Why The Advocate‘s Choice of Pope Francis for Person of the Year is a Mistake
…Pope Francis as much as anyone, I need concrete actions to back up the sentiments. Until the dogma changes, talk is cheap….
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I Agree: Critical Race Theory is Indeed Incompatible With Southern Baptist Convention’s ‘Faith and Message’
…he enslavement of Black bodies, located within an empire carved out of the cheap labor and natural resources stolen from the Global South, future seminarians at these six institutions can continue, without any pangs of conscience, to lift their eyes to the heavens in thanksgiving to their white God, who richly blessed them according to the loving mercies God holds for “his” chosen. But woe unto us who lack faithfulness to whiteness and insist on m…
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‘People You May Know’ Reveals a War on Democracy Being Waged With Big Data
…V: And it’s easy, and also in terms of churches of course, social media is cheap. Traditional outreach might have been much more time-consuming and expensive, whereas now using data you can easily find people who might be open to an invitation. Part II, in which Kriel and Viken will discuss issues related to the coming election, including the Council for National Policy, a secretive conservative Christian organization leveraging these powerful too…
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Why the ‘Confession & Redemption’ Path is Unlikely to Help Falwell Recover from Sex Scandal
…aders caught up in sex scandals, and most commentators predicted this same cheap grace for Falwell when he was recently forced to take an indefinite leave of absence from Liberty after posting a picture of himself with his pants unzipped, his arm around the waist of a similarly (un)dressed woman who was not his wife, and a glass of something that looked suspiciously like alcohol in his hand. According to two experts on evangelicals and gender, how…
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‘We’re all in this together’: The Perils of Kumbaya Rhetoric
Talk is cheap, and sentimental talk cheapens public discourse in dangerous ways at a time when total sobriety is required. Eight weeks into a public health and economic catastrophe, the facts before us should be sobering enough: Disease and death in this pandemic overwhelmingly afflict communities of color (e.g. despite making up just a third of the state’s population, 70% of the dead in Louisiana have been African American; in Michigan the numbe…
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Noah v. Kitschy Jesus: A Tale of Two Movies
…le itself suggests that he might’ve been. I don’t think it’s because Aronofsky’s Noah has a mixture of admirable and flawed elements that he raises fundamentalist suspicions. It’s because he has a mixture of any kind at all. Progressive religion values complexity and nuance; traditional religion values simplicity. Noah’s character flaws, which make him interesting to progressives, hit sour notes for traditionalists— indeed, like blue notes corrupt…
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Why Conservatives Really Oppose Federal Aid for the ‘Undeserving’
…ollars in relief aid. It’s OK to give corporations access to unlimited and cheap money from the Federal Reserve. But it’s not OK to give normal people an extra $600 a week, people who are at the same time being coaxed by billionaires into going back to work even at the risk of death. It goes almost without saying that there’s more than a little connection between conservative economic ideology and conservative racial ideology. Part of the performa…
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Is the Satanic Temple Just an Elaborate Prank? 10 Questions for the Author of ‘Speak of the Devil’
…Most Americans claim to value tolerance and religious freedom. But talk is cheap, especially if you have never seriously thought about what these commitments might actually mean in a pluralistic society. I was disturbed to read some of TST’s Christian opponents openly renouncing religious freedom if it meant respecting the freedoms of Satanists. I also think TST is forcing the public to think more critically about what “religion” is. They are dire…
Read MoreWant a Slurpee with Your Birth Control?
…e?” It’s one of the bishops’ favorite arguments: that birth control is so cheap and so widely available that it isn’t even a question of whether the religious freedom of objecting organizations should be burdened by having to pay for it. The bishops have been claiming since 2012 that birth control is “ubiquitous and inexpensive” and anyone who wants it can get it without insurance coverage for $10 at Target. And as usual, bishops’ allies on the r…
Read MoreWith Methodist LGBTQ Vote and GOP Support for Trump, White Protestantism Has Hit Bottom
…ose reading of Scripture is cramped, at best. Seen in this context, it’s a cheap dodge for liberals within the UMC to blame churches and delegates from the Global South for the vote to retain (and even heighten) the denomination’s ban on all things queer. Yes, the UMC does have a much heavier Global South representation in its governance than any of the other “sisters”; fully 41% of the delegates in St. Louis represented churches outside of the Un…
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