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COVID-Denying Father Sergei is Just the Latest Example of the Russian Orthodox Church’s ‘Holy Man’ Problem

By Katherine Kelaidis

…storically deferred to the spiritual father with respect to a lay member’s participation and standing in the Church. It is traditionally, therefore, your spiritual father who acts as the first and most important gatekeeper to such central practices as Holy Communion, marriage, and ordination. The Orthodox Church has among its clergy both monastics and married men. Married priests are forbidden from the episcopate and have historically served as pa…

Was Alexander Hamilton Jewish? Does it Matter?

By Andrew Porwancher

…merica. In the wake of the Revolution that Hamilton waged alongside fellow patriots—both Gentile and Jew—the new republic confronted a momentous question: Would the radical promise of equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence now translate into democratic realities? A number of politicians sought to withhold the prerogatives of citizenship from Jews, from the courthouse to the ballot box. Against these forces of antisemitism, Alexander…

Mike Johnson’s Porn-Monitoring isn’t Just ‘Creepy’ — it’s a Window to the Fascist Desire Driving the White Evangelical Will to Power

By Jessica Johnson

…for Intimacy, by Dr. William Struthers, which describes the dreaded “porn path”: “Like a path is created in the woods with each successive hiker, so do the neural paths set the course for the next time an erotic image is viewed. Over time these neural paths become wider as they are repeatedly traveled with each exposure to pornography. They become the automatic pathway through which interactions with women are routed. The neural circuitry anchors…

The Inauguration’s Beautiful Call for Unity Was Undermined by the Invocation of Religion

By Andrew L. Seidel

…ul office in the history of the world. We are celebrating the triumph of empathy over cruelty. But while I believe that Biden’s empathy extends to atheists, agnostics, nonreligious Americans, and non-Christian Americans, it did not feel like it today. We should not make the mistake of thinking that rhetoric about unity will serve to unite us or that prayers for unity will substitute for work. Biden is absolutely correct that “unity is the path for…

Does Biden’s Inauguration Signal a ‘Third Reconstruction’?

By John Stoehr

…n what Barber calls a mass social movement of “fusion politics”—to fulfill partially the first principle of the United States enshrined in the Declaration of Independence in which everyone is created equal. The results included the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. Then came the Second Reconstruction during the postwar years when, again, white people and Black people came together to fulfill partially that same promise. The results included the 1964…

How Do You Beat a ‘Pretty Damning’ Impeachment Case? You Lie

By John Stoehr

…, according to Blake. That raises an interesting question for a democratic republic such as ours. If the Republicans have gone blind to the truth because they want to go blind to the truth, how on earth are Democratic impeachment managers supposed to get them to see? The Democrats presented and will continue to present a pretty damning political case demanding Trump’s disqualification from holding public office. How do you beat a pretty damning po…

Have White Evangelicals Finally Lost Control of the Narrative?

By Chrissy Stroop

…l as adultery. Mohler wants us to empathize with how “difficult” it is for parents, pastors, and youth pastors to teach about “a healthy sexuality” within those heteronormative, paranoid strictures—and I guess I’ll grant him that, because there’s no such thing as a healthy sexuality based in repression and alternative facts. He also scolds Skidmore College religious studies professor Bradley Onishi, an Asian-American ex-evangelical, for describing…

Times’ Link of NOI With Capitol Killer is Based on Flawed Comparison Between Rightwing Christian Nationalism and Black Religious Nationalism

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…enet of the group is to follow the laws of the land because enslavement is part of a divine plan. In a recent biography on Malcolm X, The Dead are Arising by Les and Tamara Payne, the authors note most violence carried out by members of the NOI is within the context of intragroup skirmishes that took the life of Malcolm X or between opposing African-American Islamic sects such as the Hanafi massacre of 1973. Neither of these qualifies as a call fo…

Claiming That ‘We Birthed a Nation From Nothing’ CNN’s Rick Santorum Gives a Master Class in Christian Nationalism: An Open Letter to CNN

By Andrew L. Seidel

…want religious freedom, they wanted a government that would enforce their particularly stringent brand of Christianity. So they fled Leiden and came to North America. They fled religious freedom so they could establish theocratic enclaves in the wilderness. The same can be said of the Puritans, who regularly banished and even executed people over theological disagreements. This is not freedom, but religious tyranny. This historical myth-making ab…

Will the Taliban Actually Remain Somewhat Moderate This Time?

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…hot. At the end, the Taliban simply marched into Kabul and took over. This patient pattern of negotiation and coalition-building, however, has changed the Taliban. Although the movement continues to give voice to the extremist Islamic ideology for which it is justly infamous, it has also tempered its talk, in part to mollify its coalition partners. It remains to be seen if their support will be dropped as soon as the Taliban has secured its hold o…