Religion Dispatches
…o be in or out of the closet. In some ways, the process is to help people prioritize their feelings. Those who become priests and nuns, for example, prioritize religion over sexuality. All this suggests that what many people think of as “conversion” therapy is really not. The lines are blurry between conversion and identity therapy and between real and effective change in sexual orientation, identity and priority. A story that helps us understand…
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…e doubled Bebbington’s quadrilateral by injecting Christian nationalism, Christian tribalism, political moralism, and antistatism into the movement. Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s reprinted essay similarly highlights the importance of patriarchal authority and militant masculinity to contemporary American evangelical culture, claiming that today’s devout have “replaced the Jesus of the gospels with an idol of machismo …” For some of the authors, the cultu…
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…change. Things went downhill fast when Donald Trump became president and prioritized the Christian Right’s policy goals, including attacks on the rights of transgender Americans. And even now with Democrat Joe Biden as president and Democrats in control of the Senate, things continue to get worse for trans folks year over year. It’s long been clear that the widespread use of false, inflammatory, and dehumanizing anti-trans rhetoric by right-wing…
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…declaration: “I swear to maintain and defend the social and political superiority of the White Race on this Continent; always and in all places to observe a marked distinction between the White and African races; to vote for none but white men for any office of honor, profit or trust; to devote my intelligence, energy and influence to instil these principles in the minds and hearts of others; and to protect and defend persons of the White Race, i…
Read More…schism and theological technicalities had obscured the original power of primitive Christianity and who sought to restore that original power to daily life and practice. Mormonism has turned out to be the most powerfully innovative of the Restorationist Protestant movements (which also include churches like the Disciples of Christ), generating its own additional books of scripture, a distinctive notion of Christian perfection (or “sanctification,…
Read More…daries. They embellish. They add their own stuff. To wit: “My main goal,” writes Cambridge psychopathologist Simon Baron-Cohen in his book The Science of Evil, “is replacing the unscientific term ‘evil’ with the scientific term ’empathy.’ ” This is thoroughgoing ideology. No one can say such a thing who hasn’t already decided, once and for all, that evil is over. Perhaps other unscientific terms should be replaced by scientific ones. We could star…
Read More…r the true believer. It can motivate people to stop smoking, drinking, swearing, wearing their hair long, or cheating on their spouse or income taxes. I get emails from gay and lesbian Christians on almost a daily basis who are deeply worried that living into their natural, God-given sexuality will earn them a one way ticket to Satanland. That fear is real, that fear is palpable, and these people are willing to do anything to avoid that fate—even…
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…ty intended for monks who would produce illuminated manuscripts in their scriptorium by the rhythm of the daily liturgy, living a life of prayer and contemplation before being buried beneath the numerous stone Celtic crosses that still line the shores. Columba never met the more famous Patrick, but Iona’s founding evidences the latter’s piety. Ironically, it was Columba’s grandfather, the pagan king Nial, who was responsible for Patrick’s kidnappi…
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…’s consider this claim more closely. I don’t mean for this essay to serve primarily as a rebuttal, although it’s not hard to start to form the outline for one. (I mean, for the trillionth time, yes, sometimes getting pregnant can make some women very very sick. Also, on what basis are we supposed to accept that there’s a clear and non-culturally-laden way of sorting out Official Real Diseases from Things That Aren’t Diseases But Still Make Your Li…
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…traordinary meditation on truth and interpretation, Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche asks, “Who is the Sphinx? It is a rendezvous, it seems, of questions and question marks.” The sphinx hidden in plain sight within the Chicago Picasso is just that: a rendezvous of questions and question marks. In its irresolvable ambiguity, in its irrational monstrosity, the Chicago Picasso is an icon of the mystery of interpretation, a visual utterance o…
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