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Repent, Hillary: Trump’s Evangelical Backers Play the Sin Card

By Hollis Phelps

…r House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who reported to prison this week to serve a 15-month sentence for financial crimes related to the alleged sexual abuse of minors, has apologized for past “transgressions.” Former GOP Representative Tom Delay has described Hastert as a man of “strong faith” and “great integrity.” “I know his heart and I have seen it up close and personal,” Delay wrote to the court in defense of Hastert. Returning to Graham, although…

Festivus, Atheist Santa, and the Invention of Blasphemy

By Anita Little

…n. Religious traditions die off if they don’t revive some sort of festival spirit. It’s happened throughout history: rituals get old, people reject them and then have to reinvest them with new energy. It’s not just diversifying and democratizing, there’s a certain narrative that we’ve bought into with Christmastime that has outlived its usefulness. There are a lot of creative possibilities coming out of this democratization of the Christmas season…

Quantum Theology: Our Spooky Interconnectedness

By Beatrice Marovich

…interest in transdisciplinary conversations. Perhaps theologians, pastors, spiritual leaders, people who are spiritually attuned to irreligious forms of creativity, will find some new ways to communicate about these things. But if science is left out of the mix, we will always be off in lala land. We need the incarnational practice of taking into account the most precise knowledge we can find, in the face of the mystery of our embodied existence….

Cue the Mad Swine: A Biblical Lesson for Republicans

By Peter Laarman

…ones,” reads the text. Without hesitating, Jesus first summons the unclean spirit to leave the poor man in peace, but the possessed one immediate shouts back, “What have you to do with me? I adjure you by God: Do not torment me.” When Jesus asks the man his name, he replies, “My name is Legion; for we (the demons) are many.” What’s more, Demon Man seems okay with his situation; in verse 10 he implores Jesus not to send his demons away. But the de…

Honey Boo Boo and the Sweet By and By

By Carrie Allen Tipton

…rasp the paradox of how this music can exert such a powerful aesthetic and spiritual hold over him (and by extension, over others) when its host culture opposes his ethical values on so many fronts. Writing himself visibly and self-consciously into the study allows for an empathetic, nuanced, yet honest rhetorical stance reminiscent of Randall Balmer’s tone in Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory. To mix religious metaphors, Harrison kicks a couple of sa…

Voodoo’s Quest for Respect

By Spencer Dew

…ikewise disturbing are two central practices: the sacrifice of animals and spirit possession. The former is bloody, the latter theatrical and sometimes violent, as dancing practitioners lapse into ritual trances and are “ridden” by loas from the Voodoo pantheon. Such acts strike many outsiders as “Satanic,” an inaccurate but nonetheless damaging label with which Voodoo is frequently plastered. Compounding the problem is Voodoo’s symbolism, promine…

Beyond Retribution: Bin Laden’s Death in its Cosmic Context

By Eric Reitan

…ies haven’t been redeemed. Crime and Punishment Let me explain. Back in the 1990s I was deeply involved with the Alternatives to Violence Project, an organization committed to offering experiential workshops, mainly in prisons, aimed at teaching nonviolent conflict resolution and communication skills, building communities of trust, and cultivating a spirit of nonviolence. Going into prisons as much as I did, my academic research naturally gravitat…

RDPulpit: Obama Missed the Hope in State of the Union Address

By Daniel Schultz

…the most muted of tones at the end of the speech, touching on Americans’ “spirit of determination and optimism” in the face of adversity. Prophetic speech must also recognize the power of language to “shape consciousness and define reality.” If the royal consciousness is be unseated, its control over our vocabulary must be contested, its largely unseen effects exposed. This is hardly a radical insight for those who have studied political struggle…

Anti-Gay Celebration in Uganda; Weddings in England; ‘Francis Effect’ at the Vatican

By Peter Montgomery

…thening the country’s anti-gay laws – which already have penalties of up to 15 years in prison – by spreading Scott Lively-like warnings about “the dangers posed to children by homosexuality.” Dr. Antonious Seyoum, an anti-gay evangelical preacher, is frequently quoted in the media. Southeast Asia: ‘Modest Signs of Change’ in ASEAN Countries Writing for The Diplomat, Kirsten Han looks at “modest signs of change” in the direction of LGBT acceptance…

Among the Problems with Trump’s Proposed Ban: Who is a Muslim?

By Michael Schulson

…sential, heritable, and inextricable. None of this is new, exactly. Between 1790 and 1952, because U.S. law barred naturalized citizenship to anyone who wasn’t white, courts often had to decide the race of citizenship seekers. In making that judgment for immigrants from the Middle East, Islam often came into play. “Religion has always served as a proxy for racial identity,” said Khaled Beydoun, a law professor at the University of Detroit Mercy wh…