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Turn on the News: Some Abortion Opponents May Opt For a New Vaccine, But Behind Their Skepticism it’s Often a Different Story — of Disinformation, Conspiratorial Thinking, and White Nationalism

By Daniel Schultz

…viewing requests for religious exemptions to vaccination, has a lot to say about how conscience has become privatized, and what that means for vaccination. I think this part gets at the overlap of religion and conspiracy thinking: [The claims Zoloth reviewed] often had a fantastic or magic quality. People worried about the calcification of their pineal gland, or interference with their auras, or a disruption of a natural order given by God or gods…

America’s National Conversation about Christianity is ‘Fundamentally Unserious’ — But Not in the Way You Think

By Chrissy Stroop

…has made them accustomed to being coddled, so they consider a conversation about Christianity “unserious” if those who have objections to things like Christian proselytizing are heard at all. In fact, the opposite is true. If we want to have a serious conversation about Christianity in the United States, we must consider the ways in which Christian hegemony harms others, including through its normalization of Christian extremism. Instead of system…

Prison as Resurrection

By Caleb Smith

…gly, a scene where we have rehearsed some of our most cherished fantasies: about the individual’s capacity to remake himself or herself through discipline, about a society’s power to remake itself through humanitarian reforms. Is there anything you had to leave out? There is a vast, rich archive of writing about prisons in America, much of it written from inside the walls, and I was only able to present a few examples. When I look back over the ch…

What the Danish Cartoon Controversy Tells Us About Religion, the Secular, and the Limits of the Law

By Winnifred Fallers Sullivan

…ide a road to a renewed progressive politics. But anthropology is not just about translating other cultures. It is also about understanding what Asad calls “the modern secular condition we all inhabit.” The sameness is as important as the difference. Asad and Mahmood each show us a different sameness than the sameness of the secular liberal order. And it has a very long history. Returning for a moment to the case of the Danish cartoons, consider a…

Pence Amendment not Just About Abortion, but About Thwarting Contraception

By Sarah Posner

…ho is “part of a growing movement of conservative Christians in the social sciences seeking to reimagine social relations through the lens of their distinctive faith.” These views are not just touted in remote outposts of conservative religious movements; although elected officials and organizational leaders won’t be blunt about it, they offer no other explanation as to why they won’t support contraception, which prevents unintended pregnancies an…

What the Lost Finale is Really About

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…and shakes them up. The “explanation” for the show is not what the show is about. Analyzing the symbols, connecting the dots, the numerology, the philosopher-characters, may or may not amount to the right answers. Finding the code might give answers, but not faith. Faith exists only when there is still doubt; it is born and thrives with questions. What Lost is Finally About (no spoilers) Every time I have watched Lost over the past six seasons, Jo…

The Wounded People of God

By Anthea Butler

…y, well, I just can’t be nice. As a matter of fact, I am righteously angry about it. Maybe for those who have critiqued my tone, it’s also about a woman’s voice being in the mix. Lord knows there aren’t women in the Vatican hierarchy who could provide a balance to the high male clericalism. I also doubt anyone is telling Christopher Hitchens to tone it down. Besides, it is important to remember that many other Catholics are hurt deeply by this. It…

Days of Reckoning for the Philadelphia Archdiocese

By Anthea Butler

…context has bishops, including Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia, ranting about religious freedom and birth control, while not giving a damn about the children who have been repeatedly raped and abused in their care. I can no longer sit back and criticize the Church without asking a big question: For those of you who stay, how can you do it? How can you sit under such perfidy? Here’s why I ask. I walked into Old St. Joseph’s church in Philadelphi…

The ‘Fake Christian’ Deflection and Contrarian Concern Trolling: How Not to Write about Evangelical Authoritarianism

By Chrissy Stroop

…not white supremacism or patriarchy we should be worrying our little heads about, you see. No, no. It’s the tragic corporatization of evangelical churches that really matters. According to Hinch, ordinary evangelicals aren’t people moved by deep-seated cultural grievances tied to the ugliest elements of American history. Heavens no. They’re simply regular folks who go to church because, just like you and me, they need relief from “the challenges o…

Open Carry Racism: The Right Wing Fever Dream that Predates Trump

By Jason C. Bivins

…. But as Birtherism grew, what increasingly stitched together its concerns about birthrights and freedoms, about wrong religions and national identity—and especially about race—was guns. The fear was that Obama’s thugs would come first for our guns, to prevent good citizens from righteous revolt once the real attacks on Christianity began. Armed white citizens appearing in public came partly to define the Obama era and the resurfacing of aggressiv…