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How Herbalife’s Gospel of Health and Wealth Fuels a Billion-Dollar Deception

By Michael Schulson

…world of prosperity gospel preachers, whose claims about the relationship between faith, donations to the church, and personal well-being strike many outsiders as a straightforward, money-motivated swindle. In the business of hope, there’s already very little overlap between the legal and the ethical—and, it seems, little clarity on where the legal marketing ends and the illegal stuff begins. What’s clear is that dreams are good business. It’s fi…

Country Trumpkins

By Daniel Schultz

…hcraft. The loathsome Glenn Grothman, who is about the most simpatico US House member Trump has, used to represent the area in the Wisconsin State Senate before he moved north to push a moderate Republican out of the 6th Congressional district. Trump’s people got what they wanted in West Bend: no interruptions and polite applause. The whole thing was weird. Beyond his evident confusion about where exactly he was speaking, Trump was on the Teleprom…

Hillary Clinton Feeds the Trolls

By Michael Schulson

…a vocal right-wing fringe movement (like Farage’s UKIP) that has limited access to political power than to have a quieter right-wing fringe movement that, by taking over a mainstream party, actually has a shot at national office. I suspect Clinton and her campaign made a good bet. Better to face things head on than to pretend they don’t exist, especially when so much is on the line. But the issue remains thorny. Faced with new, muscular expressio…

Maybe Trump Should Pray About His Problems With Religious Voters?

By Daniel Schultz

…s of all the other religious minorities, recognize a bad bet for religious freedom when they see one. They see how Trump treats Muslims, Mormons, and Hispanics, and they know his commitment to them is thinner than his actual hair. Anyway, you might say it’s only one state, but it’s also the one state with a sizable Jewish population and an uncertain outcome. There’s no way Trump is winning in New York or New Jersey, and if he doesn’t take the Jewi…

Lincoln, Clinton, and Trump: From Strategy to Spin to Straight-Up Bullshit

By Martin Jay

…nder certain circumstances, to trim the truth in the service of a higher cause. The difference between these two conceptions of Lincoln is revealing. By pausing to examine each of them, we may better understand the way mendacity normally functions in the political realm, and the ways in which, on some occasions, mendacity may violate the tacit rules that keep that system stable. Lincoln’s reputation as a person of absolute integrity has been a sta…

Are You There God? It’s Me, Donald: A President at Prayer

By Peter Laarman

…e crowds at the inauguration? What a flock, right? You had a great view, I bet, the original Eye in the Sky. Back me up, it was over a billion people. Huge. But I’m confused about this other line: “the quality of our lives is not defined by our material success but by our spiritual success.” I don’t get it. “Spiritual success”? Sounds like a dumb deal. Ewww…I don’t have money, I have my feeeelings… What do you think, Lord? What if I say that some…

Kirk Cameron Joins the Anti-Mormon Chorus
(Sort Of)

By Julie Ingersoll

…d the Mormon Church by uniting with Glenn Beck in the two events that were promoted as spiritual. Cameron, known also for his part on the television series Growing Pains and more recently nicknamed Banana-man (along with Ray Comfort) for the anti-evolution DVDs that became the source of tremendous internet humor, said he hadn’t actually been invited to be part of Divine Destiny. But he declined anyway: I had heard that there were plans to put me o…

The Theological Hijacking of Religious “Freedom”

By Timothy K. Snyder

…law is being used to legislate a vision of freedom that defines religious freedom as “freedom from.” Unlike the early American Baptists, who faced serious persecution, these advocates seek to use the law to protect their vision of worship in the workplace as a purity ritual. It is a vision of religious expression free from interference in the form of difference, free from the conflicting demands of our common lives, and free from any obligation t…

It’s the Theology, Stupid: Why the Shocking SBC Report is Anything But Surprising

By Chrissy Stroop and Jessica Johnson

…exual abuse in SBC churches, notes that “senior SBC leaders appeared to excuse abuse and/or support accused abusers… while at the same time survivors were ignored or treated poorly.” To put it mildly, we were not surprised. Nearly four years ago to the day, an RD headline read: “SBC’s #MeToo Problem isn’t a Rotten Apple, It’s a Rotten Tree.” In addition to its handling of individual cases, the report is also highly critical of the SBC Executive Co…

Why South Korea (and the US) Use Amusement Parks to Push Creationism

By Andrew Aghapour

…hen Gallup first asked the question. Gallup has polled Americans to choose between these three options 11 times since 1982, and this year’s poll does not significantly diverge from the 30-year average. Gallup also reports some unsurprising relationships between creationist views and religious affiliation, education levels, and political views. Creationism is strongly correlated with church attendance (two-thirds of weekly churchgoers subscribe to…