Christianity

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• SOURCE: Far Out
  10/3/2021
  

  The Beatles vs. the KKK

  John Lennon's notorious "bigger than Jesus" comment prior to the group's 1966 American tour brought out right-wing protestors and helped push the band to stop touring permanently. 

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• 10/3/2021
  

  How Evangelical Conversion Narratives Feed the "Free Choice" Rhetoric at Your School Board Meeting

  by Rebecca L. Davis

  Evangelical Christianity grew in America by emphasizing the power of individual conversion as a "choice for Christ." This frame explains not only the prominence of Evangelicals among anti-mask and anti-vaccine protesters, but also the frequent rhetorical connections they make between COVID policy and LGBTQ tolerance. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/19/2021
  

  John Shelby Spong, 90, Liberalizing Episcopal Leader

  Spong's advocacy for liberalized theology, acceptance of women and LGBTQ clergy, and reconciliation with modernity encouraged some Episcopal congregations to liberalize and others to embrace conservative traditionalism, foreshadowing the tensions in mainline protestantism.

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• SOURCE: Vox
  9/17/2021
  

  "The Eyes of Tammy Faye": When the GOP Got in Bed with the Christian Right

  The scandals involving the PTL television ministry of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker allowed Jerry Falwell to expand the inluence of the Moral Majority and connect the religious right more firmly to the Republican Party. A new film highlights that moment. 

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• 9/12/2021
  

  Scammed From the Beginning: Rejecting Expertise as an American Value

  by Guy Lancaster

  When Americans demand and take unauthorized medications to treat COVID-19, they aren't indulging a new conspiratorialism but are tapping into currents of American cultural and religious history that have always rejected established authority. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  8/26/2021
  

  Britney Spears is Part of a Long History of Celebrity Religious Conversion (and Fan Skepticism)

  by Rebecca L. Davis

  The skepticism that has often accompanied public conversions by celebrities, from Sammy Davis, Jr. to Britney Spears, reflects prevalent assumptions about what religious experiences are authentic. 

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• SOURCE: Dissent
  8/30/2021
  

  Daddy Issues

  by Bethany Moreton

  White American Christians have embraced aggressive patriarchy as access to social and economic power has become more concentrated in fewer hands. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  8/9/2021
  

  The Connection Between Conservative Christianity and Fast Food Franchises

  by Marcia Chatelain

  Many fast food chains have roots in two pillars of 20th-century conservatism: Christianity and free markets.

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• 8/8/2021
  

  Recessional: The WASP and God (excerpt)

  by Michael Knox Beran

  "We  may  enjoy  the  poetry  of  the  fair  sheepfold  without  believing  in  the shepherd himself. But when we come to the achievement of the WASPs, their public service, their standards of conduct, their faith in the possibility of regeneration, we find that it owed a good deal to their conviction that there is a shepherd."

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• SOURCE: Religion & Politics
  7/27/2021
  

  Why Is Critical Race Theory Being Banned in Public Schools?

  by Leslie Ribovich and Charles McCrary

  While much of the debate over so-called "critical race theory" in school curricula has revolved around whether the US is a racist society, it also reflects long struggles by Evangelicals to shape school curricula around a set of moral and spiritual values and against secularism.

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  7/25/2021
  

  The Unmaking of Biblical Womanhood: Prof. Beth Allison Barr's Historical Challenge to Evangelical Gender Roles

  “Women think all of this is the Bible because they learn it in their churches,” Barr told me. “But it’s really a post-Second World War construction of domesticity, which was designed to send working women back to the kitchen.”

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• 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. 

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• 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.

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• 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. 

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• 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. 

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• SOURCE: MSNBC
  5/18/2021
  

  How Billy Graham Weaponized White Evangelical Christian Power In America

  by Anthea Butler

  Although the Reverend Billy Graham projected an image of religious revival divorced from politics, he encouraged an evangelical sense of fear that has been manipulated by right-wing politicians for decades. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  4/15/2021
  

  'The Making Of Biblical Womanhood' Tackles Contradictions In Religious Practice

  "In her new book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth, historian Beth Allison Barr traces cultural sources of patriarchy that have all but erased women's historical importance as leaders of the faith."

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• 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. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/6/2021
  

  Retro Report Presents: How an Abstinence Pledge in the ’90s Shamed a Generation of Evangelicals

  Retro Report's latest collaboration with the New York Times examines the roots and social impact of Evangelical purity culture, both for individuals and American society's approach to sexuality. 

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• 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.