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The Progress of Christ in Commercial America: A Review of Chris Lehmann’s The Money Cult

By Peter Laarman

…delights in surfacing little-known factoids. These include the remarkable number of commercial hucksters who were preachers or else preachers’ kids (e.g., Richard Bolles of What Color is Your Parachute? fame—a former Episcopal priest) and the equally remarkable number of notable preachers who had strong commercial instincts and/or commercial roots (ranging from 18th-century superstar evangelist George Whitefield to 19th-century revivalist giant C…

The Dirty Little Secret of Every Ponzi Scheme, or: Bernie Madoff’s 150 Year Sentence

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…who had hitherto remained comparatively pure between the open vices of the class above and the hidden crimes of the class below them. The pernicious love of gambling diffused itself throughout society… “The pernicious love of gambling”—the main symptom of a pervasive “moral epidemic.” Isn’t that the dirty secret lying at the heart of every Ponzi scheme? Why did people clamor to be part of Madoff’s investments? Why did people clamor for pieces of J…

Dieting, Sex, Jesus: The Body as Moral Battleground

By Lynne Gerber

…others. I wasn’t able to include much on fatness, weight loss, and social class—an issue that interests me a great deal and that I’ve written about elsewhere. What’s the biggest misconception about your topic? There are so many. I think in terms of weight loss, it’s that fatness is self-evidently bad, that fatness on bodies has moral meaning, and that dieting and weight loss is quotidian and harmless at worst, and a moral mandate at best. The dis…

‘Heretics’ or ‘Atheists’? A Response

By Rachel Ozanne

…nts how many of them believed in equal rights for women. Almost the entire class raised their hands. However, when he asked them how many of them were feminists, a much smaller number raised their hands. The professor and my friend could only conclude that the reason for this disparity was linked to negative connotations that students have with the word “feminist.” I wonder whether we questioners, unbelievers, and heretics have allowed ourselves t…

Risky Business: The Pitfalls at the Corner of Church & Wall Street

By Elizabeth Drescher

…pian “class warfare” fears of Tea Partiers and other Republicans? When the number of Americans living in poverty—46.2 million, according to a recent report from the Census Bureau—is at an all-time high? When more than 300,000 Christian churches dot the American landscape, the majority with declining membership and largely unused real estate or financial capital that might well be put to work in the service of that stalwart of Christian faith: neig…

Coffeehouse Churches and the ‘Party-on Messiah’: How I Lost One Leper Messiah, and Gained Another, Part 3

By Mark Dery

…ouraged public displays of beatified passion and, more generally, a middle-class, white (read: toned-down) version of the exuberant call-and-response dynamic that has animated black Pentecostal churches and Southern white revival meetings for generations. On October 25, 1974, as on most Friday nights, Abba’s house band Hebron churned out folk-rock worship music, original tunes that gene-spliced David Crosby and King Crimson—a progressive take on w…

Teach Your Children Well: Challenging Religion-Based Sexism

By Sikivu Hutchinson

…ice program, my partner Diane Arellano and I train our students to lead in-class workshops on the everyday impact of misogynistic language, stereotypes, and media imagery. Students develop critical consciousness about their shared struggle vis-à-vis the stereotype of the sacrificial good black/Latina “woman of faith.” On several occasions our students have been chastised by girls who argued that sexual violence and high rates of HIV/AIDS contracti…

Inside the American Family Association

By Sarah Posner

…sexuals will become part of an elite class’ and ‘Christians will be second-class citizens at best.’” The most powerful person in Texas and a contender to be the most powerful person in the world is hosting a Christians-only prayer rally with an organization that believes Christians are at serious risk of becoming “second-class citizens.” What’s important to remember, though, is that while religious right elites are lining up to endorse Perry’s pra…

If Modesto’s Public Schools Can Teach World Religions, It Can Happen Anywhere

By Jonathan Homrighausen

…ing interreligious dialogue and biblical studies. I don’t think McIntyre’s class is responsible for all of that. But looking back, I can’t help but wonder if this class ignited a spark that would eventually become a flame. So Modesto is also the city that implemented a mandatory course in world religions in public high schools. The city designed that course in consultation with local religious leaders to ensure that every group is represented fair…

TED-Evangelism Harkens Back to a Forgotten 19th-Century Tradition

By Michael Schulson

…ure of ideas. They went to see and to be seen, and to perform their middle-class-ness, just as attendance at a TED or TEDx conference, or association with that brand, signals membership in the creative class. TED and the lyceum movement also share an enormous confidence in the power of ideas to lift up society and individuals. This is a progressive vision, but it’s largely divorced from politics. Lyceum lecturers would often touch on political iss…