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It Is Time For American Orthodox Christians to Protest Russia’s Persecution of LGBT

By Katherine Kelaidis

…onment in which—even though there exists a progressive plurality among self-identified American Orthodox Christians—public statements that could be perceived as critical of the Orthodox Church and its social teachings are rare. Those cradle-Orthodox from immigrant backgrounds (who make up the majority of progressive Orthodox Christians) have inherited their parents and grandparents desire for belonging in America and know the stories of those gran…

The Muslim Ban May Be Unconstitutional, But It’s Not Un-American

By Willie Dwayne Francois

…of war on American ideals, but it isn’t quite correct to say that it’s “un-American.” Masquerading as a travel ban, last Friday’s executive order dramatizes the perpetual conflict between the essential America and the existential America. Essential America places a premium on justice, peace and freedom, while the existential America practices a politics of exclusion, a heritage of hate and a culture of violence. The tragic conflation of global te…

How a Pioneer of Branding Invented Christian Fundamentalism

By Daniel Silliman

…ls. It is the publication that gives the fundamentalist movement its name—a 12-volume set of theological treatises written by various scholars that claim to put forward these fundamentals of the faith. Most people do not read The Fundamentals. When you do, what you find is that there are huge gaps in what would be a traditional creed. There are any number of points of theology that, actually, most of Christians would see as essential—ideas about w…

Rising Influence of New Apostolic Reformation Teachings is Ominous Sign For the US — Especially For LGBTQ Students

By Jonathon Sawyer

…, whose nonprofit recently held its annual fundraiser at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, told a crowd at the NAR-influenced Turning Point USA‘s Educators Summit that “Satan wants your kids” and that children in public schools are under spiritual attack by demonic “wickedness in high places.” These aren’t merely the efforts of some of the more brazen Christian Right warriors. Walters and Newman are diligently working alongside other conservative efforts…

Guns, God and Government — The Coming of White Minority Rule?

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…s that could cause maximum damage and fatalities. The proliferation of high-powered semi-automatic weapons along with a steady erosion of gun control measures in the very states that hold the key to continued GOP rule means that an armed reactionary populace is ready to enforce the divine dictates they believe they’re called to uphold in an apocalyptic showdown between God’s chosen and the godless forces of socialism and critical race theory. Ther…

Religious Leaders Condemn National Prayer Breakfast; Offer Alternative American Prayer Hour

By Sarah Posner

…n alternative American Prayer Hour to condemn The Family’s role in the kill-the-gays bill pending in the Ugandan parliament. “Prayer is a good thing, and Americans ought to gather to pray, but we better be careful what we pray for,” said the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, the Ninth Bishop of New Hampshire and the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal church, speaking at the National Press Club Tuesday morning. “We have a duty to confront those who…

How a Stars and Stripes Hijab on ‘Rupaul’s Drag Race’ Reveals America’s Troubling Relationship to Gender, Ethnicity and ‘That’ Religion

By Megan Goodwin and Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst

…ng a billion-person millenium-old global religion into one (terrifying, not-American) thing. So yeah, when Jeff Goldblum looks at Jackie Cox in a hijab and says “that religion,” of course we know what he means. Goldblum doesn’t say “Islam”—in fact, no one says Islam or Muslim for the rest of the episode. No one has to. With this question-cum-critique, Islam became what was happening On Tonight, and Goldblum became every white dude in any audience…

The Marxist Roots of American Exceptionalism

By Michael J. Altman

…tual History, Oklahoma University professor Ben Alpers has an incredibly in-depth post where he digs into the history of the term “American exceptionalism.” The long and the short of it is that while ideas about America being a special country date to its founding, the term “American exceptionalism” originated among Marxist theorists between World War I and II as a way to explain why America did not develop a strong socialist movement. Capitalism…

It’s The Apocalypse, Stupid: Understanding Christian Opposition to Obamacare, Civil Rights, New Deal and More

By Daniel Silliman

…ubstantial of a moment in the history of evangelicalism. What about African-American evangelicals? How were they apocalyptic? This was one of my favorite parts of doing this book. I wanted to take seriously how African-American evangelicals compared and contrasted with white evangelicals. They started from the same theological premises, but came to very different political and social conclusions. They had that sense of fever and anxiety and hope f…

How AIDS Changed the Way American Christians Talk About Sex

By Anthony Petro

…terosexuality (and the immorality of homosexuality). Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, a number of Christian denominations and churches found that they really had to discuss the HIV/AIDS crisis, because it was a pressing local and national concern. And to do so, they had to talk about sex, including homosexuality. It turns out, the things they had to say about AIDS and about sex proved far more diverse than Christian Right rhetoric pronounci…