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More Than Big Hair and Money: Jim, Tammy Faye and the Media “Holy Wars” of the 80s

By John Wigger

…, like the Jessica Hahn affair, that I could not verify certain details about, and therefore left out. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about your topic? A lot of people only remember PTL for the scandal and subsequent “holy war” in the media. It is hard to forget Tammy’s makeup streaming down her face as she cried or the way the Bakkers flaunted their wealth. Bakker raised about $158 million between 1984 and 1987 from his “lifetime par…

What Do ‘The Christians’ Believe? Easter Reflections from a Non-Christian

By Gary Laderman

…flurry of reports and allegations have been in the news recently of institutional authorities covering up or taking lightly charges against priests who have taken a vow of celibacy and are accused of sexually abusing children and misusing their power. Although it is not yet clear how Pope Benedict XVI will deal with these charges in the long run, his recent homily referring to the “petty gossip of dominant opinion” glossed over the seriousness of…

Holy Father, You’re Not Helping: The Problem with the Pope’s Plan to Consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

By Katherine Kelaidis

…theology, chief among them contention over the pope’s claim to universal authority. A number of violent incidents over two hundred years, from both sides of Christianity’s two halves, helped solidify the separation. These included the Byzantine massacre of Catholics living in Constantinople in 1182, the sacking of Thessaloniki by Catholics in 1185, and their pillage of Constantinople in 1204. Finally, the establishment of Rome-allied episcopacies…

Glenn Beck’s Salvation Army

By Peter Montgomery

…faith through a prism of American nationalism? Not to mention the growing number of Americans without any religious commitment? Beck tells us, “you must fall to your knees and you must reconnect with God. He is not asking you. He is commanding us as a people to get behind Him. He will right the wrongs. We will have to pay a price because we lived outside of His laws. We will have to pay a price, but every day we don’t get behind Him, the price ge…

Orthodox Jews Begin to Reckon with Sexual Abuse

By Paul Berger

…any more or less prevalent in the Orthodox community than anywhere else; but there are a number of peculiarities to Orthodox Jewish life that have made the reporting of abuse less common than in society at large. “I think the subject of abuse is probably the same in any religious community,” says Michael Salomon, a Long Island psychiatrist, who has just finished working on an as-yet-unpublished book about sexual abuse in the Orthodox world. “Diff…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…n of religious dissent online is being carried out not just by government authorities but also by private corporations. During the Innocence riots, for instance, Google restricted YouTube access to the video in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Libya, and Egypt despite the fact that its content does not violate YouTube’s hate speech policy, which recognizes hate speech against individuals but not the (highly problematic) category of hate speech against…

My Business, Myself: Piercing the Corporate Veil

By Howard M. Friedman

…ional rights. A corporation cannot be convicted of a criminal offense without the protections given by the Constitution to criminal defendants. And in the famous 2010 Citizens United case, the Supreme Court held that corporations have the same First Amendment rights of political speech that “real people” do. If the First Amendment has been interpreted to guarantee a corporation’s free speech rights, does it also have free religious exercise rights…

Dear White Evangelicals: A Black Square Ain’t Gonna Cut It

By Jhas Williams

…ow does one person teach another to treat human beings like human beings? But I can tell you without a doubt that a start would have been not being able to count on one hand the number of Black children in my entire Christian school student-body. Do Black educators only exist in public schools? Of course not. Why then couldn’t we find more Black scholars to employ when it came to teaching children? I can tell you that I’ll recognize change as genu…

Jesus Christ and Super Stars: How The Holy Rolled Mainstream in Pop Music

By Alana Massey

…n implicit acknowledgment is present across this diverse range of musical output that that which is holy is also whole. With the authority of the church largely removed from the lives of young people, institutional religion is no longer mediating theological conversations. This has given artists and audiences free rein to reach more deeply into their Christian heritages and memories to grapple with holy mysteries that were once closely managed by…

Debate Heats Up Over “Francis Effect”

By Patricia Miller

…ve to “ask around” Boston to find folks who know someone who’s thinking about returning to the church or who feels less horrible about the church than in the darkest days of the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal, which had Boston at its epicenter. That’s a pretty low bar, but of course no one denies that Francis is a change for the better. As Jon O’Brien, head of Catholics for Choice, told The Guardian, Francis isn’t so much “a breath of fresh air a…