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Pop-Culture Angels Are More Than Just Embarrassing Kitsch

By Ed Simon

…y from Victorian sentimentalism. Such angels are on sale at reduced price; cheap wares for cheap faith. It would be an error, however, to fully dismiss pop culture angels. Despite the fact that representations of angels in film and television, comics and music, paperback novels and posters, are filtered through market concerns, such pop culture can still speak to human meaning—and because of that they merit our attention. Besides, the bulk of art…

Tinkering with Creation: Intelligent Design 2.0

By Lauri Lebo

…olution as a controversial subject. Coincidentally, 160 miles north of the Austin conference room where the board will be debating how evolutionary theory should be taught in its public schools, creationists announced this summer that they have discovered proof of man and dinosaur co-existence. Just outside of Glen Rose, Texas, in a place known as the Paluxy Flats, creationists say they have identified the three-toed footprint of an Acrocanthosaur…

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

By Daniel Silliman

…ties of slavery and its aftermath.”He had previously worked to desegregate Texas churches in the 1950s, helped organize the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and went on a hunger strike in 1995 to protest the Methodist church’s treatment of LGBT people. He nevertheless described himself as a paralyzed soul, unable to effect change. He was 79. Fred Phelps, Sr. Leader of a small but infamous church dedicated to declaring God’s judgement,…

Satanists Take Aim at School Spanking

By Joseph Laycock

…ut the worst bruises they’d received. On the issue of corporal punishment, Austin and rural Texas were two different worlds. Last week worlds collided when The Satanic Temple’s “Protect Children Project” erected a billboard in Springtown, Texas, featuring the organization’s goat-skull logo and the caption, “Never be hit in school again.” The billboard was reportedly torn down after just a single day. The website listed led to a form students could…

Don’t Buy Alito’s Assurances: Here’s What Happens Next After Roe Falls

By Brynn Tannehill

…for being lesbian, gay, or transgender. Imagine if those LGBT parents flee Texas, and Texas tries to have them extradited from California? What happens when the only safe place to go for women and LGBT people is to get out of the US, and flee to someplace that will refuse to send them back? If, in this scenario, California were to allow the extradition, there would be an explosion of protest and dissent, and a lot of Democratic politicians would l…

Texas Approves Anti-Muslim Resolution for Textbooks

By Lauri Lebo

On Friday, the Texas Board of Education passed its anti-Muslim resolution condemning what it claims is a “pro-Islamic/anti-Christian bias” in public school textbooks. After dismantling the social studies curriculum this spring and rewriting it to fit a far-right fundamentalist and evangelical Christian agenda, this late-in-the-game measure seems almost as if conservative board members realized after the fact, “Shoot! We forgot to target the Musli…

‘Culting’: From Waco to Fundamentalist Mormons

By Catherine Wessinger

…on excessive actions taken by authorities against it. A recent report from Texas Child Protective Services states that of the 53 YFZ girls between ages 14 and 17 in state custody, 31 have children or are pregnant. However, authorities in Texas took the measure of removing all the children from the YFZ community. At first their mothers went with them, but then the children were separated from their mothers. After breastfeeding advocates and others…

The Link Between Texas’ Law Requiring ‘In God We Trust’ Signs in Schools and the January 6 Insurrection

By Andrew L. Seidel

…handbook christened the legislation, “the National Motto Display Act.” The Texas bill requiring the display of this phrase looks an awful lot like Project Blitz’s National Motto Display Act, which in turn mirrors Saccones’. No surprise there, as Texas State Senator Bryan Hughes is a Christian Nationalist. He was also the driving force behind SB8 (mob rule over the womb), severe voting restrictions, and a bill to require teaching the Bible in Engli…

Bill Mill-ennialism: Arkansas’ End Times Politics May Be Coming to a State Near You

By Frederick Clarkson

…Exchange Council (ALEC) provided a forum to NACL at its annual meeting in Austin, Texas in December 2019. There, Rapert claims to have secured nine state chairs. He says that NACL is modeled after ALEC and seeks to convene legislators like ALEC does, but “to address major policy concerns from a Biblical worldview,” and to “train and elect Christians to serve in public office so that our nation honors God once again.” Rapert has said that NACL is…

Despite Reversal on Hillary and Hellen Keller, ‘Christian Americanist’ Bias Remains in Texas Curriculum

By David R. Brockman

…d in 2010, in what RD’s Lauri Lebo called, in her aptly titled piece, the “Texas Textbook Massacre,” encouraged an emphasis on Christianity over other religions, fostering an uncritically positive version of Christian history, and promoting the idea that the United States is an essentially Christian nation. This year’s streamlining process—officially described as an effort to “produce fewer and clearer standards that are teachable in the time allo…