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Is the Satanic Temple Just an Elaborate Prank? 10 Questions for the Author of ‘Speak of the Devil’

By Joseph Laycock

…on and has done some unbelievable things. I really didn’t set out to piss anyone off, although some of TST’s opponents on the religious right may regard anything positive or even neutral said about TST as an attack on Christianity. In 2018, TST went through a shake up in which a lot of members left to form their own politically progressive Satanic groups. These kinds of fractures are extremely common in new religious movements, but they are also p…

“Hey You! Anti-Semite!”: A Jewish Krewe does Mardi Gras

By Barbra Barnett

…laying on the early date of Mardi Gras this year and the adult themes of many of the parade’s sub-krewes. One float featured an oversized Energizer Bunny (“He Keeps Coming”) with a giant erection. Other floats focused on civic grievances—one float mocking Governor Jindal’s health care policy. Another float predicted the death of local journalism with an altar of skulls and the riddle: “What’s Black and White and Dead All Over?” The smaller and les…

Sarah Palin and the Politics of Victimization

By Randall Balmer

…008 presidential campaign, couldn’t name a single newspaper she read with any regularity. “Politically-Motivated Attacks” Having failed to win election to the vice presidency in 2008 and having resigned as governor midway through her first term, Palin currently holds no political office. But, if America by Heart is any indication, there is no identity she embraces with more alacrity than that of victim. The book fairly bristles with resentment and…

The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right

By Frederick Clarkson

…the radical right-wing revolutionaries of the 1990s Patriot movement than anything you might actually describe as conservative in the traditional sense. I do think that a number of conservatives are starting to wake up to this reality now. David Brooks and Joe Scarborough and Lindsey Graham have just recently fired salvos across the decks of the right-wing talkers, criticizing them for where they’re dragging the Republican Party. But unfortunately…

Churches Can No Longer Hide the Truth: Daniel Dennett on the New Transparency

By Andrew Aghapour

…ches that are moving away from doctrine and more into allegiance and ceremony and letting people be more relaxed about what they actually believe. Now, how well this is going to work, I don’t know. I think there’s a place in the world for organizations that are bound together by tradition, by music and ceremony and texts that they treat as sort of mythic texts, and I think the religions that survive this period are going to deserve to survive. The…

Springtime for Ross Douthat?

By Daniel Schultz

…l by now), Gustavo Gutierrez, Marcus Borg, James Cone, Sallie McFague, or any number of other thinkers and theologians that Douthat does not recognize. The only people who want to bring back Niebuhr are conservatives. (I’m an admitted fanboy, but that’s about coming from the same church background as Niebuhr as much as anything.) And that doesn’t even get to the worst of it. Douthat misunderstands Francis’ amazing, charismatic realignment of Catho…

Despising the Holidays: When Christians Led the ‘War on Christmas’

By Ed Simon

…Christian values. This portion of conservative Christians – exactly how many remains vague in media coverage – apparently views the crimson cups as evidence of secular humanistic creep, and the replacement of Christianity with a pluralistic perspective that these individuals view as an affront to their religious liberties. Joshua Feuerstein, the activist (and known oddball) whose Facebook post attacking the chain over the issue is what initially…

On Eve of Sudan Split Clashes Continue

By Ashley Makar

…ater, he was handed over to an Israeli employment agency to be a source of cheap labor in Eilat—the bottom tip of the country, where the Negev meets the Red Sea, and where Sudanese and Eritrean refugees do the service jobs that support the tourism industry. William’s people are no strangers to exploitation. He told me that much of Northern Sudan was built by the Southern Sudanese. To illustrate the system of forced labor practiced in the North, Wi…

Evangelicals Clutching Pearls Over Student Debt Relief: Lord Have Mercy!

By Peter Laarman

…irectly from the Republican playbook. This is the canard, unsubstantiated anywhere, that relieving student debt represents a regressive upward redistribution of wealth, with uncredentialed working people subsidizing the college-educated elite. Jamelle Bouie, writing in the Times, had this to say about the “it’s regressive” smear: The idea that student loan relief is a handout to a small minority of affluent college graduates is simply a myth. But…

Of Zionism and Anti-Zionism: The Ultra Orthodox and the Settler Movement in Israel

By Shaul Magid

…n Israel with 6-7 children—think FLDS). Committed to study and devotion, many men do not work, or work part-time, meaning they have little financial means. Yet in many cases they live middle-class lives that seem incommensurate with their incomes. This is due in part to a complex network of Haredi charities and Israeli government subsidies for large families. The solution: develop Haredi communities in the territories where housing is cheap (throu…