. Perhaps my experience as a professor at an HBCU, historically black college or university, has forced me to understand how atrocities against humanity have occurred in a so-called Christian n…

Media Overplays Rihanna Concert Coverup

By Fatemeh Fakhraie

…er skirt. Second, it seems hypocritical: you’ll host a concern for and buy tickets to see a female performer sing songs about things that are totally haram (according to different opinions), but not if she’s wearing clothing you find inappropriate? From the artist’s point of view, it also seems like a seems like an affront. It compromises the artists’ “package deal” of music, image, and stage presence, the latter two of which sometimes include sca…

For the Love of God, Bono, Please Stop Touring

By Ben Swihart

…ly black, a stadium full of white people who paid more than a Benjamin for tickets is not going to be the nexus for authentic justice conversations. I work for a white, affluent, suburban, mega-church, so I’m used to that. But at that moment, before the music even started, I knew what my friend was referencing—I was about to get spiritual too. “They knew they were born to weep and keep the morticians employed as long as they pledge allegiance to t…

Romney to Talk Mormonism Tonight: Risky?

By Sarah Posner

…Back from my Bloggingheads hiatus, I talk with Get Religion’s Mollie Hemingway about whether Mitt Romney’s plan to discuss his Mormonism tonight at the Republican National Convention benefit his candidacy: And we also discussed the significance of the fact that Barack Obama is the only Protestant on both presidential tickets: …

Argue-by-Number: A Suggestion for the Church

By Mark D. Jordan

…n our side. Number 1 could be “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Number 2: “God doesn’t discriminate.” Number 3: “Sex is only for procreation.” And so on. We could get clever, of course, and assign separate groups of numbers to arguments pro and con or to thematic clusters. I can even imagine some seminary librarian proposing a sort of Dewey Decimal System to organize the arguments. This would allow long series of arguments to be cited b…

Coffeehouse Churches and the ‘Party-on Messiah’: How I Lost One Leper Messiah, and Gained Another, Part 3

By Mark Dery

…is alive and well and living in the radical spiritual fervor of a growing number of young Americans who have proclaimed an extraordinary religious revolution in his name. […] Christian coffeehouses have opened in many cities, signaling their faith even in their names: The Way Word in Greenwich Village, the Catacombs in Seattle, I Am in Spokane. […] ‘It’s like a glacier,’ says ‘Jesus-Rock’ Singer Larry Norman, 24. ‘It’s growing and there’s no stop…

Why We Won’t Let Jonestown (Or 9/11 or Sandy Hook) Die

By Kelsey Osgood

…e story of a small group coming to grips with a mass cultural trauma. As a number of notable sociologists put forth in their book Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (University of California Press, 2004), society, to put it simply, can experience trauma like an individual can. As with the individual, there are a few things that make a society more vulnerable to trauma. “A society emerging from a major war, suffering from diminished economic r…

Conservative Christianity and Its Discontents

By Karl Giberson and Randall J. Stephens

…essor, not buying it,” suggesting that expertise is really just opinion. A number of thoughtful evangelicals are alarmed at the surging anti-intellectualism within their ranks. And there are many academic historians, geneticists, psychologists, and other intellectuals within the Christian tradition who do not deny the knowledge claims of their respective fields. Such believers, however, are viewed with suspicion if they do not speak the language o…

Mormons Prepare to March in Seven LGBT Parades this Weekend

By Joanna Brooks

…then, Mormons for Marriage founder Laura Compton writes, there have been a number of subtle but observable changes in Mormon positioning on same-sex marriage, including: – The Church Handbook of Instructions no longer includes a request that church members should lobby governments to deny same-sex marriage rights (and rites) via legislative actions. – LDS rhetoric about same-sex marriage rights is shifting to focus on the need to protect religious…

Leper Messiah: A Jesus Freak’s Search for the Meaning of Bowie—A Critical Novella

By Mark Dery

…n Mick Rock, Blood and Glitter (London, UK: Vision On Publishing, 2001), unnumbered page. [2] Marc Spitz, Bowie: A Biography (New York: Crown, 2009), p. 214. [3] Quoted in Mick Rock, Blood and Glitter (London, UK: Vision On Publishing, 2001), unnumbered page. [4] Ellen Degeneres: Search YouTube. As of this writing, an excerpt from the episode in question could be found here. “Totally credible plastic rock star”: Quoted in the booklet accompanying…