Religion & Politics

03/05/2023

For all of us at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, this is a time of transition. As I conclude 12 years as the Center Director on June 30, we await news on the next Director. Tiffany Stanley, the longtime managing editor of our flagship journ...

21/03/2023

Angela Meyer’s friend eventually left the Catholic Church. Meyer’s reaction was different. It foreshadowed a mindset she carried with her as she continued attending Mass and immersing herself in Catholic communities. “This is our church, the church of the people. And we will fight you for it.”

Every Sunday, 17,000 Roman Catholic parishes in the United States hold Mass. For the most part, the service in Brownsburg, Indiana, looks and sounds like the rest. There are songs and Scripture readings. The white-robed priest delivers the homily. The Eucharistic Prayer features the consecration of....

14/03/2023

"We’re also paying attention to the Museum of the Bible in a time when lots of people are wondering how white evangelicals have an outsized influence in terms of power in the political sphere. And so we are historicizing the museum as one way in which white evangelicals ... can amplify their political ideologies and beliefs." - Jill Hicks-Keeton

White evangelicals have an outsized influence in the public sphere compared to their percentage of the population. This influence was evident in the 2016 presidential election and the pro-life activism that culminated in the Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Roe v. Wade. And within evangelical...

07/03/2023

Regardless of Kanye's personal struggles, his embrace of antisemitism has given extremist groups a new figure to rally around—in this case, one of the country’s most famous celebrities and a household name.

In October 2022, the rapper Ye—formerly known as Kanye West—was suspended from Twitter after posting that he was planning to go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.” In the weeks to come, Ye claimed during a podcast interview that “Jewish Zionists” were responsible for various professional set...

21/02/2023

Because these myths are so powerful ... it’s incumbent on those who want to press for greater equality to do what reformers have done throughout American history—to reclaim, reinterpret, and redirect that language.

In America, so the myth goes, freedom favors the bold and ambitious individual. From Benjamin Franklin to Steve Jobs, our national mythology has lionized and celebrated bright, plucky, self-motivated characters who work hard to realize innovative ideas. Though born and raised in families, communitie...

14/02/2023

What comes alive in Bradley Onishi’s absorbing and often disturbing work is the simple ordinariness and ubiquity of a lot of what he explores. How so much of what often passes as regular—and unremarkable—features of American life and culture have also helped cultivate the context in which a radical white Christian nationalism could take hold.

Of all the songs I loved singing as a child at my church’s Vacation Bible School every summer, my favorite was one called, “I’m in the Lord’s Army.” We sang the lyrics—“I may never march in the infantry, ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery. I may never fly o’er the enemy, but I....

07/02/2023

Lerone Martin talks to Aaron Griffith about his new book on J. Edgar Hoover—and how the FBI aided and abetted the rise of Christian nationalism.

In his new book The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover, Lerone A. Martin shows how the FBI was a major force enabling white Christian nationalism in the modern United States. As FBI director, Hoover built a religious culture at the bureau with the aim of forming agents to do battle against what he saw as

31/01/2023

Marvin Olasky still wants to make journalism biblically objective. His critics think his central idea is part of the problem in a polarized country.

In June of 2021, Marvin Olasky eased his lanky, 71-year-old frame into a desk chair and began writing his bimonthly magazine column. The title: “One Year to Go.” After nearly three decades as editor-in-chief at WORLD, the muckraking evangelical news magazine known for its “biblically objective...

24/01/2023

Shaun Casey led an office on religion and global affairs at the State Department from 2013 to 2017. It was shuttered during the Trump era. In his new book, he writes about the future of religion in American diplomacy--and whether he thinks the Biden administration is getting it right.

To be invited by the secretary of state to launch a new office on religion and global affairs, and then to be able to lead that office for almost four years, was the opportunity of a lifetime. It is impossible to fully convey the challenges and joys of that task. The team we built, the

17/01/2023

A new poll asked young people about how important different issues were to them when it came to voting. The results from self-identified evangelicals were telling, writes Ryan Burge.

One of the best-known changes happening in American religion over the last few decades is the meteoric rise in the share of the general public that claims no religious affiliation on surveys. In the 1970s, it was just 5 percent of the public and now it has risen to nearly 3 in 10 adults. Among

10/01/2023

In the wake of s*x scandals, disgraced evangelical leaders often rely on their scorned wives to repair their reputations, writes Suzanna Krivulskaya.

