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Is the Satanic Temple Just an Elaborate Prank? 10 Questions for the Author of ‘Speak of the Devil’

By Joseph Laycock

…d writing on The Satanic Temple for Religion Dispatches back in 2013. What most fascinated me about them was that they were taking hypothetical scenarios that had long existed in policy debates such as, “What if Satanists wanted to lead prayer in public school?” and then they were actually doing them. It reminded me of the George Bernard Shaw quote that, “All progress depends on the unreasonable man.” As I continued to study TST, I realized this w…

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

By Ed Simon

…attempt to regulate Christmas, where, as scholars like Eamon Duffy have demonstrated, the Reformation was hardly as seamless or as popular as triumphalist Protestant historiography has often portrayed it. During the thirteen years that Christmas was replaced with a day of fasting by Parliamentary order there was fierce resistance among the populace. Celebrations were restored in 1660 with the Stuart Restoration, but the animus towards the holiday…

Sarah Palin and the Politics of Victimization

By Randall Balmer

…ra, whose name does not appear on the cover but whom Palin thanks for her “most important work on America by Heart.” This would not be the first time that a politician has collaborated with a ghostwriter, of course, so that’s not the point. But are we really supposed to believe that, amid her self-professed busy schedule, Sarah Palin spends her copious free time perusing Alexis de Tocqueville, J. Hector St. John Crèvecoeur, Abigail Adams’ correspo…

The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right

By Frederick Clarkson

…emen. He was raised in Idaho, where the fervent factions of the far right (most notably the John Birch Society) were fashionable and intersected the lives of friends, family, and neighbors. The ideas in this book were developed in an influential series of essays at his blog Orcinus (Neiwert is also managing editor of Crooks & Liars where these issues are often discussed as well). Neiwert stresses that eliminationist rhetoric “always depicts its op…

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

By Andrew Aghapour

…ience is often treated as an absolutist metaphysics? Well, absolutism is almo*]}*st always a mild term of abuse. Nobody champions absolutism. Whenever anybody is called an absolutist it’s usually meant in criticism. And yet you don’t hear a certified public accountant accused of being absolutist about the bottom line in the books of a corporation. Those are taken as facts, and we have to take the facts seriously, and we don’t wave our hands and go all…

Springtime for Ross Douthat?

By Daniel Schultz

…too fast, and supporting Mutually Assured Destruction and the Vietnam War. Most people these days look to Juergen Moltmann (even he’s kind of old-school by 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 a…

Is Torture Utilitarian?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ed concerns (in other words: to stay out of trouble). But far and away the most bizarre attempt to justify waterboarding in the memo-trail was presented in the first, dated August 1, 2002. Throughout the analysis, the lawyers had been careful to discuss both the physical and the mental implications of extreme interrogation techniques. But with waterboarding, they changed course. “Pain and suffering,” they concluded, “is best understood as a single…

The End (of Religion) is Near, Scientists Say

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…Republic. The mathematicians seem far more surprised by these numbers than most religionists would be. The first and most obvious reason involves an important distinction that when you shift the language away from “God” or “religion” and turn to conceptions of “sacrality” or “the sacred,”’ whole new worlds of meaning and meaningful activity bubble to the surface. Lost in the debate is the large and growing number of thoughtful people who self-iden…

To Be Queer, Gifted, and Black: A Conversation with Theologian Pamela Lightsey

By Nyasha Junior

…ell. I’m thinking especially about Traci Blackmon, who was in Ferguson and St. Louis. I’m also thinking about Willis Johnson and Starsky Wilson who were also in that area. These clergy have been integral parts of Black Lives Matter and integral parts of the protest against militarized police and excessive police force against citizens in the Ferguson area. There are other clergy nationally who have been involved, and I think that needs to continue…

Who Is “Sam Bacile?”

By Sarah Posner

…: Klein told me that Bacile, the producer of the film, is not Israeli, and most likely not Jewish, as has been reported, and that the name is, in fact, a pseudonym. He said he did not know “Bacile”‘s real name. He said Bacile contacted him because he leads anti-Islam protests outside of mosques and schools, and because, he said, he is a Vietnam veteran and an expert on uncovering al Qaeda cells in California. “After 9/11 I went out to look for ter…