Offers 1 800-299-7264 Cheap Flights to Key West – American Airlines | Search Results | Religion Dispatches

‘Cult’ Is an Inaccurate, Unhelpful and Dangerous Label for Followers of Trump, QAnon, and 1/6

By Catherine Wessinger

…nuary 6 insurrection is better understood as being a continuation of a Euro-American Nativist Millennial Movement, which has existed since the twentieth century and whose believers have been anticipating a revolution against the federal government for decades. Participants’ aim is to set up a collective salvation on earth for white people who regard themselves as the true “natives” of the land that is now the United States. In the 1990s, participa…

Reading Racism: In Confronting White Christian Fragility ‘Feeling’ is as Important as Ideas

By SueJeanne Koh

…political belonging. It’s to point precisely to reading the stories of non-white, non-Christians as a necessary decentering of Christianity as part of deconstructing whiteness. Joshi’s book points to how the secular, political project of belonging isn’t about denying religious differences or disavowing our complicity with racism and religious intolerance. The work of anti-racism includes collective and individual confession of anti-blackness; it…

The Sacred and the Dead: Three Ways to American Beauty

By Aaron K. Kerr

…cle.” And to my mind the most illuminating expression of this is the tongue-in-cheek “U.S. Blues” in which Uncle Sam joyfully explains his audacious and deceptive allure. Such duplicity is emboldened through the art of seduction. A candyman is a seducer, and the song on American Beauty is very clear about this. One might compare Sammy Davis Jr.’s 1972 hit “Candyman” with the Dead’s version. Davis’ take is all sweetness and light and morally uprigh…

What is Juneteenth to America? It Has to Be More Than ‘Black 4th of July’ if It’s to Be Truly Meaningful

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…ivil religion that both lift up is, for African Americans, a mythic and not-yet-realized version. The core American values they extol have been inaccessible to African Americans, and national rites and rituals such as the Fourth of July are annual reminders that the ancestors of African Americans remained in bondage as the country declared its independence based on the lofty ideals of human freedom. It was Frederick Douglass who once queried “What…

A Portrait of Islamophobia?

By Mariam Durrani

…ing and Malik’s headshot. Linda Sarsour, the executive director of the Arab-American Association in New York, sharply critiqued the cover on the Melissa Harris-Perry show, noting that “These are things that all Muslims have in their house. There’s nothing about that that tells you a story about what terrorism looks like. So you’re telling me that when my friends who are not Muslim come into my home and see a Koran and see frames on the wall with a…

John McCain: No God But Country

By Kathryn Lofton

…discovery that celebrities are “just like US!” Even within this din of come-to-Jesus moments, McCain’s story is discordant, failing to supply some of the basic ingredients for a ritual confession of faith. It includes no mention of God (or Christ) as an actor in his life or even in that dirt-drawn moment. There are no searching first-person studies of his character, expelling moment of personal sin revealed, revelled, and renunciated. His reading…

The Scandal of the Cross

By Jeremy Biles

…n recalling the gruesome physical tortures afflicted on the vulnerable, all-too-human body of Jesus in the crucifixion. Though the scandal of the cross is often evoked in theologies of atonement, in the present context, the scandal refers more to fragmentation—both literal and metaphorical—than to at-one-ment; the Piss Christ on display in Avignon is a smashed stumbling block to any univocal interpretation. Like the sacred itself—at once holy and…

Cozy Cottage or House on Fire? Thomas Kinkade’s Theo-Aesthetic Legacy

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…ntrary, Kinkade, who grew up near Yosemite, shows a natural landscape, but offers places of rest for the nature-weary: gazebos, village chapels, cozy cottages. While Cole’s and Bierstadt’s nature could kill a man, Kinkade allows a world that invites its viewers into the space. As seen in his own version of Yosemite Valley (above), the mountains are instruments of God’s creative powers. Kinkade became especially popular by creating scenes that are…

Progressive Christians: Don’t Look to the Bible For Abortion Rights Arguments — Women’s Autonomy is Not a Biblical Value

By Rhiannon Graybill and Jill Hicks-Keeton

…again directed toward supporting the interests of men. Take Simon’s mother-in-law, for example (Mark 1:29-31), or the woman with a flow of blood (Mark 5:25-34). Jesus accepts service from women without fundamentally changing their status in a patriarchal social order (e.g., Mark 14:3-9; 15:40). In the gospel of John (7:53-8:11), Jesus saves an “adulteress” from being stoned, all the while working with and extending the patriarchal constructs that…

Who Killed Mars Hill Church? There’s One Suspect Evangelicals Simply Aren’t Prepared to Interrogate

By Cavan Concannon

…usbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.” (1 Cor 14:34-35 NRSV) And: “Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, wit…