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Rising Influence of New Apostolic Reformation Teachings is Ominous Sign For the US — Especially For LGBTQ Students

By Jonathon Sawyer

…millions more) in the United States and abroad. What’s more, NAR teachings about demons, and the urgent call for Christians to conquer culture are increasingly held by the larger evangelical world—even among non-Charismatic and non-Pentecostal communities. The NAR’s unique sense of paranoia about secular culture has mutated and spread to the broader Christian Right, a movement that was already preoccupied with the expansion of civil rights for gro…

Sex Comes For the Archbishop: Rembert Weakland’s Unflinching Memoir

By Mary E. Hunt

…, and insights into the struggles of some church officials to reconcile conscience with reality. It is about one man’s personal journey from working class Pennsylvania to the heights of ecclesial power. But it is also about the kind of scandal, moral and social, that can unmake a career. Reading Weakland’s account in the weeks after Senator Kennedy’s death, I could not help but make a connection between them: Weakland, like Kennedy, lived in the f…

Have White Evangelicals Finally Lost Control of the Narrative?

By Chrissy Stroop

…hey’re so concerned with controlling the stories the public hears not only about themselves, but also about those of us who leave evangelicalism and tell the truth about how it has harmed us, criticizing evangelical theology as well as the racism, misogyny, anti-LGBTQ animus, and culture-warring politics that theology bolsters. As evangelicals’ own story of engaging politically out of serious concerns about morality and “sincerely held religious b…

The Dangerous Fact About QAnon Believers That Reporters Fail to Grasp

By John Stoehr

…te of eggs and bacon, what they mean is punishing the weak. When they talk about their “liberty,” what they mean is their dominance. When they talk about their “traditional values,” what they mean is their control. A Times reporter can’t possibly know any of that. The problem is made worse when sources give voice to this or that conspiracy theory. She can’t know her sources aren’t delusional. She can’t know they aren’t crazy. She can’t know that c…

A Furious Sadness: Conversation with Christian Protester of Nazi-Saluting Trump Supporter

By Daniel Schultz

…f this was an effective time to start conversation: “What do you even like about this man? What are you defending? You’re better than this!” Which sounds so ridiculous now. Tell me about Birgitt Peterson. What were you feeling while you were talking with her? Initially I was feeling a little confused. The whole ends justifying the means. I was more okay with grown folks yelling at each other while some filed out of a building, than with us yelling…

Does Atheism Have a Misogyny Problem?

By Julia Galef

…anel discussion earlier that day—which he had attended—she had even spoken about misogyny in the atheist community and about her distaste for being objectified. It’s understandable, she added, that a woman might feel nervous at being propositioned by a stranger in an enclosed space where she can’t escape if need be. “Guys, don’t do that,” she urged. Watson’s complaint sparked a minor debate on various atheist and skeptic blogs, which then exploded…

The Bible Says… and Other Myths About Scripture

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…worthy of careful consideration when we endeavor to speak in general terms about the Bible. What kind of a book do we imagine when we speak of “the Bible”? Presumably we do not think of the long papyrus scrolls that constituted the original “books” in the Hebrew Bible. And we probably do not think of the richly-illuminated handwritten and leather-bound codices that early Christians began producing not long after the New Testament writings had been…

Unreasonable Doubt: Vincent Bugliosi Defends Agnosticism

By Eric Reitan

…sting sense of the word—is more than just an acknowledgment of uncertainty about God’s existence. It is a decision about how to respond in the face of that uncertainty. But, despite his promise to contribute something truly new to the God debates, Bugliosi treats agnosticism as nothing more than the recognition that when it comes to God’s existence, we just don’t know. One hardly needs a book to demonstrate that no one has a knock-down argument f…

But What About the Parents? New York Times Falls Into the Anti-Trans ‘Parents’ Rights’ Trap

By Chrissy Stroop

…ely also motivated by a variety of factors that may include valid concerns about whether their children will be safe, less valid concerns about how their child’s transition will reflect on and impact their family socially, and misdirected anger over a sense that they don’t know their own child (often projected as insistence that they know the child better than the child knows themself). “Parents know better” was, of course, one of the rallying cri…

‘Leaving is Never So Simple as Stepping Over a Line’ — A Conversation with the Author of ‘Rift,’ a New Memoir on Christian Patriarchy

By Audrey Clare Farley

…until my wedding night. Even kissing was forbidden. I held a lot of shame about my body and sexuality, dissociating much of my life to avoid thinking about my body. When I moved out at the age of 25, I experienced panic attacks during sexual experiences, not understanding how I’d been affected. I now see abuse as tied to my sexuality and how I perceive myself as a sexual being. I think it can be called sexual abuse. Many survivors like me experie…