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Trump’s Rise: What’s a Christian Progressive to Do?

By Jonathan Orbell

…ere mortality increased most heavily—West Virginia, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Arkansas—are precisely the same states where Trump achieves the strongest support. Some of us feel a moral impulse to condemn the ugly sentiments at work in the Trump camp. But we have to keep the broader structural realities in mind—deindustrialization, an unequal economy recovery, the dissolution of the middle class. A look at Trump’s mos…

Compassion for AZ Shooter?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…s still unclear. It’s not like the shooter who opened fire in a Knoxville, Tennessee Unitarian Universalist Church. He had books by Sean Hannity and other right-wing talkers in his possession and was clear he was out to kill liberals. The motives here are not so clear – but what is clear is that the tenor of our national dialogue is toxic and dangerous. No matter the motive, the outcome is the same – the shootings strike fear in all our hearts, an…

Paul Crouch, Architect of Prosperity Gospel Televangelism, Dead at 79

By Sarah Posner

…and self-dealing.” The luxuries included a “former Conway Twitty estate in Tennessee, corporate jets valued at $8 million and $49 million each and thousand-dollar dinners with fine wines, paid with tax-exempt money.” The network has repeatedly denied Koper’s allegations, and has claimed it was Koper who stole money from the network. Koper’s sister, Carra Crouch, also sued the network, claiming her family covered up her rape by a TBN employee when…

Op-Ed: Liberal Hatred

By Laurie Patton

On July 27, Jim D. Adkisson walked into the Unitarian Church in Knoxville Tennessee, where children were performing the play “Annie,” and opened fire. I can’t imagine what it might have been like to be a child in the church that day. A summer of learning and theater descended in a single second into violence and death. When the shooting began, some were so incredulous as to think it was part of the play. Mr. Adkisson had left a letter in his car…

The Heart of Texas Ain’t Hateful: An Open Letter to Lawmakers From a Texan Trans Queer Latinx

By Robyn Henderson-Espinoza

…gious beliefs.” HB 3856 and its Senate companion, SB 2096, take a cue from Tennessee and seek to allow counselors and licensed mental health professionals the right to refuse treatment to those in need who somehow offend the therapist’s “sincerely held religious belief.” HB 3859, which passed the House on Wednesday, would allow adoption and child-welfare agencies, including those that contract with the state, to refuse to serve prospective parents…

When Religious Disagreement Seems the Least of Our Problems: The Future for “Interfaith” in a Divided Society

By Michael Schulson

…h grade self would have digested Patel’s larger message. I grew up in east Tennessee, one of perhaps a dozen Jews in a school of more than a thousand kids. My sister and I were the most visibly Jewish kids there. Interfaith work was part of our lives, whether we liked it or not. To be honest, by the end of high school, formal interfaith interaction was the last thing that I wanted. The tokenizing had become more exhausting than the occasional anti…

What We Actually Mean By ‘Sacrifice’ During the Pandemic Makes All the Difference

By Matthew J. Walsh

…ly well-armed) minority of Americans espouse in these troubling times. One Tennessee protest poster gained notoriety for its appropriation of the rhetoric of sacrifice, stating plainly that we should “Sacrifice the weak”. These lock-down protests highlight their profound lack of community concern which invalidates any notion that the inconveniences most of us face are anything remotely approaching real ‘sacrifices’. On the contrary, those dissenti…

Found in Translation: How a Thirteenth-Century Islamic Poet Conquered America

By Ryann Croken

…nce of Barks’ accomplishment cannot be overstated. Barks, a white man from Tennessee, doesn’t speak or read a lick of Persian, and this fact both complicates and facilitates his ability to make a historically accurate Rumi accessible to mainstream America. A poet himself, Barks “re-Englishes” existing translations, releasing, in his own words, “the fire and ecstasy of Rumi’s ghazals” from the stale confines of their scholarly translations. But bec…

The Car Wreck that is Sarah Palin and the National Day of Prayer

By Welton Gaddy

…n as she shouts, “Reload.” Palin has thrown what we used to call in West Tennessee “a conniption fit” over the federal judge’s decision that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional. While many of us applauded a judge who seems to understand the First Amendment’s religion clauses, some political pontificators and bandwagon religionists rushed to microphones to decry the further moral ruination of the nation. Setting aside all Constitutio…

Protesters in Washington DC, the day before the January 6 insurrection, wrapped in American flags blow shofars.

Netanyahu’s Genocidal Religious Rhetoric isn’t Just an Appeal to the Israeli Right — He Has Another Constituency in Mind

By Brock Bahler

…w, while 55% of Americans as a whole have a favorable view of Israel, that number jumps to 80% among White evangelicals. And further, among evangelicals who support Israel, up to 50% have suggested End Times prophecies are part of their motivation. There are surely some whose uncritical support of Israel is motivated by End Times prophecies, though there’s significant disagreement on that point. What I would argue instead is that Christian Zionist…