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With Methodist LGBTQ Vote and GOP Support for Trump, White Protestantism Has Hit Bottom

By Peter Laarman

…ose reading of Scripture is cramped, at best. Seen in this context, it’s a cheap dodge for liberals within the UMC to blame churches and delegates from the Global South for the vote to retain (and even heighten) the denomination’s ban on all things queer. Yes, the UMC does have a much heavier Global South representation in its governance than any of the other “sisters”; fully 41% of the delegates in St. Louis represented churches outside of the Un…

In a Time of Irrational Fear and New Media: The Deadly ‘Dance Plague’ at 500

By Ed Simon

…ic well-being of your fellow citizens? At a time when a disturbingly large number of people believe in the “QAnon” conspiracy; when “pizzagate” inspired a gunman to raid a pizzeria; where “flat-Earthers” have a growing fan-base; or where people ingest Tide Pods; can we really argue that these aren’t as foolish a bit of mass hysteria as dancing oneself to death? Scottish journalist Charles Mackay contends in his 1841 classic, Extraordinary Popular…

Must We Burn Something to Get Attention?: 50 Years After the Catonsville Nine

By Jason C. Bivins

…e Americans with disabilities being hauled off by Capitol cops, and to the numberless people standing against legal authority that suspects them for the crime of simply being black or Muslim or queer? If we think about Catonsville not just as a curiosity, a minor episode in the history of radical chic, but as a provocation or a template, what do we learn? Must Americans burn something to get attention? Must religious protesters be arrested? Many c…

Must We Burn Something to Get Attention?: 50 Years After the Catonsville Nine

By Jason C. Bivins

…e Americans with disabilities being hauled off by Capitol cops, and to the numberless people standing against legal authority that suspects them for the crime of simply being black or Muslim or queer? If we think about Catonsville not just as a curiosity, a minor episode in the history of radical chic, but as a provocation or a template, what do we learn? Must Americans burn something to get attention? Must religious protesters be arrested? Many c…

Trump’s Easter Egg Roll: Inauthentic Christianity in a Bunny Suit

By Karen E. Park

…r the children of atheist lesbian couples are simply not welcome here. The cheap paperback Easter stories read by Sanders and Conway—no doubt ordered the day before from Amazon Prime—had nothing to do with teaching, or welcoming, or even celebrating a Christian holiday (inappropriate as that itself would have been at a White House event). As this administration did with its craven and phony defense of “Merry Christmas” as if it were an endangered…

Noah v. Kitschy Jesus: A Tale of Two Movies

By Jay Michaelson

…an’t quite pinpoint what all of these had in common, except that they were cheap, over-simplified, and kitschy. And thanks to Walter Benjamin, Clement Greenberg, the Frankfurt School, and a legion of writers and musicians allergic to the cliché, I came to reject kitsch and its quasi-fascistic associations. Feel this way, think this way, act this way—no! It took another several years before I really understood that some people, perhaps most people,…

Just Like January 6, One of the Most Disturbing Aspects of the Right-Wing Coup Attempt in Germany is Who Was Behind It

By Annika Brockschmidt

…tails ties to the Reichsbürger milieu. Experts attribute the stark rise in numbers to a heightened awareness and the agencies’ attempts to reduce the number of unreported cases. The conservative Minister of the interior of the previous Merkel administration, Horst Seehofer, had always refused to conduct a study of right-wing sentiments in the police and military, in spite of the warnings of social scientists who urged him to commission one. For ye…

A Startling Number Believe You Can Be Jewish Jesus Follower; Why It’s Not As Crazy As It Sounds

By Michael Schulson

…that number seems staggeringly high. A full third? Once you delve into the numbers, though, 34% doesn’t seem quite so high. Really, Pew has asked an excellent question—a question that reveals the full tangle of ambiguities and inconsistencies that surround the topic of Jewish identity. First, some background: when the researchers at Pew set out to conduct this survey, they quickly ran into a problem that’s been under discussion for at least two th…

Why are Nuns and Monks in the Streets? (Parts I & II)

By José Cabezón

…he early afternoon, cameras in hand. It is not uncommon for tourists to outnumber monks in the debate courtyards during this time. This is obviously disruptive, making a spectacle out of a serious educational pursuit. Monastic response to the Chinese government policy of limiting monastic enrollments is at least in part the result of a clash between the secular, materialist, security-concerned worldview of the Chinese state, and the religious, tra…

Dirty Money in the Appalachian Church: Six Years After Deadly Coal Mine Disaster, Where Are We Now?

By Michael J. Iafrate

…statement on the issue of fracking, which is also affecting an increasing number of communities in the state, it has not publicized it widely either. The same reluctance to speak loudly and clearly can be seen in the Diocese’s response to worker justice issues. In 2013, during the Fairness at Patriot campaign, when church officials were asked why the bishop was not saying anything publicly in defense of the miners whose pensions and insurance wer…