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Gospel and Soul Lose a King and Queen

By Anthea Butler

…o the development of gospel music and performance is undeniable. Walker’s good friend, Mahalia Jackson, encouraged her to go on the road and quit singing background for her. Walker took the advice, creating a group called The Caravans which in turn launched the careers of such greats like James Cleveland and Shirley Caesar. Walker, singing in one of my favorite movies “Leap of Faith,” wowed the film crew so much that her granddaughter Tina Nance s…

Why Christians Should Not Host Their Own Passover Seders

By Rebecca Cynamon-Murphy

…most college towns, graduates often settle nearby. This makes my neighborhood a hub for evangelicalism and means that my neighbors tend to have followed the injunctions of their pastors to “keep themselves pure” from culture that is not specifically Christian. Even if folks didn’t attend Wheaton themselves, the school’s values permeate local culture. Add to this a simple demographic isolation and overall, my neighbors tend not to have had much ex…

The Most Ominous Promises Jeff Sessions Just Made to ADF Attorneys

By Sunnivie Brydum

…stian ideology on state and federal laws. He affirmed the Christian victimhood complex that groups like ADF champion, promising that Sessions’ DOJ will never force anyone to abandon their “sincere religious beliefs.” Following a soliloquy on the secular constraints placed upon the federal government, Sessions signaled that he intends to continue the growing trend of privileging “sincerely held religious beliefs” over civil rights. According to the…

Dispatches from the Workplace: Postville: Ground Zero for the Intersection of Immigrant and Workers’ Rights

By Kim Bobo

…for federal and Iowa state authorities to judge. We hope someone takes a good, hard look at conditions in Postville. Given the current state of American labor law, it’s not likely that much will change dramatically for the better. Still, stricter enforcement of existing labor laws will improve some lives. Purchasers of AgriProcessors’ Kosher meats began switching to alternatives in response to the questions raised about its “kosher” treatment of…

Bannon’s “Alt-Facts” Satan

By Spencer Dew

…n’s invocation of Satan than that. Bannon’s Satan isn’t merely a misunderstood figure or heroic rebel. There’s no note of hidden or misinterpreted goodness here; no rectitude somehow wrapped up in this image of Satan. Indeed, this is why such admiration of Satan—from a man who has the ear of and is drafting policy for the President of the United States, a man now sitting on the National Security Council potentially in violation of federal law—is w…

Sex, Violence, Art, and Religion

By Kent L. Brintnall

…remains valuable to thinking about gender and sexuality—and religion. The book was largely inspired by—and shaped around—my idiosyncratic obsessions and my intuition that there was some relationship between them and that they all spoke to each other, to dominant cultural fantasies about masculinity, and to Christianity. I had this sense that there was something to be gained by paying close attention to representations of the male-body-in-pain—acro…

Exclusive: Christian Right Bill Mill, Project Blitz, Hasn’t Gone Away, It’s Just Gotten More Secretive

By Frederick Clarkson

…itz in April 2018 the website featured their annual state legislative playbook of model bills and talking points. They also named the members of the State Legislative Prayer Caucuses that drew on the model bills for their own legislation. But in the face of public scrutiny, RD’s revelation of a second playbook and the unwanted media attention that followed our reports (from The New York Times, Salon, The Guardian, Religion News Service, USA Today,…

Prayer vs. Medicine in the Courts

By Shawn Francis Peters

…isconsin have been confronted with a complex problem: Should parents who choose to treat their children’s illnesses with prayer rather than medicine be charged with abuse, neglect, or even manslaughter when their children die? As these cases begin to play out in the courts, it has become apparent that their task in answering that question is going to be anything but straightforward, thanks in part to the ambiguity of laws that might be applied to…

RI Civil Unions Religious Exemption Sets Dangerous Precedent

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…at says no religious organization—including some hospitals, cemeteries, schools and community centers—or its employees may be required to treat as valid any civil union, providing a religious exemption “of unparalleled and alarming scope,” Chafee said in a statement. Most “religious liberty” exemptions for religious organizations guarantee the rights they already have, like refusing to perform a ceremony for a couple or allow them to use church pr…

How Evangelicals Pick Presidents

By Sarah Posner

…y still are) bitter that leaders didn’t get behind their guy until it was too late. “Who is James Dobson going to endorse?” was the never-ending query around the proverbial pundit water cooler. He endorsed Huckabee—finally, at the eleventh hour, when it was far too late. Huckabee wrote of his own resentment about the leadership’s refusal to get behind him in his 2008 book, Do the Right Thing, while praising “prophetic voices who broke with the old…