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

By Ed Simon

…(obviously secular) images of snowflakes and reindeer, 2015’s version has replaced this festive decoration with a minimalist, crimson blood-red design. Supposedly this has enraged a portion of the Christian right, who view this decision as a rejection of 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 r…

An Open Letter to Black Clergy on the Disdain for Protest

By Rev. Osagyefo Sekou

…on black churches are a tried and true tactic of the enemies of black freedom. This violent strategy is based on the belief that our churches support black resistance against state violence. Even the most hardened young black activists mourned the bloodshed in a holy space that serves to help and hold an often-broken people. As an ordained clergyperson nurtured in the bosom of the black church, I am all too familiar with the way in which we tend…

Richard Dawkins’ Atheist Academy of Unguided Truth

By Paul Wallace

…God loves you because your priest told you so? And so on. These were not cheap shots. He was serious. He loved us, he loved his job, and his questions were troubling. Some students wept. At which point he would offer Kleenexes. It was in Fr. Cavanaugh’s class that I began to see that all true education is intensely personal. Dawkins’ distaste for an officially atheist academy may be mere iconoclasm. But maybe not. Maybe it’s closer to the truth…

Fear of a Catholic Ghetto

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…te the backstory there. Haley’s use of the phrase “Catholic ghetto” is not cheap hyperbole, if you consider the history of Catholics in the United States. The US Catholic hospital system grew up in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries; largely under the care of women’s religious orders, and largely to serve the poor. (Read about a few of the women who helped build Catholic health care.) The surrounding cultural landscape could be pr…

The Problem with Christian Gentlemen: A Short Goodbye to Ted Cruz, the “Mr. Pecksniff” of Presidential Politics

By Peter Laarman

…is rationalizing his decision to pimp out his younger daughter at a rather cheap dowry price to a rich but grotesquely uncouth suitor: All his life long he had been walking up and down the narrow ways and by-places, with a hook in one hand and a crook in the other, scraping all sorts of valuable odds and ends into his pouch. Now, there being a special Providence in the fall of a sparrow, it follows (so Mr. Pecksniff, and only such admirable men, w…

Religion Profs Critique PBS’ God Documentary, Call it Simplistic

By Matthew Avery Sutton

…narratives to a few clear points, we all use evidence selectively, we all repackage our original sources, and we all attempt to craft engaging narratives. In sum, those of us sitting comfortably in our cheap desk chairs in our sterile offices in the nation’s colleges and universities have no higher ground to stand on. While we all labor to maintain an appropriate level of nuance, complexity, and context in our work, there is no doubt that we coul…

RDBook: Apocalypse Without God

By Nathan Schneider

…igion who has been accused of not studying religion. Early on, he made his reputation with works on Kierkegaard and Hegel, and during the 1980s he helped to bring the ideas of Jacques Derrida into American theology and religious studies. Starting in the late 90s, though, Taylor ventured far afield with books on architecture, computer networks, economic markets, and even Las Vegas. In 2006, he released a book of photographs of animal skeletons in t…

Doubt v. Predator: A Vatican II Parable

By Gabriel Mckee

…redators for decades—is still in place. Sister Aloysius’s power within her domain is absolute, but the borders of that domain are unchanging. It’s tempting to view this story as a mystery—did Father Flynn abuse his student, or didn’t he?—but Shanley doesn’t want us to walk away with an answer. Father Flynn’s explanation is plausible enough, but his behavior is strange enough to hint that Sister Aloysius is right, and both characters are convincing…

Pop-Eye: Meat The Wrestler

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…ronofsky’s tale is disinvested of tacky teardrops falling from the sky and cheap-trick resurrections. The reason reviewers passed over the religious is not simply, I suspect, because of religious illiteracy, but because of the received wisdom of late-modern culture that continues to dwell on a body-soul dualism, with the soul in power, the body a mere marionette. Several of the religious review sites described Randy’s body in metaphorical terms: R…

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

By Shaul Magid

…to their rabbis and could conceivably move en masse. Second, they have the numbers that no other settler community has. If they decide to move back to Israel, the facts on the ground would change considerably. This does not bode well for the Settler Zionists. They know that one day, perhaps soon, there will be a peace agreement, and that agreement will include significant uprooting of facts on the ground. The more bodies living in the settlements…