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The Leadership Crisis at the End of the Megachurch Era

By Benjamin Dueholm

…ob Bell, who left behind the big, influential church he founded in 2011 to freelance as a speaker and sage. Entrepreneurs turned locally-designed innovations into business enterprises and fell into the pitfalls of the CEO. This seems to have been the fate of Bill Hybels, whose church was a major force in the church-growth movement. He ended up accused of inappropriate behavior on his yacht and his personal plane, sounding very much like an executi…

‘Hell is a World Without You’ Shows Readers How Squarely They Would Have Been on Path to Jan 6 if They’d Come of Age in Evangelicalism

By Michael J. Altman

…vel resonates with much of the current discourse of American religion. The flight of millennial and Zoomer exvangelicals out of churches, the embattled politics of American Christian nationalism, and evangelical attacks on LGBTQ+ rights provide a backdrop for this coming of age story. RD spoke recently with Kirk, a senior editor at The Athletic and co-creator of several popular podcasts, about the book, Christian Nationalism, Hell, and what it mea…

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…

Will the Taliban Actually Remain Somewhat Moderate This Time?

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…position of patience. They proclaimed that there would be no reprisals and free access to the airport. With some truly unfortunate exceptions, this promise was largely met. Compare this to the last time the US lost a war and had to suddenly retreat during the fall of Saigon. During that memorable scramble in 1975, US diplomats had to evacuate the embassy via helicopters that landed on the roof as the North Vietnamese army tanks literally broke dow…

Larycia Hawkins’ Actual Violation of Wheaton’s Statement of Faith Hints at the School’s True Intentions

By John Gleim

…s and cultures—it’s not easy, after all, to cultivate a reputation for top-flight scholarship while simultaneously signaling common cause with evolution-denying right-wing conservatism. Given the emptiness of Wheaton’s theological censure of Dr. Hawkins, it seems even more unlikely that Wheaton’s move to fire Dr. Hawkins is a principled defense of evangelical orthodoxy. In fact, it seems fair to presume that the optics of this situation are delibe…

Religious Resistance to Bolivian Gender Law; US Religious Right Celebrates Court OK For Romanian Marriage Initiative; Will LGBTs Be Banned from Indonesian TV?; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…marginalized communities and to honor their country’s commitment to basic freedoms guaranteed in the Moldovan constitution. “Moldova has already made great democratic, constitutional, and economic advancements. It was only three years ago that the nation took an important stand for human rights and basic freedoms when it overturned a similar anti-LGBT propaganda law,” said Representative Lowenthal. “The U.S. values its relationship with Moldova a…

Blame Series Bonus: How Federal Policy Created America’s Fergusons

By Andrew Aghapour

…ow have a law, the Fair Housing Act, which says that African Americans are free to live anywhere they want. They can live in Levittown, they can live in the suburbs of St. Louis. But it’s not an effective remedy to tell people that they can now move to neighborhoods that have become unaffordable, when they, or their parents or grandparents, could have moved there when the homes were affordable 50 or 60 years ago. The result is that white working c…

The Blame for Ferguson: A Response

By Stephanie Gaskill

…gation in Ferguson was not just the result of individual decisions (“white flight”), but also of carefully engineered federal policies intended to prevent white and black people from living in the same places. Aghapour wants us to get better at blaming institutions. When confronted with thorny social situations, he suggests that we first “scale up,” meaning that we situate individual actions within a broader institutional context. Second, he sugge…

The Sacred and the Dead: ‘Friend of the Devil’ is a Love Song

By Pitman B. Potter

…life in jail.” The theme of alienation is expressed in the song’s focus on flight—from the law, from society, even from friends. And yet we are drawn to identification with an outlaw so alienated from the rest of the world, he believes the Devil is his only friend. In my ministry as an Anglican deacon, leading ministries that offer food, clothing and, most important of all, fellowship to homeless folks living on the streets of Vancouver’s West Sid…

What NOT to Expect from the Pope’s US Visit

By Anthea Butler

…xception. As is his custom, the Pope gave an interview to the press on the flight from Cuba to America. Cindy Wooden of Catholic News Service reported that, in response to questions about being a communist and Newsweek‘s “Is the Pope Catholic?” headline, he responded: “I am certain I have never said anything more than what is in the social doctrine of the church. I follow the church and in this, I do not think I am wrong.” That is key to understan…