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Cafeteria Christianity in the Age of Social Media: What’s Old Is New Again

By Kate Blanchard

…o Germanic Christians; the break-up between Eastern and Western churches in 1054 was largely a matter of Roman intolerance of Eastern variety; and medieval inquisitions existed for the purpose of cracking down on unlawful Christian variations. This is to say nothing of the picking and choosing unleashed in the 16th century by Luther and his ilk. (What could be more ironic than any Protestant pointing fingers at anyone about picking and choosing?)…

The Sacred and the Dead: I Love You More than Words Can Tell

By David Vanderveen

…aid his bones by the waterside. My favorite verse from the Bible is Genesis 1:2, “…and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” In the water is where I wrestle with God and where the truth of the universe tends to reveal itself to me. It’s home and it’s always humbling. Every July 4 since Mark left us, his friends, family, and neighbors have hosted a community paddle-out where kids, parents, and grandparents paddle to the outer reef at Bro…

Heresy, Bad Taste, or Capitalist Adventure: Is it Still Pentecostalism?

By Anthea Butler

…various New Testament Texts (including I Corinthians 12:8-10, I Corinthians 12:28, and Romans 12:3-8). These gifts/practices include healings, exorcism, speaking and interpretation of tongues, words of wisdom, and prophetic utterances. Speaking in tongues, or glossolialia, has been considered the primary practice of Pentecostals. Today, despite the occasional outbursts of televangelists, a substantial number of Pentecostals do not engage in the pr…

The Economy is Sacred, Stupid

By Gary Laderman

…treatment, save for classics like Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and more recent sociological studies like Robert Wuthnow’s God and Mammon in America. A few questions may help make the case about the intimate, if unexpressed, links between money and religion: Is the pursuit of wealth an ultimate value? Is self-worth tied to the accumulation of material goods? How do moral virtues connect to marketplace success? Is mo…

Walt Whitman’s Sacred Democracy

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…f American spiritualists-in-letters—was ultimately a psalmist of the human spirit. He was, as we would now say, “spiritual (or sacred), not religious.” But then, in his judgment, that’s what democracy is all about. The very coin of the democratic realm is “sacred.” Whitman saw the work of fostering such a “religious democracy” as the work of the 20th century, and that task continues unabated today. He warned that there was only one thing that rea…

Why Go to Church If You Don’t Believe Anymore?

By Angela Bonavoglia

…e the hidden corners of the cathedral until we arrive at the last station, number 14, where Jesus is laid in the tomb. From there, we move outside to a garden, where we stand in a circle, the cross gone now, face to face with one another. I am both in the process and outside of it. I believe in something, but not most of this. I hold on because there is some deep comfort and some essential discomfort here. I can’t let go. Why? What draws me year a…

New Book by Olivier Roy Argues that Aggressive Attempts to Christianize the West Actually Hasten Secularism

By Ivan Strenski

…Sunday services have tumbled into the single digits, and roughly the same number disavow belief in major Christian doctrines. Despite the political impact of white evangelicals, and the United States’ claim to being exceptional in escaping Western Europe’s radical de-Christianization, Gallup reports that fewer than 50% of Americans declare membership in a church, synagogue, or mosque. Yet, despite the decline of organized religion, the latest boo…

What This All-Star Christian Movie Gets Wrong About Christianity

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…that he was so moved by it, so shaken, that it can only have been the Holy Spirit. I don’t think I overstate things when I suggest that the screenwriters mean for us to interpret their movie by the same rubric. The movie moves us… or, well, it moves the people it was intended for. Aha, that must be the Holy Spirit at work! Theologically, though, such a rubric is entirely wrongheaded. If my mind should generate some pious-sounding blurt, and if I s…

AR-15 Lapel Pins are More Than Political Provocation — They’re Symbols of the Violence at the Heart of White Christian Nationalism

By Annika Brockschmidt

…nity” originated as a youth movement. The core principle was that a strong spirit required a strong body as well—a principle that made its way to the US and was fused with the frontier spirit and Manifest Destiny, as historian Peter Manseau explains: “All of this might seem far removed from holiday cards, until one recalls that it is Jesus himself who has been proposed as the exemplar of the ‘manly and virile’ faith found at the root of Christmas…

The Other, Forgotten Apocalypse of 2011

By Jason Bruner

…arnate in the form, respectively, of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The man reputed to be the Holy Spirit allegedly died when he flung himself off a cliff, believing he would have the ability to fly. Later, in the early years of the Vietnam War, another movement spread which proclaimed that Christ would return, perhaps wearing American clothes and distributing firearms. These rather cursory comments indicate that over the course of…