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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

…ation about religious freedom and religion itself. I see TST as testing America on the values we profess. Most Americans claim to value tolerance and religious freedom. But talk is cheap, especially if you have never seriously thought about what these commitments might actually mean in a pluralistic society. I was disturbed to read some of TST’s Christian opponents openly renouncing religious freedom if it meant respecting the freedoms of Satanist…

“Hey You! Anti-Semite!”: A Jewish Krewe does Mardi Gras

By Barbra Barnett

…objects of jest. This approach is analogous to that of the traditionally African-American Krewe of Zulu. Scholars of American Jewish humor often draw parallels with traditions of African-American humor, and the comparison between Krewe du Jieux and the Krewe of Zulu is an easy one. Zulu has a longer and deeper history in the city, originating in a social aid and pleasure club, which is a form of social service organization that emerged to serve th…

Sarah Palin and the Politics of Victimization

By Randall Balmer

…he Democratic Party as the “Democrat” Party. But Going Rogue was not unpleasant. The second book in the Sarah Palin œuvre, however, America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag, crosses the line from cute puppy bouncing on his back legs to mangy cur relentlessly humping a visitor’s leg. By all accounts—and especially Palin’s own account—the former governor of Alaska is a busy person these days, appearing regularly on Fox News, starring…

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

By Andrew Aghapour

…growth in world Muslim populations will increase not only in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but also in North America. Their demographic study validates your prediction that there will be more religious switching within Western culture from Christianity to non-affiliation. But the percentage of unaffiliated believers will actually go down as a percentage of the global population. But of course that’s a projection, and it’s based on the an…

Springtime for Ross Douthat?

By Daniel Schultz

…ernaturalist”— as though its message of redemption and liberation of the African-American community has nothing to do with it. And then there’s the bit about “religious liberalism’s urge to follow secular liberalism in embracing the sexual revolution and all its works.” Cute. I wonder if a Times columnist might not want to consider the use of statistics in his work, like this one: 99% of all American women who have had sex have used some form of b…

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

By Ed Simon

…re their intellectual ancestors, but this is willfully misreading the historical record as surely as creationists misread biological evidence. Contemporary American fundamentalism, from its pre-millennial dispensationalist eschatology to its free-market economic ideology is at odds with the actual ideology of American Puritanism. The reductionist ‘culture wars’ obscure the nuances of history and culture, while failing to recognize the full complex…

Seeking Broad Appeal to US Christians, ‘God & Country: The Rise of Christian Nationalism’ Glosses Over Critical Context

By Chrissy Stroop

…evangelical David French—no friend to LGBTQ and especially transgender Americans—lamentinghow “partisan” Christians have become. The film then cuts to an interview with Bishop William J. Barber II, who says: There’s no way you can look at Jesus and the gospel and put him on the side of greed, on the side of injustice, on the side of wrong. And oftentimes what you end up with is people who are so loud about what God says so little about, and so qu…

Turn on the News: Some Abortion Opponents May Opt For a New Vaccine, But Behind Their Skepticism it’s Often a Different Story — of Disinformation, Conspiratorial Thinking, and White Nationalism

By Daniel Schultz

…a disruption of a natural order given by God or gods. Appeals to Native American spirituality and “nature” were raised (even though actual Native American communities had one of the highest vaccination acceptance rates in the country). There were many conspiracy theories with this fantastic quality, some of which came close to medieval blood libels: that unborn babies had been aborted for use in the vaccine, or that contamination of one’s blood (o…

How To Control Your Ungodly Urges… On a Budget!

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ight want to be sitting down, because I’m about to describe a kind of rhetorical genius so intense the words might singe your retinas with their brilliance. (pauses while the readership of RD collectively finds their protective eyewear) Some on the right wing (leading lights like Rush Limbaugh, for example) responded with the unprecedented, totally creative, really-takes-an-intelligent-person-to-come-up-with-it tactic of calling Fluke, and her fri…

The Same Toxic Christian Right Theology Supports Both the Online Bullying I Experienced and the Cruel Anti-Trans Policy in TX — And it’s Not Remotely Fringe

By Chrissy Stroop

…ons that target loving parents of trans children, thereby raising a metaphorical middle finger to both fundamental human decency and the medical consensus. Both the rhetorical and legal attacks on trans people are, after all, of a piece. Dehumanization of the members of a vulnerable group scapegoated by grievance-driven authoritarians is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for genocide. And what’s happening in Texas now, with some state…