On a hot pandemic day in 2020, Jerry Falwell Jr., president of the fundamentalist Christian Liberty University, was caught with his pants down. To be fair, Falwell voluntarily posed for the compromising photograph, which he then posted to his 25,000 Instagram followers. In the photo, the evangelical...

04/01/2023

Evangelicals often rightly get critiqued for pushing Christian nationalism. But mainline Protestants have also encouraged a melding of God and country, write the Rev. Brian Kaylor and the Rev. Beau Underwood.

As the first members of the pro-Trump mob waltzed into the U.S. Senate chamber on Jan. 6, 2021, they looked for “evidence” of wrongdoing. A few made their way to the podium, where one shouted, “Jesus Christ, we invoke your name!” That declaration inspired Jacob Chansley—nicknamed the “QA...

20/12/2022

What's next for Saddleback Church as Rick Warren retires?

When Rick Warren stepped behind his church’s hand-carved pulpit for the last time as Saddleback’s senior pastor in August, he did something unexpected. The 68-year-old founder told his congregation that he would repeat word for word his first sermon at Saddleback in 1980. “It is the dream of w...

13/12/2022

"We’re seeing what happens when we put people on pedestals and grant them a God-like spiritual authority, or when we confuse charisma with calling. In the wake of so many celebrity pastor scandals, I think we’re at a time where we need to examine the roots that have led to such bad fruit." - Katelyn Beaty, author of "Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church"

Evangelicalism has long been fraught with scandals, and in recent years, much of it has centered around megachurches and prominent pastors. Christian celebrities such as Carl Lentz, Bill Hybels, and the late Ravi Zacharias have all fallen from grace. Documentaries and podcasts have documented the ab...

06/12/2022

New data show a substantial number of Americans are choosing churches based on politics.

As the 2022 midterm elections wrap up, candidates in most states will be temporarily retiring the attack ads. Both parties are preparing for an era of divided government, meaning compromises will need to be made to govern the country. In his post-election address, President Biden highlighted: “On ...

29/11/2022

Charles Marsh on reconciling treatment for mental health with his Christian faith. "After trying for so long to calm the mental storms out of my own depleted resources, coming to the knowledge that I could accept the therapeutic work and the medication as God’s gift, was the saving grace I needed."

“I need help. I feel worse now than I’ve ever felt, and I’ve felt bad for a long time,” I told the attending nurse at the student health clinic at the university where I was writing a doctoral dissertation on the integrity of the self in modern Christian thought. The methods of coping that h...

16/11/2022

Tazeen Ali's new book follows the Women's Mosque of America and its mission to elevate the voices of Muslim women.

The Women’s Mosque of America (WMA) was conceived as a space to elevate Muslim women’s voices. Its services officially began in Janu­ary 2015, when it held its inaugural Jummah (Friday prayer) for an all-female congre­gation at the Pico Union Project near downtown LA. At the service, one woman...

08/11/2022

Marie Griffith interviews John McGreevy about his new book on Catholicism, "a sweeping and vivid historical portrayal of the faith’s deep tensions and consequential turning points."

Few institutions are both as successful and as embattled as the Roman Catholic Church. Today it reaches over a billion adherents across the globe—roughly 17.7 percent of the world’s population, by some estimates—and, as John T. McGreevy writes in his latest book, “No institution is as multic...

01/11/2022

Just in time for the World Series, Paul Putz reviews a new spiritual biography of Jackie Robinson that revisits the baseball great's faith and activism.

Fifty years ago this October, Jackie Robinson’s final autobiography, I Never Had It Made, was published, just one week after Robinson died. It’s a book that I assigned as a history professor when teaching a post-1877 U.S. history class, because it’s fundamentally a book about America—about p...

26/10/2022

Virginia is revoking the rights of trans students. There is a thread of religious nationalism running through the state's new guidelines.

The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE), with board members newly appointed by Governor Glenn Youngkin, issued the “2022 Model Policies on the Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for All Students and Parents in Virginia’s Public Schools” on Friday, September 16. The document is a complete revers...

18/10/2022

"The story of American Protestantism in the twentieth century is the story of evangelical rise and ecumenical decline," writes Eric Miller, on his conversation with scholar and author, David Hollinger.

For all of the influence wielded and attention received by American evangelicals today, one could be forgiven for concluding that evangelicalism and Christianity are synonymous in America. But such a mistake would have been impossible a few decades back, when the liberal “mainline” denominations...

