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The ‘Jezebel Spirit’ Isn’t (Just) Bible-Based Misogyny, it’s a Literal Demon — So What Happens When They ‘Stop Tolerating’ It?

Most people, to the extent that they heard about it at all, probably interpreted the connection between Jezebel and Kamala Harris made by conservative Christians as more or less an expression of sexism and racism filtered through a biblical lens. When the idea of “The Jezebel Spirit” is invoked, it tends not to be fully unpacked, instead becoming a part of the (admittedly, rich) tapestry of prejudice that Jezebel represents. But for those who agr…

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Trump’s Fervent Christian Zionists Poised to Lead the Military — And US-Israel Relations

…there’s Pete Hegseth, whose 2020 book, American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free, Jeff Sharlet wrote about this week. Nominated to lead the world’s most powerful military, the 44-year-old Fox News host served as a National Guard officer in Iraq and Afghanistan and served at Guantanamo Bay, the detention operation known for its flagrant human rights violations whose expansion he’s called for. Hegseth’s severe lack of qualifications for the Defense S…

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Loyalty and Chaos Play a Role in Trump’s Nominations, But This Schoolyard Tactic May Provide a Better Explanation

Thus far much of the commentary about Trump’s cabinet and staff picks alternates between “He values loyalty above all else” and “He wants to generate chaos and break the federal government.” There’s significant truth in both statements. However, a more fundamental psycho-social program appears to be at work in Trump’s nomination of people like Matt Gaetz for Attorney General and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services—as…

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Already Beatified by the Right for Surviving an Assassination Attempt, Must We All Pray for Donald Trump?

I had some finessing to do on Sunday. I filled in for a colleague the morning after the attempt on former president Donald Trump’s life, you see. Just about everyone in the congregation had heard about it by that point, and they expected me to say something about it. But what? My denomination may have a progressive reputation but that’s not always the case, and in our neck of the woods it can be difficult to parse just how not-the-case a given co…

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Rising Influence of New Apostolic Reformation Teachings is Ominous Sign For the US — Especially For LGBTQ Students

…eaches that the separation of church and state is itself unconstitutional) promote the notion that affirmation of LGBTQ identities leads to national weakness. In addition to warning that public schools are grooming children into an “LGBTQ lifestyle,” they’ve worked with the Alliance Defending Freedom on anti-LGBTQ legislation. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of the institutionally subtle but politically powerful influence exerted by the NA…

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Election Reporters: Here’s Why Simply Descriptors Like ‘Christians’ Can Have Enormous Consequences

Here at Religion Dispatches, we have an informal policy that “religion is as religion does.” Which is to say, we don’t try to adjudicate who is, for example, a “real Christian” and who’s not. If you label your beliefs and practices as “Christian,” and those beliefs are shared by a reasonable number of people, that’s the label we use. It’s not a perfect rule, but then heuristics are only ever meant to work well enough. I was reminded of this rule…

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Attacks on Tim Walz’s Lutheran Denomination are Undermined by Reality — I Mean, Is ELCA Even Exciting Enough for Controversy?

…tor-in-Chief of The Federalist, a right-wing publication with a history of promoting false information about the 2020 election, Covid-19, and climate change, showed no such restraint, proclaiming on Twitter: As a confessional Lutheran, I’m getting a lot of questions about Tim Walz possibly being Lutheran. FWIW, Walz is ELCA, an extremely left-wing sub-denomination. You may be familiar with the ELCA due to some of their congregations using the “spa…

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Church Attendance is (Once Again) Correlated with Authoritarianism — So Why Do We Refuse to Acknowledge It?

Since 2016, I have been arguing here at RD that former president Donald Trump’s politics, and his appeal to White evangelical Christians, are best explained through the lens of authoritarianism. Pundits initially scratched their heads for entirely too long over how evangelicals could purport to follow Jesus and support Trump. The answer was always easy; he promised to do, and then did, what they wanted, which any disaffiliated former Christian sc…

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Nikki Haley’s Slavery Omission Typifies the GOP’s Tragic Pact with White Supremacy

…is about freedom. That’s what that was all about. It was about individual freedom, it was about economic freedom, it was about individual rights. This is, of course, the very “States’ Rights” rhetoric that sparked outrage in the first place. And the follow-up to every claim that the Civil War was about “individual rights” and “economic freedom” has to be followed up with the questions: “individual rights to what? economic freedom to do what exact…

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Jewish Studies Is a Free-Speech Zone, and It Needs to Stay That Way

…ing Jewish life on college campuses. While I was aware of their efforts to promote certain discourses and to curtail others, I largely left them alone. This was perhaps made easier on my campus because Hillel does not really bring in speakers—on top of the fact that I have the privilege to teach some of the brightest students I have ever encountered. Many of my Jewish students here are searchers, trying to make sense of their religion and to make…

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