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Noah v. Kitschy Jesus: A Tale of Two Movies

By Jay Michaelson

…people don’t do that. And of course, Jesus can’t be tempted by sins of the flesh—even though the Bible itself suggests that he might’ve been. I don’t think it’s because Aronofsky’s Noah has a mixture of admirable and flawed elements that he raises fundamentalist suspicions. It’s because he has a mixture of any kind at all. Progressive religion values complexity and nuance; traditional religion values simplicity. Noah’s character flaws, which make…

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

By Ed Simon

…ed up small, grande, and venti cups with (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 evidenc…

Want a Slurpee with Your Birth Control?

By Patricia Miller

…e?” It’s one of the bishops’ favorite arguments: that birth control is so cheap and so widely available that it isn’t even a question of whether the religious freedom of objecting organizations should be burdened by having to pay for it. The bishops have been claiming since 2012 that birth control is “ubiquitous and inexpensive” and anyone who wants it can get it without insurance coverage for $10 at Target. And as usual, bishops’ allies on the r…

Churches Can No Longer Hide the Truth: Daniel Dennett on the New Transparency

By Andrew Aghapour

…lly – or I would say more – awe-inspiring discoveries of science. Gods and flaming chariots are nothing, they’re cheap comic book fare, compared to what we actually have learned about stars and galaxies and the like. I think that there’s a sort of mirror image, an opposite of scientism, which has a real tin ear for the breathtaking awesomeness of science. All you have to do is listen to David Attenborough or Carl Sagan or other brilliant expositor…

Lindsey Graham’s Lying “Eye-ranians”

By Haroon Moghul

…rd is a real American, because Bill Gates is American. Those of you using iPhones, by the way, are probably Iranians and should be detained or deported. Because Steve Jobs was part Syrian, and Syria is part Iranian, which means your iPhone auto-correct is lying to you. Come to think of it, how do we know Lindsey Graham is not lying to us? How do we know Lindsey Graham’s not an Iranian? What if he’s the Manchurian—or should I say Mazandaranian!—can…

Dylann Roof Was Wrong: The Race War Isn’t Coming, It’s Here

By Willie James Jennings

…I can fathom this grace of forgiveness offered is if the very life of God flows through people like these black families. It does. But I also struggle with the way this word of forgiveness is interpreted in America. It’s used to avoid dealing with the problem of whiteness and the poison-filled faith in competition embedded in it. Christian forgiveness when processed on the American social and political landscape emerges as a kind of rhetorical na…

The Moral Bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Asceticism

By Vlad Chituc

…museums because we all use solar cells and drink Soylent and have our clothes shipped to us (efficiently) by drone. But who will exist on the fringes? Rhinehart’s vision would have us invert the “haves” and the “have-nots,” letting the rich live lightly by offloading the messy business of consuming and owning to the poor. The solution to our problems isn’t to wildly deregulate and make transient consumption so cheap that the rich are no longer bu…

SoulCycle Looks to Sell its Soul

By Michael Schulson

…mic and the spiritual, and the legalistic and the New Age, with a seamless fluency. On a page of the S-1 form that discusses “the lifelong quest for meaning, wellness, and personal growth,” we also learn that this lifelong quest has had a happy outcome, namely an “increased Adjusted EBITDA from $11.2 million in 2012 to $35.7 million in 2014, representing a CAGR of 78% and an Adjusted EBITDA Margin of 32% in 2014.” Is SoulCycle in “the business of…

Springtime for Ross Douthat?

By Daniel Schultz

…y now), Gustavo Gutierrez, Marcus Borg, James Cone, Sallie McFague, or any number of other thinkers and theologians that Douthat does not recognize. The only people who want to bring back Niebuhr are conservatives. (I’m an admitted fanboy, but that’s about coming from the same church background as Niebuhr as much as anything.) And that doesn’t even get to the worst of it. Douthat misunderstands Francis’ amazing, charismatic realignment of Catholic…

When Being “Christian” Means Supporting Trump: An Argument For Hiding Your Faith

By Jonathan Malesic

…on the First Things podcast from October 7, regardless of Trump’s profound flaws, “I do think it’s important to support someone who is at least willing to admit that we have really serious problems in our country.” If that were all Trump were willing to do, then he would be a much better candidate than he is. But of course Trump would actually try to fix the problems he thinks we have, and he would suddenly have nuclear weapons in his toolbox. Amo…