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The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right

By Frederick Clarkson

…ually describe as conservative in the traditional sense. I do think that a number of conservatives are starting to wake up to this reality now. David Brooks and Joe Scarborough and Lindsey Graham have just recently fired salvos across the decks of the right-wing talkers, criticizing them for where they’re dragging the Republican Party. But unfortunately, they’re also in pretty deep denial about just how deeply entrenched the problem is. You know,…

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…

Teach Your Children Well: Challenging Religion-Based Sexism

By Sikivu Hutchinson

…ly accepted norm. According to a recent article on The Root, an increasing number of black girls are being sold into prostitution and sex trafficking, while “in both the international and national anti-trafficking movements, black girls who are victims of prostitution are invisible.” In a review of the new book Girls Like Us by sex trafficking activist Rachel Lloyd, writer Rinku Sen notes, the black and Latina girls with whom Lloyd works are thou…

Fox News Controversy on Yoga and White Supremacy Reveals Problem of Yoga Discussion

By Andrea R. Jain

…meaning and purpose, such as yoga and ayurveda, in order to get elected or sell commercial products (see here and here). They resort to traditionalist rhetoric about yoga that thrives on nostalgia while also betraying a modern flavor of capitalism, all while profiting off of a fear of lost cultural norms tied to various forms of xenophobia, nationalism, patriarchy, Islamophobia, and homophobia. Modi works closely with a number of allies to wed yog…

Two Women and a Mosque: A Convert Community Grows in Panama City

By Aliyya Swaby

…country, and continued to teach for more than forty years until he had to sell the shop last year. We met in a small mosque he runs in Panama City, belonging to the Shi’a sect of Islam. Few people attend its regular Thursday prayer services. Less than one percent of Muslims in Panama are Shi’a, according to a 2009 international report. He is unhappy that the women are opening Al Haqq, instead of joining his mosque, because he believes it goes aga…

How Fitbit Helps a Conservative Evangelical College Monitor Students’ Bodies For Christ

By Jonathan Root

…t the “Aerobics Center,” students filled out a computer card with their ID number, activity number, and the time, intensity, and distance of their workout. The data derived from the cards helped to determine grades. One student who had been forced to enroll in the Pounds Off Program said, “I’m really sad for the school. It has so much potential, so many positive things about it, but you can’t treat people this way… They treat you like you’re not c…

Republican Scandals Drag Secretive ‘Family’ Into the Big Time

By Randall Balmer, Anthea Butler, Evan Derkacz, Jeff Sharlet, and Diane Winston

…to a Family cell as “balance”; rather, that’s the narrative The Family is selling its members). There’s a sense here in which the media’s paradigm for political and religious ideas is undermining it—I think Diane’s right that any smart media organization wants to keep conflict alive, and to that end they find the religious right very helpful. But, having identified certain issues—global warming, poverty—as fundamentally liberal, they’ve backed th…

Like Azusa Street Baptized into Bureaucracy: Mexico’s Flourishing LLDM Church Loses its Apostle

By Michael Schulson

…lves as charismatic or Pentecostal Christians (38%).” Pinning down precise numbers for LLDM is almost impossible. The church claims to have more than three million members abroad, and 1.5 million in Mexico, which would make it the country’s largest non-Catholic religious institution. The 2010 Mexican census reported only around 200,000 members, but that number may well be low (the Mormon church in Mexico has argued that the religious count was ina…

Resurrection of ‘Comstock Laws’ Would Threaten Access to Abortifacients — But Even That Fear Misses Bigger Picture

By Gillian Frank

…to sell birth control. Authorities also conducted raids on establishments selling “illegal” contraceptives, including cafes, gas stations, pool halls and taverns. Newspaper reports indicated that in some cases, the buyers were high school age. But the market for birth control extended far beyond the young and the unmarried. In the absence of access to reliable reproductive healthcare resources, women availed themselves of dangerous and ineffectiv…

The World is (Always) About to End, No Zombies Required

By Kelly J. Murphy

…tudies classroom: there are no zombies in the Bible. Nevertheless, zombies sell, as The Walking Dead‘s creator Robert Kirkman and others know well. The course stems from the knowledge that pop culture and monsters interest students, even if ancient biblical texts don’t (at least, not often and not at first). Yet it was also born out of a desire to show students that ancient texts matter, and that these texts continue to live on all around us, whet…