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Why It’s Heresy to Read the Bible Literally: An Interview with John Shelby Spong

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ntroversial. I don’t like being controversial. I get abused a lot in mail, phone calls and that sort of thing. I don’t enjoy that. But, if you are controversial in the public arena, the people who have given up on Christianity say, “My God, there must be something more to this story than I realized.” So, being controversial is my doorway to the generation of my own children. “The primary issue in the Christian church today is to get away from orig…

The ‘Evolving’ Story of Teacher Who Burned Cross into Student’s Arm

By Lauri Lebo

…when Mr. Freshwater burned a cross onto the arm of our child. This was done in science class in December 2007, where an electric shock machine was used to burn our child.” Dennis sighs on the phone when she thinks back on the past two years. “It’s changed our lives,” she said. “But I think we just had to do what’s right for our son. He was wronged.”…

“Reason to Worry”: An Anti-Semitism Scholar Opens Up on Trump, Misogyny and the Future of Anti-Judaism

By Michael Schulson

…s a dean and a professor of history at the University of Chicago. Over the phone, he spoke with RD about Twitter, Trump, and the parallels between anti-Judaism and misogyny. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. When you see American Jews acting surprised about the recent surge in anti-Jewish rhetoric, do you think “Oh, how hopelessly short-sighted of them”? Quite the contrary. I am myself surprised. I’ve had discussions with peop…

Can You Make a Comedy About UFO Cult Mass Suicide?

By Joseph Laycock

…uyana). Funny stuff, right? Satire about religion is a double-edged sword. American popular culture has long been fascinated with cults. After the Heaven’s Gate suicide, Family Guy as well as the comedy Road Trip (2000) poked fun at the mass suicide meme. By portraying cult leaders as suicidal maniacs and cult members as helpless losers, these comedies reinforced a distinction between healthy, “normal” religion and deviant “cult” religion. Basical…

Romney Had No Clue as to Obama Ground Game

By Joanna Brooks

…n Ohio. And eavesdropped on an Obama canvasser. I mean, I spent 45 minutes phone-banking the parking garage of a lowly San Diego field office with four children under nine years old hopped up on Doritos and doing laps around my folding chair, and even under those suboptimal circumstances I could tell right away that Obama’s data was even better than it was in 2008 and that there was hardcore focus on the 18- to 29-year-old set. And, mind you, I’m…

Terror In South Carolina

By Sarah Posner

…more than a church.” It is “a place of worship that was founded by African Americans seeking liberty” and “a sacred place in the history of Charleston and in the history of America.” Yet, as Obama noted, Emanuel, like other black churches, has been the target of violence, not just last night, but throughout its history. In an excellent essay at TPM, Benjamin Park writes about how black churches have long “served as a flashpoint for hatred from tho…

Where are the Clergy? A Report from Occupy DC

By Sarah Posner

…ide. Others emerging from the Starbucks across the street, talking on cell phones or carrying laptops. Conversations on the park’s benches. For a city accustomed to itinerant protesters, a population glued to mobile devices, as well as the homeless sleeping in the shadows of the halls of power, it quite possibly looked like any other day in the heart of the nation’s capital. That passersby appeared to ignore the protesters was appropriate: Occupy…

U.S. Religious Right Groups Support Move Toward ‘Illiberalism’ of Hungary and Poland; and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Montreal in August. A new international coalition, the Global LGBTQI Francophone Initiative” is in the process of coming together and working together “to end governmental and societal repression of sexual and gender minorities.” A U.S. vote against a United Nations resolution condemning the death penalty for “same-sex relations” and other acts provoked widespread outrage, leading U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley to tweet, “Fact: There was…

How (and Why) A Determined Sit-In Worked

By Daniel Schultz

…’ offices pretty much go directly in the trash. They pay more attention to phone calls and letters, but street protests don’t bother them at all, unless they’re on cable news, which they almost never are. Hashtags? Changing your Twitter avatar? Forget about it. Popular protest does play a supporting role in getting us to a point where something like the Congressional sit-in works. So do the organizations—including the religious groups—who sponsor…

A Sacred Encounter with Erykah Badu’s Controversial Nude Video

By Tamura Lomax

…, “I was thinking about going down there and whoopin’ her…but I was on the phone with the police, too…I called the police…I was very offended. There were too many kids, women, and children down there.” While I am sure that Lewis was concerned about Badu’s nudity in front of the other “women and children,” I imagine she was equally uneasy about the implications of reproducing the violence of slavocracy in a post Civil War society. In short, not onl…