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The Forgotten Struggle Over Gender and Bigotry in Christianity

By Stephen J. Patterson

…hild of God.” “So you’re saved?” No. That’s not what I meant. That is what most people assume it means. That is what most people think the Christian religion is all about: salvation. But that is not really it. Earlier that morning the minister had used words from an ancient, nearly forgotten credo once associated with baptism. “You are children of God,” she said. “There is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male and female.” The words were from…

How Should We Speak of Unspeakable Evil?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ncere regret, yet one may refer to the actual deed only in the vaguest and most general terms. Come any closer to the mention of an actual transgression, Bauer suggests, and the public may not be so forgiving. When we move from the realm of private sex scandal to mass killing, however, in the face of attempted genocides from Cambodia to Rwanda to Darfur, it has been difficult to know how to imagine forgiveness at all. Is it possible to forgive the…

“My Scientology Movie” Pokes the Hornet’s Nest

By Gordon Haber

…of Scientology” by hiring actors to re-enact moments from church history, most notably the violent tirades of its current leader, David Miscavige. To make his fake movie, Theroux elicits the help of Marty Rathbun, a former high-ranking official in the Church of Scientology. Rathbun, for good reason, gets a lot of screen time. He’s an articulate, charismatic presence, and his growing impatience with Theroux’s faux-ingenuousness nicely reflected si…

Before We Scold DeSean Jackson and Others For Anti-Semitism We Need To Talk About ‘Chosenness’

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…elative fame and financial stability have adopted a belief that appears to most observers as so far outside of the mainstream of acceptable religious discourse? Why do two Black millionaires need to believe a) they are “true” Hebrews; and b) white Jews are complicit in global domination? And do these beliefs actually constitute anti-Semitism and “hate speech”? In order to answer these questions it’s important to get a better understanding of the b…

Palin, Yet Again

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ut it being time to “lay off” Sarah Palin is well taken. The first and foremo*]}*st difficulty with this recommendation, of course, is that Sarah Palin, unlike the other three former candidates, continues to put herself out in plain public view, as the other three have been all but invisible, working behind closed doors on the current fiscal mess. Governor Palin, admittedly, has little to do with that work, so she is free to adopt a more public postur…

Even if Biden Wins Will We Reckon With ‘Virtuous Republic Syndrome,’ the Persistent Belief that America is a Blessed Nation?

By Peter Laarman

…lding consequential elections on a Tuesday in November, in a country where most workers get no time off to vote, squares with our stated commitment to popular rule. And of course they see the deep taint of racism in the effective disenfranchisement, since about forever, of a very large share of the Black people living here, now numbering 42 million. As Malcolm X pointed out decades ago, it’s impossible to regard the United States as a nation of la…

Trend Watch: “Progressive Christian”

By Daniel Schultz

…he “progressive” label as relates to their faith, not just their politics. Most of those links go to the church world, not the activist. Second, my denomination – the United Church of Christ – is right in the thick of it. There might be some self-selecting bias going on here, but it sure seems like whenever people talk about progressive Christians, the UCC’s not more than a few steps away. Perhaps I’m wrong about that. I’d love to see examples fro…

Time to Face Facts: White Evangelicalism Has Always Been Right Wing

By Neil J. Young

…gelicals put their signatures to the Declaration, a group that consisted almo*]}*st entirely of white men. Some of those signatories, like Foy Valentine and Nancy Hardesty, soon distanced themselves from or entirely disavowed their evangelical identities, perhaps the surest evidence that attempts to marry political progressivism to theological conservatism could not succeed for most. Despite this history, Mouw’s mention of the Declaration as a milesto…

Tomorrow-Less Land

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…at away, and the system really does collapse. When rapacious quasi-capitalists start acting like there is no tomorrow, then that’s when it really hits the fan. That shift in temporal orientation actually destroys the system. And what we have witnessed in the last half-generation since Ronald Reagan first sold the rhetoric of Republican de-regulation and trust in free markets is just that: the death of tomorrow-thinking, under the pressure of the d…

Fighting (Over) Words: What is an Evangelical Feminist?

By Julie Ingersoll

…initial enthusiastic reception among conservative Republican voters is the most notable example of this. But to women who advocate the dismantling of patriarchy in favor of women’s equality, these efforts look a lot like the assertion that “some of my best friends are black.” Later this month the “girls” of tea party nation are meeting in St. Louis for the “Smart Girl Summit.” Honestly, when I first read about the leadership training for conservat…