6 Overlooked Takeaways From a Reviewer of Controversial Texas Textbooks
In September 2014, I found myself standing before a mostly hostile Texas State Board of…
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More Religion in Politics? New Poll’s Findings May Be Overhyped
A day after headlines heralding Americans’ desire for more religion in politics and public life,…
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Fight the Power: How to Read, and Re-Read, the Book of Revelation
American Christians assume that what prophecy does is predict specific events to happen. And of course that’s the way the Book of Revelation has been read. They read it, as you say, as predicting this means this, or the beast is this. But prophesy, as we know, is a highly interpretative art, and the way this book lives and has lived for two thousand years is by interpretation and reinterpretation.
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The Suppression of Sin in Evangelical Abolitionism: The Wilberforce Problem
Young evangelicals who have taken up Wilberforce’s abolitionist banner are discovering that lacing social action with a concern for “the suppression of sin” is miring their efforts in needless controversy and threatening much-needed coalitions.
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Pope: Heterosexual Marriage “Makes Europe Europe”
In the Pope’s words, the current debate over state-sponsored heterosexual marriage is ultimately a question that concerns the European identity itself. The stakes, then, could scarcely be higher.
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Taking the Christ Back Out of Christmas: Secularizing the Season
Despite the efforts of those eager to see a “War on Christmas” at every turn the origins of this season’s traditions are no more Christian than those of Easter eggs or the Easter bunny. This was a time of goodwill and generosity long before anyone heard of a baby born in a stable.
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US Catholic Bishops Elect a Culture Warrior
Archbishop Dolan is a fighter for the orthodoxy that has become central to the Catholic Church since Dorothy Day’s death in 1980—sex and gender.
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The End of the Religious Right? Not So Fast
One of the strangest phenomena in American politics is the persistence of claims, based on scanty or dubious evidence, proclaiming the death of the religious right or that the end of the culture wars is at hand…
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Evolution Challenged in “Textbook” Case: As Goes Texas, So Goes the Nation
Opening the door to “junk science,” members of the Texas Board of Education inserted the coded language of creationism. With the second largest textbook budget in the nation, publishers are paying close attention.
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RDPulpit: To the ‘Furiously Raging’ Religious Right
Newsweek actually gets religion, writes the author of the recent gay marriage issue. It’s the Christian Right culture warriors who claim that God possesses their prejudices who are mistaken.
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