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Jesus Has Left the Building: Celebrating the Next Reformation

By Donna Schaper

…eran or Presbyterian was. Now most people who still believe with a gracing Spirit don’t really care what they are in the first place. That applies unless you are the type of conservative Christian who has a theology of blame and shame or what I call “punishmentalism.” Then you still want to “get it right.” The mainlines are the old lines, and the evangelicals’ dogmatism will soon be there as well. Gratia always escapes religious tendrils and chain…

Sex, the Body, the World: It’s R. Crumb’s Bible Now

By Naomi Seidman

…ritual universe, in which the single word ru’akh means wind AND breath AND spirit, has been lost in the spiritualizing afterlife of the Bible. Crumb’s illustrations do not merely restore the physical dimension suppressed by theologizing abstraction, at their best they convey that there are no differences between these realms, as there is none between—in one of the more charged corollaries of the distinction between Earth and spirit—sex and love. M…

America’s Fat Tues Turns to Ash Wed: Imagine a Humility-Driven Recovery

By Peter Laarman

…ny, rather than the 70% it has been in the United States. For us a genuine spiritual revolution need not be a Teutonic killjoy revolution—a mere taking away of the goodies that people now enjoy. And in fact this revolution of the spirit will not succeed unless it actually expands the joys and satisfactions of everyday living to people who will no longer be seeking all of their joys and satisfactions from shopping. Shopping has infantilized us. A h…

The Christian Worldview Revealed by Sessions’ Use of Romans 13

By Susan B. Ridgely

…ames Dobson. Ralph Drollinger’s wife Danielle worked for Focus in the early 1990s and Dobson frequently promoted the couple’s new venture after its founding in 1996. The continued connection between the two groups is evident in Capitol Ministries’ support of corporal punishment as well as in the understanding of the relationship between the people and the government that Sessions learned in its lesson. Focus made its views on what constitutes a ri…

A Long History of Blaming the Jews

By Gordon Haber

…nberg’s discussion of the Renaissance—in his definition, the period between 1400 and 1600. But this discussion has little to do with the supposed rebirth of Western culture. Nirenberg highlights the ironic contradictions between the scarcity of Jews in Western Europe and the frequent allegations of Judaizing. Martin Luther accused his Papist opponents of “legalism,” “Pharisaism,” and of course, “Judaism”; the Papists, in turn, accused Luther of ge…

A Catholic’s Eulogy for the Harvard “Black Mass” Controversy

By Craig A. Ford Jr.

…he doing of good. But with respect to the black mass we have rejected that spirit and capitulated to a culture of abjection and hysteria. We heard the words “Satanist” and “black mass,” and quickly turned our eyes, ears, and hearts away from these people, assuring ourselves that we knew exactly what was going on, and that we wanted nothing to do with them. But what did we actually “know”? Much of the discussion in the Catholic world surrounding th…

The Sacred and the Dead: Truckin’ as a New American Pilgrimage

By Varun Soni

…igious moniker, the band members all have spoken in great detail about the spiritual foundations of the Grateful Dead universe. Reflecting upon the music and message of the 1960s, Garcia said, “For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part.” For Garcia, the Grateful Dead’s music could serve as a “signpost to a new consciousness” by challenging the listener to become “an understan…

A Writer’s Murder Raises Fears of Death-by-Decree

By Shalom Goldman

…ording to Kadivar, not based on authoritative Shia sources, but, rather, on 19th-century texts. In Kadivar’s opinion, Shia jurisprudence might support a fully democratic system of government. This book, published in 1999, led to Kadivar’s imprisonment for “spreading false information about the Islamic Republic and helping the enemies of the Islamic Revolution.” Kadivar was sentenced to 18 months in prison and served his sentence in Tehran’s notori…

Bachmann Weaves Own Salvation Story into Christian Nation Mythology

By Sarah Posner

…hool, God gave her a “life verse,” 2 Corinthians 3:17 (Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.) And she used that “life verse” to wrap her own salvation story into an Christian American exceptionalism narrative. Liberty, said Bachmann “is the great animating principle of this nation.” Jesus, she went on, “came to set the captives free.” That, she went on, “is the essence of the founding of this nation.” B…

Reports of the Black Church’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated: A Review of Walter Fluker’s Latest Book

By Joseph Winters

…panied by a passage from the proverbial frying pan to the fire of the Holy Spirit. Here Fluker plays on the ambivalence of fire in the context of black strivings. While it can refer to racialized violence and destruction (lynching, the burning of black churches), it also alludes to the experience of being overwhelmed, and consumed, by the Spirit. Fire here signifies passion and life. Fire is that energy that takes an individual beyond herself, ope…