Evangelicals

Patriarchy and Purity Culture Silence Evangelical, Southern Baptist Women amid Sexual Abuse Scandals

By Julie Ingersoll, University of North Florida | – A devastating yearlong investigation into the executive committee of the largest conservative evangelical denomination in the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention, has documented widespread claims of sex abuse including accusations of rape, cover-ups and gross mistreatment of women seeking justice. In 2019 the Houston Chronicle and […]

Evangelicals

Who is More Advanced? 29 Muslim-Majority States will Have more Liberal Abortion Laws than much of America if Roe Falls

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The American Religious Right as a political force is in some ways a creation of the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that made abortion a woman’s right grounded in Americans’ constitutional right to privacy. Opposition to abortion and to a right to privacy united previously divided factions within […]

censorship

Disney Targeted on Gay Rights by both DeSantis’ Christian Taliban and Saudi Muslim Obscurantism

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis notoriously just came after the Walt Disney Co. for its opposition, if belated, to his “don’t say gay” legislation forbidding school teachers to mention the subject of gay relationships to children under 9. The act vaguely insists that mentions before children older than that had to […]

Evangelicals

War in Ukraine is testing some American evangelicals’ support for Putin as a leader of conservative values

The Conversation

By Melani McAlister, George Washington University | – In February 2022, evangelical leader Franklin Graham called on his followers to pray for Vladimir Putin. His tweet acknowledged that it might seem a “strange request” given that Russia was clearly about to invade Ukraine. But Graham asked that believers “pray that God would work in his […]

Christians

How the most Powerful Israel Lobby started Preferring anti-Democratic White Christian Nationalism to American Jews

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee or AIPAC, the major coordinator of thousands of organizations making up the Israel lobbies, can no longer call itself “non-partisan.” That they would openly endorse 37 Republican Members of Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 Election quashes any notion of non-partisan standing. […]

Christianity

Which Way America? Confronting Christian Nationalism in the Spirit of Desmond Tutu

Liz Theoharis

( Tomdispatch.com) – “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” — Archbishop Desmond Tutu The world lost a great moral […]

Antisemitism

The Capitol Insurrectionists came for America with Bibles, Guns and a Messianic Trumpism

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – At Christian Nationalist conferences , “ . . . resistance to Mr. Trump is tantamount to resistance to God,” according to New York Times writer Katherine Stewart. That accounts for the heavy presence of Christian symbols, crosses and Bibles, AND guns carried by rioters during the January 6 […]

Anti-Vaccination

Cherry-Picking the Bible to oppose Vaccines is an old Technique for Evangelical Agendas

The Conversation

By John Fea | – A devout evangelical Christian friend of mine recently texted to explain why he was not getting the COVID-19 vaccine. “Jesus went around healing lepers and touched them without fear of getting leprosy,” he said. This story that St. Luke tells in his gospel (17:11-19) is not the only Bible verse […]

Christianity

Critical race theory is an important tool in better understanding how religion operates in America

The Conversation

By Tiffany Puett | – ( The Conversation) – The debate over critical race theory has played out in TV studios, school board meetings and state legislatures across the U.S. It has also found its way into churches. The theory comprises a set of concepts that frame racism as structural, rather than simply expressed through […]