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The Suppression of Sin in Evangelical Abolitionism: The Wilberforce Problem

By Jonathan D. Fitzgerald

…ted slaves, he had little sympathy for the nascent labor movement at home. Today, as the abolition of modern slavery has become a favorite cause among young evangelicals, Wilberforce has become something of a hero to them; thanks in no small part to a 2006 biopic, Amazing Grace. As the new abolitionism enters the evangelical mainstream, however, it’s clear that his sin-suppressing instincts remain alive and well. Slavery becomes conflated in evang…

The Year in Religion: A Ray of Hope Amid the Usual Fecklessness

By Peter Laarman

…r now ending — a response much too fixated on the epiphenomenon, as though today’s naked expressions of white nationalism can somehow be separated from the longer career of white supremacy. Making a show of their ethical colors, liberal faith leaders have organized and participated in routinized rituals of personal purification that do absolutely nothing to make the slightest dent in structural oppression. Not all, of course: to say that would be…

Why America’s Whitewashed Thanksgiving Needs to Go: A Short Study in the Power of White Christian Mythmaking

By Peter Laarman

…am harping on it because I was seduced by the legend, and I repent myself today for letting myself get sucked in. Two decades ago I was knocked out by Kevin Phillips’ The Cousins’ War, in which Phillips draws out common themes and common threads among the English Civil War, the American Revolution, and our own Civil War. The “good guys” throughout are all Pilgrims, so to speak: doughty English revolutionaries—religious Dissenters, close spiritual…

Virginia Mollenkott: Warrior in the Battle for Evangelical Acceptance of Gays (1932-2020)

By Anne Linstatter

…tian lives saved by this groundbreaking book,” comments Christian Feminism Today on its website. An earlier book, Women, Men, and the Bible, attracted widespread attention in 1977, giving hope to women raised in conservative denominations that required women’s submission to men. Mollenkott spoke at two of the first conferences of evangelical feminists: one in 1973 at Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver and another in 1975 to the newly founded E…

Why The Book of Mormon (the Musical) is Awesomely Lame

By Jared Farmer

…xt—proof of Smith’s prophetic powers—was more important than its contents. Today, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emphasizes scripture reading more than ever; but even now, Mormonism is not primarily about the Book of Mormon. This sacred text would indeed be a strange foundation for a religion. It’s a convoluted, quasi-historical chronology of prehistoric America, a narrative summary of men with arcane names (fathers, warriors, gen…

Herd Heroism in an Age of Rebels: The Cultural Roots of the Anti-Vaxxer Movement

By Michael Schulson

…industrial complex for their well-being, my children will not. Few parents today have seen pertussis or measles firsthand. As Eula Biss points out, it’s easier to oppose vaccines when you have no real concept of the diseases they’re intended to prevent. Similarly, few of us probably have much of a concept of what happens when, say, Neal Beagley refuses treatment for a bladder obstruction. The answer—that backed-up urine ruptures the kidneys and en…

The People’s Temple, the Black Church, and the Tragic Legacy of Jonestown

By Anita Little

…sed visibility of the black atheist community. Is that growth we’re seeing today influenced by the way the Bible was historically used to justify the degradation of black people? I absolutely think that is the motivation for many African-American nonbelievers. That the whole Curse of Ham lore, the justification of slavery, the justification of rape and commodification of black women’s bodies— all of that plays a big role in the embrace of atheism…

Merry Kitzmas! Marking An Evolutionary Victory

By Lauri Lebo

…a lot of people about the significance of evolution and how it got us here today. More importantly, it seems to have engaged the science education community to develop ways to address the teaching of evolution more directly. Today, evolution education has gained prominence with a host of new teaching programs. Certainly in the case of Dover, teachers in the school district there were timid about teaching the subject, fearing it would offend the Ch…

The Divorce Rate Is Falling. Shouldn’t That Mean the Sky Isn’t?

By Sarah Posner

…han same-sex marriage will ever do.” (UPDATE: Mohler addresses the article today in his daily podcast, The Briefing.) But what if marriage, overall, isn’t on the rocks because of the so-called “divorce culture,” but is actually more stable precisely because of the very factors the Christian right frequently points to as causes of the “decline” of marriage: feminism, the broadening of reproductive rights and options, and cohabitation? Miller explai…

A Neoconservative Jesus, Certified Kosher

By Ira Chernus

…the forces of light must now preserve civilization itself. In the face of today’s problems—“financial crisis, decline of our values, the deterioration of the family, rampant greed and materialism… terror and war”—the only way to overcome our “hopelessness” and “fear” is to “return to the values and principles that define us. The Jewish Jesus I have laid out before you embodies these Judeo-Christian values.” In Boteach’s Rohrschach test, the Jews,…