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Gas For Two Bucks a Gallon? Bachmann Taps a Pipeline to the American Sacred

By Rosamond C. Rodman

…it a sacred object; although one could not be blamed for thinking so. The Los Angeles Times reports that Americans spend almost 100 billion a year on new car purchases alone, not counting used car purchases or maintenance of existing cars. When gas costs $3.84, reports CNN/Time, Americans spend eleven cents out of every dollar on gasoline. On average, an American spends 72 minutes a day in a car, getting from place to place. In one sense, a car…

Snake-Handlers, False Messiahs, and a Few Great Souls: 14 Who Died in 2014

By Daniel Silliman

…some moderate civil rights supporters. Author of numerous works on American-American religious history, including There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America and Martin Luther King: An Inconvenient Hero, Harding taught at Illiff School of Theology in Denver, Colo. for more than 20 years. Nelson Bunker Hunt A Texas billionaire remembered mostly for his business exploits, Nelson Bunker Hunt bankrolled the religious right. He underwro…

Raising Children the Right Way

By Jeffrey Feldman

…rents who dared to discipline their children. For this “notice-that-dad-has-a-penis” shower moment to be effective, Dobson explains that it must be performed by a father who has previously used painful discipline on his son to establish authority. Such a father has presumably begun to build up in his son the beginnings of God-fearing adulthood. In the absence of responsibly violent disciplinary parenting, the father-son shower scene would just bec…

Trump’s Magical Appeal: A Dated Anthropologist Offers Clues

By Elijah Siegler

…ospel preacher? A Platonic tyrant? Or is he a truth-telling jester? At the Los Angeles Times, Peter Manseau recently tried to bring some critical theory to this exercise, arguing that Trump’s appeal is best explained through the French sociologist Émile Durkheim. This kind of analysis can seem abstract. But as the public ritual of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland unfolds, religion-oriented analyses of Trump can be useful. As more an…

Unauthorized Catholic Immigrants will Renew a Christian America, Archbishop Says

By Marie Friedmann Marquardt

…f the territory that forms part of the United States. He explains (with not-so-subtle reference to our current political landscape), “Long before the Boston Tea Party, Catholic Missionaries were celebrating the holy Mass on the soil of this continent.” In summary, he argues: This is the real reason for America, when we consider our history in light of God’s plan for the nations. America is intended to be a place of encounter with the living Jesu…

The Role of Spirit in the #BlackLivesMatter Movement: A Conversation with Activist and Artist Patrisse Cullors

By Hebah H. Farrag

…g with prayers for the oppressed. Protests called “ceremonies” in front of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s house, with attendees asked to wear all white. Last weekend, activists posted videos from the retreat hashtagged with #blackjoy as a reprieve from the rage and sadness. Black Lives Matter chapters and affiliated groups are expressing a type of spiritual practice that makes use of the language of health and wellness to impart meaning, heal g…

Mitt Romney’s Prosperity Gospel

By Peter Laarman

… no longer the world’s most mathematically-inclined nation. We’re a scratch-to-win nation. We’re a roll-the-dice people. And our god is that God: the one who makes water flow from the rock (Numbers 20:11); who surprises us all the time by blessing us in the least likely circumstances. Mr. President: You need to understand this. You need to work with this, but very, very carefully. Because, like it or not, the endgame in this election is going to b…

Heterosexual Martyrs and Gay Saints: Did AIDS Coverage Clear the Way for LGBT Equality?

By Diane Winston

…rested in the gay community and assumed their view reflected the population-at-large. The only stories that roused them were marked by sensationalism or conflict. As the dimensions of the AIDS epidemic emerged, these two themes—gay libertinism and religious condemnation—became frames for seeing the disease as a moral as well as medical problem. Even stories that were not about religious responses to AIDS often evoked the moral/medical axis. As the…

On Eve of Sudan Split Clashes Continue

By Ashley Makar

…fugees will have to leave Israel as a result of the Jewish state’s new anti-immigration bills, which are as harsh as those of Arizona and Alabama here in the United States. Thousands of illegal African workers will lose their jobs before being detained in the desert until deportation. When I saw William in January, he was hoping to go back to Sudan with the assistance of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. He was planning to make a n…

The Economy is Racism: Ending Race-Based Economic Violence is the Real Challenge of This Moment

By Peter Laarman

…much including the “decent” white Christians, completely abandoned African-American aspirations for full equality within a few years of the bloody Civil War’s end. And why did these whites “move on” so quickly? Because there was so much money to be made in the first Gilded Age and because the reintegration and rehabilitation of the former Confederate states could contribute to that project. If you are one of today’s activist allies who thinks tha…