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Is Criticizing Mitt Romney an Excommunicable Offense? No.

By Joanna Brooks

…linary council on charges of “apostasy.” Twede had acknowledged on his blogsite that he had attempted to influence a couple he met at church by emailing them frank information about controversial aspects of Mormon history, while concealing his own identity as an editor of Mormonthink.com. His identity was reported to Church officials by Scott Gordon, president of the Foundation for Apologetics and Information Research, an independent Mormon organ…

Beware Mitt Romney’s “Softer Side”

By Joanna Brooks

…ust to make us cry. This sentimental storytelling is an American tradition dating back at least to the nineteenth century. It encourages us to zero-in on the anecdote—to identify with and shed tears for the helplessness of the victim—and lose complete sight of the big picture. Is there anything in Romney’s foreign policy that will ensure that more Navy SEALS, sailors, and soldiers will come home quickly? Does the Romney-Ryan budget maintain the s…

How (Not) to React to Anti-Mormon Sentiment in the South

By Joanna Brooks

…se. Memories of anti-Mormon persecution are deep-seated in Mormon culture, dating to the nineteenth-century mob violence that took the life of LDS Church founder Joseph Smith and spurred our removal to the Great Basin. There is a tendency—even now, as Mormons enjoy prosperity, safety, and well-being in the United States—for us to treasure these old feelings of persecution. But that’s hardly the most courageous, positive, or even honest response to…

Mitt’s Jesus, Barack’s Jesus, and Why Christ’s Color Matters

By Joanna Brooks

…tion of whiteness. The birth, growth, and evolution of white Jesus imagery dating from the antebellum era and exploding in the twentieth century coincided with the birth of an American empire founded, in part, in notions of race. The assault on that sacralization of whiteness through the civil rights years has not, and could not, defeat it entirely, and the depth of religiously-fueled sentiment directed against Obama suggests that as well. Jeremia…

Was Blind But Now I See: The Debut of a New Anti-Abortion Strategy

By Kellee Terrell

…the stories were flatly ludicrous, the power of the conversion narrative, dating back as it does to the “Roe” conversion, is undeniable. Mirroring the born-again experience, they’re more or less an anti-abortion version of the oldest Christian story: once was blind, now I see. Their gestating faith had presented them with a divine ultimatum: Either continue “murdering babies” and go to hell, or do right by God and walk away. These conversion stor…

American Jews: From Holocaust to New Age Hasidism?

By Martin Kavka

…e, seeing her bare shoulders, asked why she had left that life: “I started dating a non-Jewish boy,” she said simply. If postethnicity is to be only a momentary blip in Jewish and American life, those who want to change the world and leave Judaism untouched will have to break into people’s hearts. Those hearts will be shattered in the process. It seems wiser, once we learn from Magid that Jewish theology and sociology need not be enemies, to run…

An Evangelical Intellectual Takes On Same-Sex Marriage, Grasps at Straw Men

By Eric C. Miller

…ate, because it allows anyone—gay or straight—to marry a member of the opposite sex. This argument has been made before, with equal self-satisfaction but without quite this level of obliviousness. Throughout his criticism of gay marriage, Craig never finds cause to condemn same-sex marriage, presumably because it makes the same offer as traditional marriage—gay or straight, anyone is free to marry a member of the same sex. Whether they would want…

Reza Aslan’s Missed Opportunity

By Micha'el Rosenberg

When my wife and I first started dating 11 years ago, I was prepared for some interesting conversations with my mother about my future mother-in-law’s career. My wife and I are both religiously-observant Jews who, among other things, keep kosher, observe the Sabbath, and pray regularly. My mother-in-law, also a religiously-observant Jew, is a professor whose expertise lies primarily in…early Christianity. And in particular, a renowned scholar of…

Syria and the American Apocalyptic Imagination: Isaiah 17:1 as “Evidence” of the End

By Jason C. Bivins

…in the Middle East is, of course, extremely commonplace (a long tradition dating back to the Crusades, spiking with the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible, and becoming enormously popular with Hal Lindsey). The text most commonly cited here is Isaiah 17:1: “Behold, Damascus will cease to be a city and will become a heap of ruins.” Apocalyptic scenes (additionally from Jeremiah and Zechariah) extend to Damascus, and the Qur’an, too, locat…

On National Coming Out Day, Many Still Can’t Afford the Luxury

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…nd would say in that breathless, starry-eyed way teenage girls—who are not dating seniors—always seem to talk. In fact, my boyfriend and I had already mapped out our wedding day. We were to be married at home plate at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium where our beloved Atlanta Braves played. That dream imploded in the same way as that old stadium did when I hit my 16th birthday. I learned who I really was that year when a copy of Rolling Stone arrive…