Departments

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Christianity

  • 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. 

  • SOURCE: TIME
    10/6/2020

    The Overlooked Queer History of Medieval Christianity

    by Roland Betancourt

    An attentive reading of the record shows that same-sex intimacy, gender fluidity, and diverse sexual identities were prevalent among early Christians, contrary to the claims made by some fundamentalists today that these represent deviations from historical norms. 

  • SOURCE: NPR
    9/24/2020

    The Evangelical Vote (audio)

    NPR's "Throughline" examines the growth of evangelical christianity as a political movement and its influence over the nomination of a Supreme Court justice and the election. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    9/18/2020

    What Trump Taught America About the Bible

    by Peter Manseau

    The Bible is a powerful talisman for the majority of Americans, but Trump’s successful use of it these past five years suggests that, to many, it is a book whose content matters less than the one holding it; an expression of tribal identity as much as creed.