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Racial Justice Will Be Top Priority for New Prez of the United Church of Christ

By Frederick Clarkson

…rld of the unheard.” “Here I am, a gay, black male, born and raised in the South,” Jackson continued, “and John sought me out. I love him.” Dorhauer’s election was endorsed by 85% of the delegates. The UCC’s democratic expression of Christianity is a far cry from more conservative and authoritarian forms of church governance. The General Synod delegates knew Dorhauer well, and his election is an expression of where the church is already going. Joh…

For Clergy Who Ministered Through the AIDS Crisis Covid is Both Eerily Familiar and Puzzlingly Different

By Lynne Gerber

…from ministry, locked down at home, and “trying to be of service over the phone and zoom” to people in his church facing another pandemic. Pieters is part of a unique cohort for whom the current pandemic is both eerily familiar and puzzlingly different. LGBT Christian clergy who ministered in queer communities in the 1980s and 90s are engaging Covid-19 using some lessons learned from AIDS ministry in the years before treatment. They’re also grapp…

Trump, Islamophobia, and the Philly Pig’s Head Incident

By David Krueger

…ific terrorist attacks in Paris, Al-Aqsa mosque in Philadelphia received a phone message stating, “I hope you people are happy about what you did in Paris. I’d like to state for the record that Allah is a piece of pork shit.” A few weeks later, in the early morning hours of December 7, the mosque manager unlocked the front doors for the early morning fajr prayer. As he was about to enter, he noticed the severed head of a pig lying next to the door…

Oprah, Terrorist Cells, and the Meaning of Life: An Interview with Paul Froese

By Andrew Aghapour

…r of the Baylor Religion Surveys. The Cubit recently reached out to him by phone to discuss purpose, religion in modernity, and the brilliance of Tony Robbins. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. In your book you argue that modernity has brought about a kind of existential confusion, and you discovered this in an interesting way: by comparing levels of happiness and purposefulness to per-capita GDP. Could you tell us more abou…

A Portrait of Islamophobia?

By Mariam Durrani

…en fruit bowl, a few artificial flowers, half a bottle of Sprite, and some phone chargers. The two smaller images feature the cluttered interior of a walk-in closet with a bunch of clothes and a faint family portrait on the wireframe shelf, and something that will be familiar to anyone with a newborn child: a rocking seat next to a pink and yellow baby mat. With the caption “A Home Revealed,” the audience is left to make sense of these household p…

“What Kind of Islam Is That?”: Talking With Refugees From ISIS

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…uld not be harmed as long as they gave them all their money and their cell phones. In other villages, they heard, an agreement to convert to Islam and a payment of $7 per month would allow them to survive. But initially they were not given those options. Moreover, his wife was taunted for wearing a Western-style dress, as many Christian women do, so she could not venture outside. They also kept their daughters hidden, fearing they would be capture…

Reporting from Paris: A Prayer for Polluters

By Donna Schaper

…e a caucus proposed a stop fracking resolution. We spent hours on national phone calls debating when fracking should be stopped. We finally proposed 2030 as the last fracking date. It was a compromise after many “brackets,” what COP21 calls the matters that are kept in that famous parking lot where we put the things we don’t know how to decide. The Synod amended our so-called radical proposal and unanimously passed 2017 as the final date. We were…

Are All Religious Experiences Reducible to 16 Desires?

By Andrew Aghapour

…all time and space? When the Cubit recently reached out to Dr. Reiss for a phone interview, though, his answers were surprising. We discussed his methodology, potential applications of his theory to secularism, and Reiss’s own spirituality as a scientist. How does your theory differ from those of past authors that posit just one or two motivations for religion? Ours is based on scientific research, so we ask people what motivates them. At this poi…

Refusing Religion, Claiming the Future: A Roundtable Discussion on “The Nones Are Alright”

By Peter Laarman

…one is an expert now, and if I don’t know something I can look it up on my phone), globalization (multiple claims to the same authority coming from incredibly diverse sources), and corporate corruption (you win if you cheat, the little guy gets screwed). This translates into religious and spiritual authority as well, what with sex scandals, health and wealth theologies, and various corrupt religious leaders all demonstrating why we shouldn’t take…

The Passion of Katniss: How the Hunger Games Confronts the Trauma of Violence

By Michael Schulson

…answer to those questions is, in my opinion, a most definite yes. Over the phone, Deaton explained that Collins captures the helplessness of its hero–and, through that sense of helplessness, the dynamics of trauma. “Trauma really is about the moment of freezing,” said Deaton. “What is traumatic is when there’s nothing that can be done.” Collins, he said, sustains a kind of trapped tension throughout the books—that feeling that you’re “never really…