Departments

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Christianity

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    6/29/2021

    A Scholarly Screw-Up of Biblical Proportions

    by Ariel Sabar

    The author of a book on the high-profile forgery of papyrus fragments indicating Jesus had a wife discusses how an article based on those fraudulent documents passed peer review. 

  • SOURCE: College Theology Society
    6/14/2021

    Family Values, Social Reciprocity, and Christianity

    by Stephanie Coontz

    Family historian Stephanie Coontz argues in a chapter excerpted here that relationships of care and mutual obligation have been much more complex than the nuclear family.

  • SOURCE: Current
    5/26/2021

    American Amnesia

    by Jeremy Sabella

    The religious history of America shows a restorationist impulse to seek a return to an idealized past. Without reckoning with the totality of that past, the restorationist project dangerously eliminates accountability. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    5/21/2021

    Breaking Evangelical Resistance to Coronavirus Vaccines will be Hard

    by Matthew Avery Sutton

    COVID vaccination documents are the latest phenomenon that Evangelicals have integrated into an apocalyptic reading of scripture. This means up to a quarter of the US population may need extensive convincing to take the vaccine. 

  • SOURCE: Waco Tribune
    4/12/2021

    Baylor Professor Argues 'Biblical Womanhood' More Cultural Than Biblical

    Beth Allison Barr argues that contemporary Christianity's doctrines on gender roles in the family are influenced more by the historical claim to power by men than by clear scriptural dictate, and that there are numerous historical examples of differently-ordered gender roles in Christianity. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    3/16/2021

    The Post-Trump Crack-Up of the Evangelical Community

    Anthea Butler and Kristin Kobes Du Mez offer insight into how racial double standards within evangelical religion and the willingness of "insider" historians to craft a selective picture of evangelical political action has made it difficult to understand how many of today's evangelical leaders have made peace with (or even embraced) white supremacy.

  • SOURCE: Crain's Chicago Business
    2/21/2021

    America's Churches are Now Polarized, Too

    The Trump era has concentrated longstanding differences about the role of faith in American life and the obligations of the faithful to act in the world. During the McCarthy era, the Republican establishment pushed back against attacks on clergy by the far right. Will something similar happen today? 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    2/16/2021

    Henry Louis Gates Jr. on African-American Religion

    Jon Meacham reviews Henry Louis Gates's book on the Black church in America; Gates seeks to recover the traditions of social and political activism in churches against skeptics who identify religion with conservatism and quietude. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    1/21/2021

    Bad Religion in the Ivory Tower

    by Jacques Berlinerblau

    Have scholars of religion and politics missed the rise of militant Christian nationalism because they follow an unspoken rule to "always posit religion at its best, secularism at its worst"? 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    1/15/2021

    White Christian Nationalists Want More Than Just Political Power

    by Lauren R. Kerby

    "White Christian nationalism also unites nostalgia for a lost age of Christian power with a profound sense of victimization. No one should underestimate how dangerous this combination is, particularly among those who decide that their faith requires them to retake their nation."

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    1/14/2021

    The Capitol Riot Revealed the Darkest Nightmares of White Evangelical America

    by Matthew Avery Sutton

    Many observers have speculated that American evangelicals have had a transactional relationship with Donald Trump. But his messages of "American carnage" and warnings of dire consequences if he is defeated mesh perfectly with their end-times outlook and have helped tie evangelicals to the far right coalition. 

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    11/18/2020

    Trump has Changed the Way Evangelical Christians Think about the Apocalypse

    by Thomas Lecaque

    Evangelicals have largely avoided interpreting the COVID-19 pandemic as a sign of the end times because doing so would also demand that they recognize their champion Donald Trump as a morally degenerate leader. The apocalyptic rhetoric that flowed freely under Obama has been silent this year. 

  • SOURCE: The Revealer
    11/12/2020

    On Evangelical Masculinities (Review)

    Journalist Daniel José Camacho reviews Kristin Kobes Du Mez's book "Jesus and John Wayne" and considers the way that masculinities are expressed in non-white evangelical communities.