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

By Ed Simon

…spiracy; 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 Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, that during times of social disarray we “find that whole communities … become sim…

After Orlando: Love Wins, But When?

By Daniel Schultz

…outhern France, which contains ancient, astonishing paintings discovered in 1994. They are filled with wonder, color, raw power, more life-like than life. But here’s the thing: scientists say rockfall closed the cave to the outside ages ago. Chauvet and its contents went unseen for 28,000 years while the world continued around it, summer to winter and back, a million griefs and more ignored in all that time. The hope of the dead feels like that so…

Holding Out for a Hero: New ID Book Aims to Save You From Despair of Evolution

By Kriti Sharma

…ur own fear and pain and get you home safely. Despite Axe’s passionate call-to-action, heroes are actually not badly needed. But friends are. Good friends don’t need to be particularly heroic, pious, smart, strong, or good. They’re not free of fear or uncertainty. Rather, they’re just attentive enough to their own fears and uncertainties to support others who are facing the same. Unlike the savior-evangelist, the good friend trusts you to be able…

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

By Jonathan Malesic

…t in my 2009 book, Secret Faith in the Public Square. In it, I argued that American Christians were selling out their religious identity for cheap political gain, and that they could help ensure their religious integrity if they took that identity off the market altogether by concealing it in public life. This approach would take seriously Jesus’ advice to pray in secret and to give alms without letting “your left hand know what your right hand is…

Can I Get Some Birth Control Pills With That Slushie?: Unpacking the Contraceptive Mandate Rollback

By Sunnivie Brydum

…oundation, birth control comprises between 30 and 44 percent of women’s out-of-pocket health care spending. For marginalized groups, the impact is likely to be especially severe because funding for the contraceptive safety-net provider, Planned Parenthood, is also under attack. But the biggest effect is likely to be felt on access to the “LARCs” (long-acting reversible contraceptives) like IUDs and implants, since they are the most expensive. The…

First Things First: Sexual Equality Just Is

By Kate Blanchard

…rence to same-sex couples, since they wouldn’t fit into his complementarity-of-the-sexes model in which “we long for what is missing in ourselves.” But despite their sex acts being supposedly “self-referential,” gay men may be having more sex than average, while studies among lesbians suggest that men just aren’t that good at satisfying women sexually. June Cleaver might have let Ward have his way with her, but today’s women may not feel obligated…

“Giving Godhead”: A Bloody Vision of Religion’s Deepest Influence

By Spencer Dew

…archment tastes just like the honey of that many-mansioned heaven in the by-and-by sky. Krieger shows us the bodily as both central to and taboo within that tradition. Something two-faced lurks, these poems suggest, in the way we cry out the word God when we writhe like the damned in hot pits, or how we think of transcending death through the petites morts we tremor through. Our bodies offer both rough bondage and temporary redemption—blood and vi…

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

By Karen E. Park

…Christian” message to the lucky lottery winners, all of them children under 12. During his stunningly awkward address to the children from the Truman Balcony, the president managed to create both a bizarre visual tableau and a transcript that rivaled his cringeworthy speech to the Boy Scouts. Flanked by the miserable-looking First Lady and the comically aghast Easter Bunny, Trump spoke to the children about the booming economy and the “$700 billio…

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

By Jason C. Bivins

…e emulated, necessarily, but because it underscores how urgently religious Americans need to challenge the public power of America’s corporate Christianity. When Sam Brownback and Tony Perkins (whose organization is classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group) are affiliated with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, when Robert Jeffress is the poisonous voice sanctifying the American embassy’s relocation in Isr…

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

By Jason C. Bivins

…e emulated, necessarily, but because it underscores how urgently religious Americans need to challenge the public power of America’s corporate Christianity. When Sam Brownback and Tony Perkins (whose organization is classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group) are affiliated with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, when Robert Jeffress is the poisonous voice sanctifying the American embassy’s relocation in Isr…