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Battlestar Galactica and the Future of American Religion

By Nick Street

…n cults that birthed the Western theatrical tradition holds any lesson for American Catholicism, mainline Protestantism and the other traditional religious institutions that are shedding members—and isn’t it delightful to think that it might?—it’s that the interplay between inspiration and the forms of religious practice and observance must always be fluid. Imposing a sober orthodoxy on rituals intended to pierce the veil that separates the mundan…

American Christmas (Shopping) and the Protestant Reformation

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…iness. So, Roman Catholics leave the Baby Jesus out of the manger, whereas American Protestants seem especially obsessed with that symbol of primal innocence. And American Protestants leave the Crucified Christ off of the Cross, which must mean something too… Consider what constituted the real heart of the religious reforms central to the Protestant Reformation. No holy water, no incense, no painting, no statues, no saints, no relics, no monasteri…

I Want a Perfect Body

By Jeremy Biles

…godliness. The idea that “fit bodies… signify fitter souls” permeates the American consciousness with anxiety about the body while shaping beliefs about beauty. Today, as Zed Nelson wants to show in his work, the forces of globalization have propelled the American conception of the perfect body into the world at large, where it has merged with and inflected traditional Western ideals of beauty. Nelson writes, “The promise of bodily improvement is…

The Uses and Abuses of the Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…m the popular narrative. King’s legacy has been appropriated in service to American exceptionalism and Christian supremacy. In essence, to be a real Christian and real American is to be like the mythic King. In the years after King’s assassination, his opponents (and some allies) were relegated to the category of the “scribes and Pharisees.” Useful props to deploy to demonstrate the superiority of King’s approach of nonviolent resistance and integ…

In Qur’an Burning We’re All Losers

By Julie Ingersoll

…Hindu” by Prema Kurien. Yet the aftermath of 9/11 has made the process of Americanization different for American Muslims. What, months ago, Sarah called the utter ordinariness of demeaning Islam has turned into full-blown, ugly bigotry (and that includes both Qur’an burnings as well as efforts around the country to prohibit the building of mosques). Today my friend and colleague Parvez Ahmed, who has, himself, been attacked by anti-Muslim activis…

Crossing the Rubicon? Mar-a-Lago Raid Enflames Right Wing Fantasies of Christian Caesarism

By Annika Brockschmidt & Thomas Lecaque

…ere somehow, and if these guys don’t have a better plan… The Caesarism the American Right dreams of is neo-fascism. What they’re after, of course, is not a real Caesar—this is nostalgia for a Rome that never existed, a mythical Constantine at best. What they’re after is a new Mussolini; an American one. A Christofascist dictator with stars and stripes behind him, Bible in hand—a Caesar in the White House. The idea that all that’s needed for the US…

In a Powerful Statement Black Presidents and Deans Say: No More Stolen Black Lives!

By Pamela R. Lightsey

…hool of Divinity Terri Laws, PhD, Assistant Professor, African and African American Studies, University of Michigan-Dearborn Randall C. Bailey, PhD, Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, Interdenominational Theological Center Lee H. Butler, Jr., PhD, Distinguished Service Professor of Theology and Psychology, Chicago Theological Seminary Rev. Dominique A. Robinson, DMin, Dean of Chapel & Assistant Professor of Religion, Wiley College Rev. Stephanie M…

The Myth of ‘Voodoo’: A Caribbean American Response to Representations of Haiti

By Dianne M. Stewart

…d’s good nature is reflected in the slave trade, what was the Devil up to? American ignorance of Vodou beliefs and practices aside, I am befuddled by Robertson’s lack of reflection on what his tall tale of Haiti’s unpaved road to hell inevitably registers about the nature of the Christian God. Where was the almighty Christian God when Haiti’s founding patriots and defenders of human liberty allegedly “swore a pact to the devil?” There is something…

“You Lie!”: Messing with American Mass

By Ben Brazil

…a long way towards explaining the outrage felt by legislators and by many Americans. The president was not speaking to a labor union in Ohio or to teachers in Florida—he was speaking to a joint session of Congress, a ritualized setting that invokes all the sacredness of the democratic government of the United States of America. Americans tend to watch such speeches together—as families, in restaurants, in bars. For a few moments, a significant po…

If the Media Are Reluctant to Properly Label the GOP’s Racist, Christian Nationalist Ideologies, We’ll Have Trouble Hanging on to Democracy

By Annika Brockschmidt

…le to be independent.” The statement that mainly focusing on the threat to American democracy as a news organization would make it “partisan” is bizarre—and a result of the media’s fetishization of “bipartisanship,” long after it has ceased to exist, because Republicans have refused to engage in regular politics within the bounds of democracy. If being “partisan” when it comes to the existence of democracy is a problem for news organizations, they…