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Coming Out on a Christian Campus, Then and Now

By Ed Madden

…a boy—that dunk in the cold baptistery during a gospel revival was more a flight from hell and from my growing sense of sexual difference than a spiritual conviction. After taking the bread and wine that Sunday at Trinity United Methodist Church in Austin’s Hyde Park, I couldn’t get up. I knelt at the altar rail and wept, shaking, still not believing in a God or a community that would accept me just as I am, rather than just how others wanted and…

My Kind of Atheist

By Peter Laarman

…cancer, and even an opera singer he meets and befriends on a transatlantic flight. Much of the book is centered on the small loving universe that is peopled by Schaeffer’s immediate family members—his two young grandchildren in particular, whose startlingly perceptive utterances put me in mind of that venerable line in the Bible (Jesus, but quoting Psalm 8): “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise.” The writing style i…

Is Joel Osteen, Success Mag Cover Boy, Really “God’s Best”?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…od’s best,” Osteen misses a very important point. Perhaps on his next long flight he can pull out his Bible and take a gander at Luke 16:19-31—the story of Lazarus and the rich man. Daily, the rich man ignored poor Lazarus, but when Lazarus died he was taken to “heaven” or a place of eternal comfort. The rich man’s fate in Hades was terrible, however, as he begged Abraham to “send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; f…

The Leadership Crisis at the End of the Megachurch Era

By Benjamin Dueholm

…yle could be separated from the enduring substance. But departure after departure and scandal after scandal suggests that it was not to be. If there’s another chapter left in American Christianity, it will likely require an embrace rather than a flight from the absurdity of its words and practices….

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Heretic: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Jihadis?

By Haroon Moghul

…“because my Savior never engaged in those kinds of actions.” Of course, no American Muslim I know has these conversations, not in many years—the debate in favor of democracy was long ago decided. But clearly some people think we haven’t made up our minds, assuming that because people somewhere else are questioning democracy, we must be, too. (The next time this question comes up I’m going to ask whether we can trust American Christians because of…

Pope Francis Walks With LGBTQ People, One Step Forward, Big Steps Back

By Kaya Oakes

…oft-quoted statement about gay priests—“Who am I to judge?”—occurred on a flight back to Italy from Brazil. Most recently in Tblisi, Georgia, the pope referred to the “theory of gender” as a “great enemy to marriage today.” He added that “there is a global war to destroy marriage,” and that the weapons being used are a form of “idealogical colonization.” In the past, Francis has used that phrase to describe Western ideas being forced onto develop…

RDBook: Apocalypse Without God

By Nathan Schneider

…and during the 1980s he helped to bring the ideas of Jacques Derrida into American theology and religious studies. Starting in the late 90s, though, Taylor ventured far afield with books on architecture, computer networks, economic markets, and even Las Vegas. In 2006, he released a book of photographs of animal skeletons in the desert. Taylor’s most recent book, After God, gathers these pieces together into a wide-ranging manifesto. He insists t…

How Postwar Germany’s Witchcraft Trials Can Help Us Understand QAnon And Other Conspiracy Theories

By Monica Black

…aft accusations did not involve carnal relations with the Devil, nocturnal flight, or being able to fall down stairs without sustaining injury. Though they imputed magical evildoing, the accusations mostly involved more mundane human problems, like suspicion, resentment, and festering doubt. This characteristic aligns with what anthropologists and historians who work on comparative witchcraft have made clear: that while witch fears can take quite…

What NOT to Expect from the Pope’s US Visit

By Anthea Butler

…ents about doctrinal issues or specific political issues particular to the American scene. Francis, after all is a head of a global church. So whatever reading is given to his statements, those must not be filtered through popular hope or punditry, but through Catholic teaching. Pope Francis’s straightforward messages on issues like poverty are discordant to American ears because of the religious vitriol we are constantly hearing from pundits, pre…

Claude, Adieu: A Farewell to Lévi-Strauss

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…along the way of describing his repeated trips to Brazil in the 1930s, his flight from France after the Nazis overran the country in 1940 (he fought in that failed French attempt to hold the Maginot Line against the German Blitz), and his happenstance return to Brazil (he was granted a visa to come to the New School of Social Research in New York, but got held up in French Martinique, and eventually made his way back to Brazil where he sat out the…