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Australian Church Leaders See Marriage Vote as Battle for Soul of Australia: Global LGBT Recap 10/30

By Peter Montgomery

…wn in America) began consecrating gay bishops. “This dispute is not really about homosexuality,” Archbishop Peter Jensen assured me at the time. “It’s really about authority and who runs the church. And fairly clearly, to most of the rest of us, God runs the church through the Bible.” So, no poofters. Marr notes that the Christian Federation lists “militant homosexuality” along with “militant Islam,” “militant atheism” and “hedonism” as “four majo…

Following Republican Playbook, German Conservatism Breaks the Post-WWII Taboo

By Annika Brockschmidt

…o Die Welt has comically named “chief freedom reporter,” tweeted gushingly about Milei’s politics, claiming that she was “very much in love right now, except for the abortion issue, of course.” She doesn’t seem to have any problems with Milei’s other staunchly right-wing views, and approvingly quoted a claim from Milei that states are “criminal organizations.” Poschardt, meanwhile, her boss, supportively tweeted about a recent lead article in the…

How America’s Charismatic Christianity Helped Fuel the Fantasyland Presidency of Donald Trump

By Eric C. Miller

…ver of this tendency, but it is synergistic with these other factors. What about the role of the religious “free market” in the United States? Well, it’s interesting—the economists who have lent the free market theory to the question of American religiosity make America’s exceptionalism in this regard all about our unfettered supply of religious beliefs and churches that then created the demand. I’m not sure I believe that, but there was certainly…

Is Proselytizing Ever Okay? Are We All Proselytizing All The Time?

By Chrissy Stroop

…ave a moment to talk about the obnoxious practice of asking people to talk about “our” lord and savior? In a previous piece for RD, one of the reasons I gave for why America’s conversation about Christianity is “fundamentally unserious” is that our elite public sphere systemically silences “the voices of leavers, nonbelievers, and religious minorities in discussing Christianity and ‘religious freedom.’” As a case in point, I brought up Christianit…

Heaven On Earth: A Non-Hysterical History of Shari’ah

By Haroon Moghul

…litated such conclusions can properly be called ‘radical’. We hear a lot about Islam, identity, and Europe, but rarely is much of it particularly helpful. Though your book talks about the Muslim majority world frequently, what challenges and opportunities do see for Muslim (minority) communities in the West? (You can take that to mean the United Kingdom, Europe, or the West more generally.) This question is an important one. Classical interpreta…

The Tense History Behind Jimmy Carter’s Liberty U. Commencement Address

By John Fea

…ent”: Becky and I attended the opening of the Billy Graham Library in 2007 about one month after my father’s death. And I remember commenting to Becky then, that of the four former presidents speaking that day, Jimmy Carter sounded more like one of us than the rest…President Trump has called me and spoken to me about his appreciation for the former president’s friendship and support…Both Presidents Carter and Trump entered the White House as outsi…

As Florida Attempts to Make it Illegal, an Argument for the Sacred Work of White Discomfort

By Robert P. Jones

…rience, a person becomes a sociopath, someone who has an inability to care about the feelings or needs of others—someone who lacks a sense of moral conscience. Discomfort and moral responsibility are also linked in the work we face as descendants. Some of us find ourselves the beneficiaries of intact, generally functioning families that go back generations. But many of us find it necessary to reckon with dysfunction, abuse, addiction, bigotry, and…

Resurrection of ‘Comstock Laws’ Would Threaten Access to Abortifacients — But Even That Fear Misses Bigger Picture

By Gillian Frank

…a pregnancy. These laws, over the decades, also suppressed advertisements about contraceptives and abortifacients, and prevented the establishment of birth control clinics in some states. Sexual representations. Sexual objects. Contraception. Abortifacients. Free speech about contraception and abortion. And the circulation of sexual information or objects through the mails and other “common carriers.” A web of state and federal Comstock laws regu…

Fake, Evil, Spiritual, Commodified; What’s the Truth About Popular Yoga?

By Andrea R. Jain

…an are usually appealed to in academia. I hoped to speak to many audiences about why so many people across the world, including many who I hope will read this book, are choosing yoga as a part of their everyday regimens, but I also hoped to engage those who reject it outright, sometimes with great hostility. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Entertain them? Piss them off? I hoped to inform all of Selling Yoga’s readers and to offend some of t…

A Writer’s Murder Raises Fears of Death-by-Decree

By Shalom Goldman

…rsation held at Duke University on January 20, I spoke with Mohsen Kadivar about his concerns about the deterioration of U.S.-Iranian relations. “Sanctions,” says Kadivar, “are harmful to the Iranian people, more than to the government, and military action by the U.S. would be a great mistake.” “The West,” says Kadivar “does not really care about human rights in the Islamic world. Think about Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Despite the bad human rights…