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Fight the Power: How to Read, and Re-Read, the Book of Revelation

…il power embodied in the great beast. But other Christians have said to me today, “Well, this book is a prophesy against empire and it shouldn’t be appropriated by the powers that be.” This book is a book of rebellion. It’s a book of challenge to the people in power, and that is the way it has been understood in very powerful movements in this country. If we were going to reinterpret this text today, if Christianity is in the American sense, in th…

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Statement on NAR & Christian Nationalism Answers Few Questions But Exposes Growing Rifts in the Movement

…ttera himself has been a central figure in creating the Christian Right of today. He was one of 150 signers of the Manhattan Declaration in 2009, along with other evangelical leaders, Christian Right activists, 50 sitting prelates of the Roman Catholic Church and a few Orthodox and Mormons. This manifesto established a three-point common political agenda for the Christian Right: “Life, Marriage, and Religious Liberty.” Mattera also served on the “…

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When Nazi Comparisons are “Civil”

…igins of Totalitarianism, which he called “prophetic in its application to today.” Indeed the Manhattan Declaration itself, dressed up as a celebration of “life,” hauls out the trope that abortion is like genocide or holocaust, and claims that LGBT rights infringe on (real) Christians’ religious freedom. In his video released in conjunction with the Manhattan Declaration, Colson called the Declaration “crucially important for religious liberty,” a…

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Regnerus Ducks Responsibility for Study’s Misuse

…—something the study unequivocally does NOT provide. In fact, Christianity Today gave him a perfect opening to tell people to stop misrepresenting his findings, and he ducked it: What would you say to religious and political groups that promote traditional marriage and want to use the NFSS results to “prove” that parenting by same-sex couples is damaging to children? I am neither a theologian nor politically oriented, so I wouldn’t presume to tell…

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Workers Once Forced the Social Gospel Into Churches—Can It Happen Again?

…ge, official church statements of support for organized labor were scarce. Today, many denominations have such statements and they could be used to hold clergy and laity alike accountable in the midst of labor disputes. Given that rates of religious affiliation vastly outstrip support for unions among Americans today, there is ample room for such accountability. One other constant bears mention here: because church life in America operates on a vo…

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Restoring Dignity: The Employee Free Choice Act

…abor movement is solidly progressive. It has been the biggest single force promoting universal, government-supported health care coverage, protecting Social Security from Wall Street privatizers, and advancing a green jobs/green energy future. But that’s not all. The racist, jingoist, homophobic, misogynistic movement of American labor’s worst years—the George Meany/Lane Kirkland years—is long dead and buried. Today’s labor leadership is solidly a…

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With Christian Schools At Risk In Israel, Crickets from American Christian Conservatives

…tained that “we are witnessing that kind of growing repression in the U.S. today and it is fostering or at least giving rise to the spread of the persecution of Christians and religious minorities around the world.” If requiring health insurance for contraception is a “massive violation” of the rights of Christians, what is starving their schools of funding? In a letter promoting Family Research Council’s first-ever tour of Israel scheduled for th…

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Why America’s Whitewashed Thanksgiving Needs to Go: A Short Study in the Power of White Christian Mythmaking

…am harping on it because I was seduced by the legend, and I repent myself today for letting myself get sucked in. Two decades ago I was knocked out by Kevin Phillips’ The Cousins’ War, in which Phillips draws out common themes and common threads among the English Civil War, the American Revolution, and our own Civil War. The “good guys” throughout are all Pilgrims, so to speak: doughty English revolutionaries—religious Dissenters, close spiritual…

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The New God-Fearers (FKA “The Nones”) and Where to Find Them

…aware there are two distinct constituencies within the range of his voice. Today we’d call them churchgoers and Nones. But should we? “Nones” is a slippery, amorphous term, a null set. Maybe we’d do better to dust off the old God-fearer moniker, and apply it to those who are still coloring outside the religious lines as Lydia once did. American Christianity—especially its mainline Protestant variety—has largely forgotten how to seek out and visit…

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Sacred&Profane: ARIS Survey Gets ‘Religion’, Misses Boat

…see how religious practices and commitments emanate from unlikely sources today: science and the pursuit of truth; music and the social ecstasy of concerts; violence and the glorification of warfare; celebrity worship and technological wonders; heroic doctors and evil villains; funereal spectacles and sexual compulsions; the Super Bowl and sacrificed soldiers; Elvis and drugs, both legal and illegal. These and other areas of fascination and fixat…

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