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Election Reporters: Here’s Why Simply Descriptors Like ‘Christians’ Can Have Enormous Consequences

By Daniel Schultz

…e; so subtle in fact that you might’ve missed it altogether. Despite their best efforts to depict themselves as speaking to and for Christians at large, neither Turning Point USA nor Donald Trump cares about more than a relatively small portion of the religion’s adherents. That distinction becomes extremely important in light of the growing sense among many expert observers that Trump’s rhetoric is increasingly authoritarian. Let’s face it: it’s p…

Arrest the Pope: New Atheist Effort to Seek Justice in Sexual Abuse Crisis Should Be Applauded

By Frances Kissling

…ents the opposing view here — ed. The Daily Telegraph* is probably not the best source of analysis of a growing body of legal opinion that the Roman Catholic Church, as either state or religion, should be subject to prosecution by the International Criminal Court for “crimes against humanity.” The paper did, however, give the idea a boost when it published an article claiming that Richard Dawkins wants to arrest the Pope for his role in the cover…

Do Not Arrest the Pope: New Atheists’ Call for the Pope’s Arrest Isn’t Likely to Produce Justice

By Eric Reitan

…gation, the truth is that neither of these things is likely to happen. The best we can hope for is that more praiseworthy impulses within the Church will prevail—impulses to treat this crisis as a wake-up call, as a call to seriously introspect about the reasons why child sexual abuse is so rampant and the cover-ups so pervasive. We can hope that church leaders will begin to more seriously reflect on the dangers of caring more about the Church’s r…

The Wounded People of God

By Anthea Butler

…or healing for parishioners, but realized his position perhaps was not the best one from which he could provide solace or healing given this particular situation. So he asked me and another colleague to intervene. It was a tough but rewarding experience, one I carry with me whenever I speak or write on this issue. So understand, when I criticize the church and its authorities harshly, it is because I feel the pain of those who suffered abuse, and…

Polygamy, Genius, and the Origin of Religion

By Michael Schulson

…so that they invest that pregnancy or egg-laying energy in babies with the best possible genes. This story is a rough approximation of a theoretical model. But that model has a lot of descriptive power in animals. So how does all of this play out in people? Barash lays out a strong case that human beings, and our primate forebears, were polygamous. His evidence is primatological (our primate relatives today are mostly polygamous), anthropological…

Sure, There’s No ‘Religious Left’… If You Ignore Non-White Christians and Non-Christians

By Daniel Schultz

…s, and single-issue groups that make up a loose coalition that despite the best efforts of the Religion-Industrial Complex, cheerfully and successfully resists just about anything in the way of central coordination. Jenkins sees this as a distributed movement, and likes to point to areas where it’s played a crucial role in progressive successes in recent years. (Some of his most interesting reporting has been about Indigenous religious activism ar…

Capricology: Divine Madness

By Salman Hameed

…n spend time together in the Dive smoking a hallucinatory substance which, best we can tell so far, seems to be legal—if not exactly respectable—in this society. Of course, you’ve heard the joke that you can tell you are watching a cable show if the sympathetic characters are using drugs. This imagery is still not going to be appearing on the major networks. I also continue to be very interested in some of the representations of games in the serie…

Creators of Missing Lowe’s Ad Tell All

By Hussein Rashid

…king over our entertainment industry, you’ve appeared in some of America’s best-loved shows. You are even versatile enough to play brown, Muslim, American terrorists. But don’t you find your role in this most recent ad from Lowe’s truly objectionable? Here you are destroying the world’s natural resources to drive around town, and turn on an obscene number of lights. Doesn’t this offend your morality? Or do you truly have no shame? PC: Riz gets to…

Burning Down the Temple: Religion and Irony in Black Rock City

By Sarah M. Pike

…and soul. Every year since 2001, when San Francisco Bay area artist David Best constructed the first large-scale temple out of leftover pieces from a dinosaur puzzle factory, the temples have been a focal point for collective ritualizing at Burning Man. Dismounting my bicycle, I approached this year’s Temple of Transitions. Part medieval cathedral, part 24-hour desert sanctuary, the temple was epic in scale with stained glass windows on its upper…

Why Did So Many Black Women Die? Jonestown at 35

By Sikivu Hutchinson

…raisals on Peoples Temple and Jonestown only a few are by black women (the best of these have been compiled at the “Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple” site). Thrash and Leslie Wagner–Wilson are currently the only two black women survivors to publish books on their experiences. Wagner-Wilson managed to escape Jonestown before the massacre with several of her family members. As early African American members of the church wh…