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Why It’s Heresy to Read the Bible Literally: An Interview with John Shelby Spong

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ntroversial. I don’t like being controversial. I get abused a lot in mail, phone calls and that sort of thing. I don’t enjoy that. But, if you are controversial in the public arena, the people who have given up on Christianity say, “My God, there must be something more to this story than I realized.” So, being controversial is my doorway to the generation of my own children. “The primary issue in the Christian church today is to get away from orig…

Kendrick Lamar’s Hip-Hop Jeremiad

By Josiah Daniels

…t retaliation and revenge, Somebody said you bumped your head and bled the floor Jumped into a pit of flames and burned to coal Drowned inside the lake outside away you flow And that means the world to me Watch you when you walk inside your house You threw your briefcase all on the couch I plan on creeping through your fuckin’ door and blowin’ out Every piece of your brain until… Dispassionate prayer won’t do, a sermon from the preacher-man won’t…

Under Water: Waiting for the Flood (of Awareness) in Louisiana

By Drew Konow

…ise. Many have begun to criticize the lack of coverage or attention to the floods in Louisiana. These are 1,000-year floods, covering an area larger than Delaware, affecting more than 40,000 homes. This is sure to be an ongoing disaster—triggering transportation, housing, public health, and financial crises. So, many ask: “Where is the media coverage, the public awareness, the national attention?” In launching these critiques, some have contrasted…

Racial Justice Will Be Top Priority for New Prez of the United Church of Christ

By Frederick Clarkson

…rsed by two African-American pastors, including The Rev. Traci Blackmon of Florissant, Missouri, one of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement. The other, The Rev. Damond Jackson of Tempe, Arizona said, “John Dorhauer is a person of privilege in the world we live in, but he has used his white, heterosexual, male power to lift those who live in the world of no-communication, the world of the unheard.” “Here I am, a gay, black male, born and…

The Sacred and the Dead: Ten Writers on the End of an American Adventure

By The Editors

…with possibility and joy, began to cool, as cell phone calls dwindled and numbers eventually changed or were disconnected. As our shared realities drifted apart in their likeness, like Pigpen, I also turned to technologies that promised connection to try to tamp down the yearning and temper that sense of loss. #5 : Three Ways to American Beauty by Aaron K. Kerr At the height of secular modernity, when Catholics were opening the windows of Vatican…

“What Kind of Islam Is That?”: Talking With Refugees From ISIS

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…uld not be harmed as long as they gave them all their money and their cell phones. In other villages, they heard, an agreement to convert to Islam and a payment of $7 per month would allow them to survive. But initially they were not given those options. Moreover, his wife was taunted for wearing a Western-style dress, as many Christian women do, so she could not venture outside. They also kept their daughters hidden, fearing they would be capture…

The Only Religion Question Reporters and Debate Moderators Should Ask Presidential Candidates (Kim Davis Edition)

By Sarah Posner

…for shying away from hot-button religious culture war battles, “visited by phone” with Rowan County, Kentucky court clerk Kim Davis yesterday, according to a statement issued by his campaign. “I let her know how proud I am of her for not abandoning her religious convictions and standing strong for religious liberty,” the former pastor, Arkansas governor, and now two-time presidential candidate said in a statement. Arguing that “the Supreme Court c…

The Fragility of Our Reality: A Conversation with the Brain Behind PBS Miniseries on Neuroscience

By Michael Schulson

…aking exactly the same language. It’s a very clear set of rules about what flies and what doesn’t fly. These are deep-seated cultural ideas about self and identity, though. I wonder if this is how evolutionary biologists were talking in, say, 1910, before evolution became such a full-blown cultural battleground. I actually think one wouldn’t need neuroscience at all to notice some very basic things, such as that we all come to know and love and ac…

“We Blew it” on Climate Change, But May Survive Anyway: An RD Discussion with the First Transhumanist Candidate

By Andrew Aghapour

…life forms far more advanced than us in the universe just given the sheer numbers. Given how close we are to developing artificial intelligence right now, it’s also easy to think that another species did that on a planet somewhere far away and changed the universe. Given the fact that we’ll have A.I. in two hundred years that will potentially be a million times smarter than us, it could expand through the universe very quickly. I wrote this artic…

The Passion of Katniss: How the Hunger Games Confronts the Trauma of Violence

By Michael Schulson

…these films openly tackle political issues: movies like Batman and Avenger flicks express ambivalence about the surveillance state, government power, corporate influence, and other charged topics. Other times, narratives onscreen seem to mingle with political narratives offscreen, making war into an unambiguous battle between good and evil. And, more generally, these movies can feel out of place in a society where war seems less and less about bod…