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Fear, Guns, and the (Unwinnable) War Against Death: A Letter to My Fellow Americans

By Beatrice Marovich

…elate to. We’ve lost the ability to help weave them back together. This American life, where democracy apparently means that everyone can own their own weapon of mass destruction, is one place where it feels like double death itself is doubling. We are unequipped—socially, politically, intellectually, psychologically, spiritually—to cope with death on this scale. I believe that one of the reasons why we’re so unequipped to do this is because so ma…

As a Queer Catholic Woman I Had High Hopes Before the 2023 Catholic Synod on Synodality

By Emma Cieslik

…ity, also ask to be heard and accompanied.” Once more the door that’s historically been closed to LGBTQ individuals and women was shut in my face. As I had done many times before, I opened myself up to the possibility that Pope Francis’s acknowledgement and inclusion of LGBTQ Catholics would lead to Church action. I had faith in this Synod, just like I did the Synod on Young People in 2018 whose final report also omitted the term “LGBT.” Each time…

Why Antisemitism is an Insufficient (and Risky) Explanation for Hamas’s October 7 Attack on Israel

By Shane Burley

…riod of violence, bigotry or persecution of Jews has such a different historical context that it’s nearly impossible to identify a unified, coherent, and transhistorical phenomenon. This isn’t to say that the various episodes of anti-Jewish persecution weren’t ghastly, only that Jews have been persecuted for so many conflicting geopolitical, ideological, and xenophobic reasons, it’s nearly impossible to label every single instance as holding some…

Alabama’s IVF Ruling Reveals Deep Ties to This Increasingly Influential Christian Right Movement

By Annika Brockschmidt

…uality—71% of Americans support it. They want to outlaw abortion—85% of Americans think it should be legal. They want a nation of Christians like them—73% of Americans are more welcoming of religious pluralism. They’d almost certainly like to ban contraception, too, but something like 91% of Americans are in favor of it, right? Their benighted ideas and ideology are wildly unpopular, so they need an anti-democratic institution to impose it on ever…

Where’s Wallnau? A NAR Apostle Takes Aim at Swing Counties in ‘The Battle for the Mountain of Government’

By Frederick Clarkson

…gence apps” including As One America, which contains the name, address and phone number of Christian neighbors “who are not showing up to vote or who are not registered.” He then showed a map with big red arrows pointing to precincts “within striking distance” from Vida Church to the precincts that are “where the devil’s got a stronghold that God wants to break up.” The app was developed by Superfeed Technologies, which has also designed apps for…

The ‘Unified Reich’ Scandal is a Feature Not a Bug of Trump’s Brand of American Fascism

By Annika Brockschmidt

…oing to look you in the eyes and I’m gonna tell you the future. It’s an American story, and that’s why Americans are gonna love it. People are going to build you up, and, God, are they going to, because when you’re great and new, we love you. Man, we’ll build you up into something that doesn’t even exist. You’re going to change the world. But you know what? Once they’ve built you as high as they possibly can, they’re gonna tear you back down—it’s…

First it Was an Insurrection Flag, Now Supreme Court Justice Alito is Caught Flying Another Far-Right Flag — An ‘Emblem for an Extensive Spiritual Warfare Campaign’

By Annika Brockschmidt

…aven” flag, originally from the Revolutionary War era, is no ordinary historical flag. It’s been claimed by the most extreme right-wing Christian nationalists of the New Apostolic Reformation. They write: [It was] adopted by Dutch Sheets, a Wagner disciple and a famous apostle in his own right, in 2013. Sheets claimed that this Colonial American military flag was a prophetic symbol of the Third Great Awakening that would arrive as soon as Christia…

Does the Science Show that Spirituality Will Benefit Your Child?

By Michael Schulson

…don’t involve Miller’s own research, and, despite the dubious sourcing, a number of Miller’s claims are persuasive. There is evidence—much of it from Miller’s own, peer-reviewed work—that self-reported spiritual experience lowers the risk for substance abuse, depression, and unprotected sex among adolescents. There’s also plenty of evidence that adolescents can use spiritual experiences and techniques to navigate emerging adulthood, a process Mil…

Culture Wars Masquerading as Social Science: New Survey Illustrates Evangelicals’ Election Year Anxieties

By Chrissy Stroop

…crucial to understand that for the vast majority of white evangelicals—America’s most loyal pro-Trump demographic—there is no clear line between doctrine and politics. Indeed, many evangelicals maintain, as ardently as any stereotypical Marxist your imagination can conjure, that the “correct” worldview and “correct” politics are inextricably intertwined. The arch-Calvinist Ligonier Ministries’ “analysis” of its State of Theology Survey is one of…

The Forgotten Nones: The High Cost of Fleeing Fundamentalist Religion

By Andreea Nica

…ntacting them and not a single one of them has reached out to me either by phone or Facebook to see how I am. There were a good 5 people in that friend group that I thought I was very close to, but since I stopped attending Church events, none of them have contacted me though I know they are all still involved in the Church. Heather describes her coming out as a nonbeliever to family as “difficult and still a work-in-progress” and further explains…