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Dieting, Sex, Jesus: The Body as Moral Battleground

…had been engaged in fat activist community, conversation, and action for a number of years and I wanted to take the opportunity that academic work provides to really hone in on questions that always engaged me: how has fatness come to have such a potent moral charge in American culture? Why do weight loss practices such as dieting generate such strong moral and religious feelings—and why do people use languages of virtue and vice, sin and salvatio…

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The Resurgence of Right-Wing Anti-Semitic Conspiracism Endangers All Justice Movements

…t the white nationalist ideology that inspired him is also implicated in a number of other recent attacks, including the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October, the killing of 49 Muslim worshippers last month in New Zealand, and the 2015 murder of nine African-American Christian worshippers in Charleston, South Carolina. In Earnest’s twisted worldview, “every Jew is responsible for the meticulously planned genocide of the European race,” and he…

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6 Overlooked Takeaways From a Reviewer of Controversial Texas Textbooks

…es patterns of imbalance, in the textbooks. While these problems spanned a number of religious traditions, I will discuss two representative examples, Christianity and Islam—the two religions about which the most heat was generated in the textbook debate. 5. Pro-Christian, Anti-Muslim Slant As I mentioned in item 1, the curriculum standards (TEKS) promote Christianity over other religions. Sadly, I found a similar pro-Christian slant in many world…

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‘Cult’ Is an Inaccurate, Unhelpful and Dangerous Label for Followers of Trump, QAnon, and 1/6

…desired collective salvation. On January 6, 2021, it probably seemed to a number of participants and supporters in the Euro-American Nativist Millennial Movement that they had finally achieved the critical mass of adherents to overthrow Congress. There are many varieties of millennialism. As I wrote in The Oxford Handbook of Millennialism: “A nativist millennial movement consists of people who feel under attack by a foreign colonizing government…

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Is Army’s New “Humanist” Designation Just Semantic Hooey?

…ounseling and gathering spaces for Humanist groups. It also means that the numbers and distribution of Humanists in the military can be tracked along with those of other religious groups, potentially inviting a reshaping of the military chaplaincy, which critics complain is inappropriately weighted in favor of Christian, and specifically Evangelical Christian, denominations.  A study by the Military Association of Atheist and Freethinkers (MAAF)—t…

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Response to Daniel Philpott: the Politics of Religious Freedom

…learning from our colleagues and exploring these complex histories over a number of years, we have found that religious liberty is not a single, stable principle existing outside of history, as it is often depicted (particularly in policy circles in North America and Europe and by many academics invested in promoting religious freedom). It is, rather, an inescapably context-bound, polyvalent concept unfolding within divergent histories in differi…

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“Can You Tell Me Who The Villains Are?”: Rock and Religion, Irish-Style

…She feels examined by their eyes Is she right or is she wrong? She’s got a number in her pocket And one change of clothes Her innocence is fading Like last years winter snow’s Light a candle in the window So she can see it from the road With all the loving in your heart Welcome her back home. The Docs’ keening for a fallen innocent seems all too prescient, given the recent negotiations over revelations of priestly sexual abuse of both girls and bo…

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Religious Leaders Need ‘Empty the Pews’ Which Chronicles the Darker Side of the ‘Nones’ Phenomenon

…stical data on Nones, compiled by the sociologist Ryan Burge—and a growing number of books exploring the narrative stories of Nones have appeared in recent years, including a book of my own. Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church Chrissy Stroop and Lauren O’Neal Epiphany Publishing November 29, 2019 What many of these articles and books share in common is a sense of confusion or despair. The primary question they ask is often framed in the…

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The 50 Shades of Evangelicalism

…evolution is incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” a significant number of evangelicals are working to convince their fellow believers of their compatibility. Their efforts are evident in the increasing number of books, conferences, and organizations—such as Francis Collins’ BioLogos—that have formed around the topic. Cracks are likewise showing in what once was understood as a unanimous and uncritical evangelical support of Israel as ep…

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My Womb for His Purposes: The Perils of Unassisted Childbirth in the Quiverfull Movement

…the babies” themselves, both saving money and demonstrating their faith. A number of Quiverfull families follow a similar arc (as had Garrison) graduating from conventional hospital births—often where mothers felt pushed into a birth plan they didn’t desire—to midwife-assisted births at home, to the final challenge of unattended home births. It’s a logical extreme of the movement whose naturalistic bent actually overlaps with the back-to-the-land,…

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