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The Sacramental American Day of Thanks

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…m Lincoln (Gary Laderman’s important book, The Sacred Remains, tells the disturbing story of how Lincoln’s corpse itself became an important artifact for public display, until its corruption provided an alternative-, and almost anti-, myth of national salvation). For Bellah, writing in 1966 (the essay was reprinted in a collection of essays entitled Beyond Belief in 1970), the American civil religion was then involved in what he called its “third…

Possibility that Bachmann Believes in Wifely Submission Irrelevant?

By Julie Ingersoll

…h was founded to counter mutual submission theology. Others, like the Reconstructionists, as I noted in the earlier post, “have suggested that, given the biblical order for families, women probably shouldn’t be voting.” Were Senator Danforth to talk with the folks over at No Longer Quivering who work to help women leave the Quiverfull Movement, he would find that in this community submission means absolute submission to your husband and a life of…

Darwin in Rome: Burden of Diversity, Mystery of Time

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ews about time and about struggle have been so very well domesticated in most mainstream Christian communities today. But what of Rome? Much has been made of the anti-modern posture of the current papacy. It is no more than a fifteen minute walk from the Exhibition Palace to St Peter’s Basilica. What, I wonder, does the current Pope make of such exhibitions? It is hard to speculate, but in general, the answer seems clear. Evolutionary biology and…

Blue Jean Revolution

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…the first nor the last revolutionary whose idealism could not survive the Stalinist reality On thing that struck her most on these trips was that the symbol du jour was the blue jean. Of all things, the blue jean. While begging was strictly forbidden and harshly punished in Moscow, people would approach her and offer to buy the jeans right off her legs. But why? Partly because they were forbidden and impossible to get. If you tell a human being n…

Conservative Christians Say it’s Okay to Vote for Romney Despite Doctrine

By Joanna Brooks

…stalwarts. We are not surprised. We’ve seen this coming. Remember it was just last year when Warren Cole Smith of World magazine declared that theological differences between Mormons and mainline Protestants were not just differences but “dangers”—implicitly accusing Mormons of an intent to use the cultural capital of a Romney presidency to bamboozle would-be Christians worldwide into converting to Mormonism instead. But in April, even Pastor Robe…

Papal Profanity: The Vatican’s Pagan Museum

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…tertain, or to piss people off? I definitely wrote to educate, myself first and foremost. I aspired to entertain, which is an odd thing to say about academic writing in the main. I definitely did not write to piss anybody off. I’m pissed off enough myself about the state of our nation, of many religious communities, not to mention the quality of our political discourse and cultural debate, so there’s no need for me to contribute to that state, m…

For Saturn’s Sake, Remember the Dead

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…We’ve probably all heard that this festival was the real precursor to Christian Christmas, with its funny inversion of social roles, the masters serving meals to slaves, the eating, the drinking, the gift-giving, the general merriment. Saturday is still Saturn’s day in English, and we all know that his day (or rather, his night) is set aside especially for the parties. But all this playful artifice had a very serious underside, a brooding quality…

Still Captivated by Southern Gospel

By Douglas Harrison

…he book: “Why Southern Gospel Music Matters.” It still strikes me as the most straightforward explanation of what I’m up to in my research. I guess my long game needs some work, though. How do you feel about the cover? Love it. Covers (and perhaps authors in general) are a constant source of struggle for presses in the production process, and the folks at University of Illinois were astonishingly long-suffering with me as I fussed over finding exa…

Justice v. Revenge: The Question Beneath the Question of Prison Reform

By Xarissa Holdaway

…he lesser charges was the denial of prescribed psychiatric drugs. Even the strongest proponents of the death penalty would have a hard time arguing that a life sentence there would be getting off easy, much less that it’s a rehabilitative environment. Few would question the desire for revenge in cases like the Boston Bombing, where several people died and hundreds of others were wounded and traumatized. It seems somehow natural for the state to se…

Pakistan and Iran, a War on Two Fronts

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…was his simplistic assessment of the current situation in Gaza that was most striking, however, and worrisome. The situation is simple for Bush; it always has been. Israel’s battle is America’s battle, and vice versa. It is framed as a battle of Israeli democracy against the anti-democratic forces surrounding her, and it is thus another front in the War on Terror that has always had a theological echo in this president’s biblicist mind. There can…