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Waiting for Lightning to Strike: A Wobbly Agnostic among the Atheists

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…e says with her hands on her hips. According to Bey, being an outed African-American woman atheist is the same as committing cultural suicide. You’re rejecting a long history and everything your ancestors believed and stood for. You are telling your mothers and sisters that you think they’re stupid. For African-American women, identity comes first. “Because of us, you are.” Enjoy Being an Atheist At last, the speaker I had waited for is introduced…

Billy Graham and the Gospel of American Nationalistic Christianity

By Anthea Butler

…er gave two sermons during the course of an hour-long meeting carried coast-to-coast by a radio network. In one sermon he asked the U. S. Senate and House to call upon President Truman to set aside a day of prayer—as did President Abraham Lincoln on April 13, 1863—as a “day of confession of sin, humiliation, repentence, and turning to God at this hour.” Graham spoke from the place where the stand is erected for the inauguration of presidents. Mr….

How the Right’s War on ‘Critical Race Theory’ Taps into the Powerful Religion of American Innocence

By Peter Laarman

…Kendi—that conservative strategists hope will unite swampland yahoos and oh-so-refined academics and journalists like Sean Wilentz and Ross Douthat. Because they all agree on one thing: there were no actual crimes, white people are not really guilty of anything, and the whiners need to shut up and salute the flag of the redeemer nation. The big question, of course, is whether the frontal assault on “critical race theory” will have significant poli…

Charged with Impiety: When Black Bodies Defy Tradition

By Yazmine Nichols

…‘contaminate’ the sacred space, and time, of Sunday football and the nation-state.” American civil religion, with white supremacy woven through its history and ideals, depends on symbols and totems, and the American flag is one of the most potent. And yes, American civil religion thematizes Black bodies as an imagined source of disorder. However, I would like to point out that Black people, Black athletes and Black soldiers have always been both d…

American Evangelist Who Sparked Anti-Gay Panic Sued By Ugandan Gay Rights Group

By Sarah Posner

…says this is going on in the world. Or Scott Lively goes to the Uganda Anti-gay Conference, and the media says that an American evangelical says there’s a gay agenda… In four hours, he teaches them about the gay agenda [that’s seeking] to take over the world. When he leaves, at the follow-up meeting, parliament makes a statement saying thank you for this information, and now we know that there is a group of gays trying to take over the world, and…

AFA: Native Americans Lost their Land for Not Being Christians

By Daniel Schultz

…“Superstition, savagery and sexual immorality” morally disqualified Native Americans from “sovereign control of American soil,” Fischer said. That, plus the superior battle skills of Europeans gave the latter “rightful and legal sovereign control” of American land through what he delicately described as “the right of conquest.” Fischer went on to blame poverty and alcoholism on Indian reservations on Native Americans themselves, because they “cont…

Goy to the World: What Does Hanukkah Have to Teach Us About Living in Empire?

By Garret Keizer

…ation of the extent to which American democracy has been subordinated to so-called American interests, as defined by the moneyed interests now squatting in the civic temple. It would require a radical rededication to the rule of law and to the principle of human solidarity, according to which 3,000 Afghans killed as collateral damage weigh no less heavily than 3,000 Americans killed on September 11th. What would be the result of such a rededicatio…

British Culture Wars: An American Import, By Way Of Globalized Theopolitics

By Sarah Posner

…education, and welfare of all.” One key difference between the British and American versions is that the Westminster signatories, unlike their counterparts across the pond in Manhattan, have taken up the issue of immigration. In the Manhattan Declaration, which claims to be a call to “Christian conscience” to preserve life and family, and which asserts that “Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice…

Before Breitbart: How Right Wing Media Transformed American Politics

By Eric C. Miller

…devotion to pacifism that soon dissipated. Brent Bozell, Buckley’s brother-in-law, broke with National Review because he felt the magazine was insufficiently Catholic. Though, to be fair, Bozell also broke with the Catholic Church during the Vatican II reforms because he felt the Church itself was insufficiently Catholic. At what point did conservative media become activist, and why? Great question. There were conservative media—or rather, media…

Muslims Helped Legitimize Lowes’ Decision to Pull Ads From All-American Muslim

By Hussein Rashid

…that actions have consequences. I would love to see a second season of All-American Muslim (AAM) that comes to Jackson Heights in Queens to do South Asian Muslims, or to Chicago to cover African-American Muslims. So, what these criticizers did is to create a narrative that even Muslims don’t believe that this show represents Muslims. There was no positive or constructive criticism, just complaints that the critics themselves weren’t on TV. It tak…