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Mauled by an Angel: Why Do Americans Need “God’s Secret Agents”?

By W. Scott Poole

…ers. What could possibility mitigate this almost Lovecraftian portrayal of divine forces? In an American evangelical Protestantism that had no room for the saints of Catholic spirituality, angels offered a promising means of intercession with the seemingly brutal heavenly realms. Second, I would suggest that much of the evangelical fascination with angels grew out of the interest in the concept of “spiritual warfare,” angels fighting by the side o…

A Reforming Tradition Struggles With Change

By Brent Hege

…ies of pain, betrayal, and suffering over years of being treated as second-class members of their churches and being denied their vocations as clergy because of who they love. If the broader culture is any indicator, conservatives within the ELCA (and the new NALC) are fighting a rear-guard action that will become increasingly irrelevant. Surveys consistently show that younger generations of Americans are becoming more accepting of LGBTQ persons,…

Angry Voters, Right-Wing Populism, & Racial Violence: People of Faith Can Help Break the Linkages

By Chip Berlet

…of the old school, which means he is faith-centered and believes in both individual religious conscience and separation of church and state. The Southern Baptist Convention has evolved in a different direction. Over the course of a long conversation Gaddy and I we were both offended by the rhetoric of not only the Tea Party protestors, but also that of the Republican and Democratic Party leadership. He observed that there were “well-financed initi…

Capricology: Television, Tech, and the Sacred

By Diane Winston

…ith organized crime and with the distrust of their new government. It is a classic immigrant story, made all the more poignant by the contrast between the two brothers: one tattooed in ways which make it impossible for him to deny his own identity, while the other seeks to mask his identity, having adopted an assimilating name and demeanor. He refuses his mother-in-law’s suggestion that he take his son back to the world they came from, yet he’s co…

Taqwacore Roundtable: On Punks, the Media, and the Meaning of “Muslim”

By Shahjehan Khan

…mselves Taqwacore. HR: SK, my concern is that without pushing the gendered divisions early Taqwacore can inherit a lot of cultural baggage that quickly comes to define the system. Q: In the MSM, TQ is often positioned as “Islamic Punk,” or “Muslim Punk.” While members of TQ groups are from Muslim backgrounds, are these useful labels? Is the music Islamic or Islamicate? Does the distinction mean anything? That is, does their religious identificatio…

Extra-Terrestrial Kitsch: Capricology #4

By Anthea Butler

…nts, as normal aspects of youth culture are looked at through a magnifying class and distorted into symptoms of various pathologies. We see surprisingly few representations of mass locker searches or other abuses of power by American schools on television, so the moment in this week’s episode involving the locker search stood out to me. (It especially stood out given the news coverage this weekend of the Pennsylvania school which put spyware on co…

The Mystic in the Rye: JD Salinger’s Religious Fiction

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…and highly imaginative, scholar of American literature. He did not let the class neglect the crucial detail, revealed near the book’s end, that our stalwart narrator has been confined to a sanitorium, and may not be quite the trustworthy reporter he would have us believe him to be. So the book was far more than a manifesto for the mid-teen audience horrified by the overwhelming influence of “phonies” in the adult world. It was a cautionary tale ab…

Capricology: Tattoos, Blood, Cyber-Dating

By Anthea Butler

…re is time—and reasons—to explore what it means to be a person made in the divine/s image. That exploration starts with the nature of divinity (at least for the Soldiers of the One), but the real flash point will be the question of what constitutes humanity. Henry Jenkins_____________ Is the soul simply a cluster of information? I have felt all along that Caprica was edging towards some form of Extropianist philosophy and this question pushes us…

Creationism and Global Warming Denial: Anti-Science’s Kissing Cousins?

By Lauri Lebo

…fe.” Supporters of this language may have forgotten the lesson from health class that excess carbon dioxide in the bloodstream is fatal to humans. Academic Freedom Just as not all Christians are fundamentalists (indeed, most mainstream faiths have no problem with evolutionary theory), not all conservative Christians deny climate change. The Evangelical Call to Action on Climate Change and its lobbying arm Evangelical Climate Initiative seek to add…

Capricology: A Robot is Being Tortured

By Henry Jenkins

…t week when I was traveling in Israel and the West Bank with my journalism class. Caprica wasn’t aired where I was; neither could I download it. But its themes were present in the “othering,” religious extremism, ethnic tension, violence, and gender performances that constitute everyday life in the region. Fact is an adrenaline rush, but fiction has better sets and costumes. If you want to know about the real deal, my post is here and the students…