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Christianity

  • SOURCE: The Baffler
    1/12/2022

    Online Christian Martyrs

    by Peter Manseau

    "Imagine if all the energy, resources, and marketing that have been used to inject ideas of martyrdom into issues of public health and safety had instead gone toward making real change."

  • SOURCE: Religion News Services
    11/29/2021

    Taylor Swift Takes a Familiar Path to Hell and Back

    by Peter Manseau

    "In its own way, “All Too Well” tells a story not unlike myths of yore. It dabbles not in mythology, per se, but in the so-called “monomyth,” popularized as “The Hero’s Journey” by the folklorist Joseph Campbell almost 75 years ago."

  • SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
    11/16/2021

    A Beautiful Mess: On “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”

    by Emily Suzanne Johnson

    "The people who made this film seem to care about its subject, but the film does not know itself well enough to be itself and love itself. Tammy Faye’s heart and soul just aren’t in it."

  • SOURCE: TIME
    11/3/2021

    How Christian Archaeologists Fed Today's Strife in Jerusalem

    by Andrew Lawler

    The incursions of 19th century Christian archaeologists onto Jerusalem's historic acropolis created a sense of seige on the part of Palestinian Muslims, which is echoed today in ongoing conflict over the city's religious sites. 

  • 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. 

  • 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.

  • 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. 

  • 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."

  • 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.

  • 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.