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Mike Johnson isn’t Just Your Average Christian Right Avatar — He’s Influenced by Fringe Movements Unfamiliar to Most Political Analysts

By Annika Brockschmidt

…ite Christian nationalist (and a true believer at that), part of a growing number who see right-wing reactionary Christianity, White supremacy, and authoritarian politics as an integral part of “real” American identity. Those who do not fall under it must submit, or be forced, if need be, through violence. Johnson was elected to the House of Representatives in 2016, after serving two years in the Louisiana state legislature. Before his time in Con…

The Next Big Religion Issue: Immigration

By Daniel Schultz

…ording to a new poll from Public Religion Research Institute, a surprising number of religious Americans are behind immigration reform. With that broad support and a progressive base that seems reenergized by the success of health care reform, this really might be the best shot for new immigration policy in a long while. I suspect that the question will turn on whether opponents can appeal to a certain xenophobic, authoritarian streak in voters. T…

“As Orthodox As They Come”: A Backstage Conversation With Rob Bell

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…bunch of universes and parallel time sequences.” It’s just fantastic! Historically many Christians have resisted multiple-worlds theory because it threatens the idea of a single, absolute God. In a multiverse, Christianity becomes one little piece of a sprawling multiplicity. Does that sound threatening to you? No. No, it doesn’t. Think about Galileo, like, “Hey, by the way, the Earth isn’t the center.” That blew people’s minds. There was a very n…

Episcopal Conference Lives Up to Episcopal Jokes

By Julie Ingersoll

…the height of the battling, that it was all not such a big deal, that the number of dissidents was actually quite small and that he thought his church would be better off once they were gone. Indeed, according to Wikipedia there are over 7,000 Episcopal congregations in the US with over 2 million members, though the significance of that number is unclear since, as the priest in the church where I was baptized once teased me: “when you’re baptiz…

Distant Churches and the Isolated Poor: Lessons from Katrina, Ten Years Later

By R. Drew Smith

…s. Former industrial cities with once sizable populations of blue-collar African-American laborers were among the cities hit hardest by massive downturns in resources, as businesses and corporations relocated to better markets in the suburbs or overseas and as middle-class populations fled urban core neighborhoods for outer-ring or suburban locales. Both of these dynamics contributed to vastly diminished property values, tax revenues, and local ur…

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

By Kathryn Joyce

…llow unassisted childbirthers. Balizet, a former nurse and the author of a number of books on Christian home-living, motherhood, and home birthing, represents a fringe expression of the Quiverfull suspicion of mainstream, institutional experts. She condemns banks, public schools, “statist” government, and denominational churches, but she saves her harshest judgment for institutional medicine: a bastion of pagan religion, where doctors serve as “hi…

Can The Religious Left Be Effective Again? Longer Answer: Quizás

By Daniel Schultz

…gh participation rates are increasing among these types of churches, they represent a small percentage of all churches. Fulton explains that a lot of this increase is due to the debates over immigration reform; but even factoring that in, Hispanic churches are becoming more politically active. The number of congregations might be few, but they may also be larger communities, representing a substantial number of people. In any case, the trend will…

Feeding on the Faithful: How Supernatural Thinking Empowered the Third Reich

By Eric Kurlander

…natural imaginary that can, in times of crisis, begin to displace more empirically grounded attempts to solve challenges that define our 21st century reality. It is only by acknowledging the historical pervasiveness and consequences of this kind of supernatural thinking—in the Third Reich and elsewhere—that we might work to counter its influence. Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich Eric Kurlander Yale University Press July…

Was Ghana Anti-Gay Scare Just Politics?

By Warren Throckmorton

…resentative group of Muslims claiming an imminent Sodom and Gomorrah for Africa. While the accuracy of the original story is open to question, only a spark is needed to get a fire going—intentionally or not. And given the rhetoric in Ghana, it is difficult to avoid comparison to Uganda’s recent history in relation to sexual minorities. In March, 2009, three Americans spoke at a conference on homosexuality and used false and misleading information…

Dispatches From the Rhodian Shore: A (Tough) Love Letter to Religious Studies

By Todd LeVasseur

…nature in economics. Most of the rest of my argument builds on data point number 5, focusing on how religious studies (as if that’s a monolithic thing) to date has talked about the natural world. I share the below as someone who is at the core of my training a religionist who’s vested in using education to build a better, more sustainable society. I recognize that understanding the role of religion in society is of import as we work toward this g…