04/10/2022

An anthropologist visited London and the queue to pay respect to the Queen. Augusta Thomson writes, "Alluding to the queue as a pilgrimage does distinctive political work. It erases the harm that has been done by the monarchy through allusions to an exemplary collective and sacred experience that also epitomizes 'Britishness.'"

Queen Elizabeth II died on September 8, 2022. As the longest-reigning monarch in British history and the head of

27/09/2022

Despite increased pressure post- for public figures to permanently leave the spotlight, it’s surprisingly easy to return to it—especially for disgraced Christian leaders.

For the first time in nearly two years, Carl Lentz, former pastor of Hillsong New York, recently shared an update. “It’s been a challenging road but we are alive, we are at peace and thanks to the grace of

20/09/2022

"It is likely there are racial implications to the spiritual practice you pursue for wellness or self-actualization," writes Liz Bucar, author of "Stealing My Religion." "Just because you can borrow something doesn’t always mean you should."

Most progressive liberals are aware of the dangers of borrowing from racially marginalized communities. My students are no exception. They are quick to identify and condemn forms of cultural appropriation when white folks adopt styles of communities of color for financial benefit or to increase thei...

13/09/2022

How Bill McKibben connects his climate activism and Christianity:
"If one accepts this idea that people everywhere are our neighbors, we need to confront the reality that our carbon-fueled economy has sickened our neighbors, has drowned our neighbors ... we are running Genesis in reverse right now. We are steadily de-creating the planet. We are taking all the creatures that God created and declared to be good and we are driving them to extinction."

Bill McKibben is a living legend in environmental activism. A journalist and educator, he is the founder of the global climate organization

07/09/2022

"Converting to religions practiced predominantly by people of color is not enough. By itself, it cannot be a ticket out of white supremacy," Anna Piela writes in her study of white converts to Islam.

White Christian nationalism has recently come into sharper focus because of the January 6 insurrection and controversial Supreme Court rulings regarding reproductive rights and the separation of religion and state. Yet, the influence of whiteness on religion extends beyond Christianity, which often....

31/08/2022

What happened to America’s promised atheist political revolution? Aysha Khan reports on the strides and setbacks of an atheist-humanist movement.

Ten years ago, thousands of atheists, humanists, and skeptics descended by the busload upon the National Mall in Washington to attend the Reason Rally, the largest-ever gathering

16/08/2022

Maybe the complications, the syncretism that is so threatening to all kinds of orthodoxies—evangelicalism and otherwise—is the point for modern witches.

I began using occult practices—drawing salt circles around the perimeter of my home and burning candles for protection—when a devastating gynecological health condition baffled my doctors. I had the symptoms of a urinary tract infection, but no medically discernible infection. I took half a doze...

09/08/2022

"Companies like Meta are interested in creating partnerships with faith communities to make sure that future communal innovations are taking place on their platform and for their profit," writes Chris Karnadi.

Tech companies are investing in the metaverse and increasingly recognizing that religious communities, some which have already been meeting in virtual reality, will play a key role in the digital future. Many questions remain, however, as to whether that relationship will be good for the religious c...

03/08/2022

Over the past three years of the Bukele presidency, the millennial autocrat has instrumentalized religion and devotional behavior to appeal to both local and diasporic Salvadorans to generate approval and bolster his legitimacy.

Religion was at the center of El Salvador’s controversial presidential election in 2019. For the first time since

26/07/2022

Anti-Chinese hate took vicious and violent forms. Religion was at the heart of it.

The “Great Replacement" theory didn’t just emerge in Buffalo, El Paso, Pittsburgh, Charleston, or any of the other racist mass murders of the 21st century. There’s a long history to white Americans’ fear of being replaced.

19/07/2022

The uncertain status of unborn life in Dobbs offers an opportunity to Americans who will now be forced to discuss the morality and law of abortion on the state level.

The pro-life movement has long vilified Justice Harry Blackmun, whose majority opinion in Roe v. Wade struck down laws prohibiting or restricting abortion in many

11/07/2022

Professor Beth Allison Barr investigates how gender and s*xuality inform social, political, and family life in diverse Islamic contexts, spanning from seventh century Arabia to the contemporary U.S.

A thin layer of watery ice covered the street between me and my parked car. The slick road wouldn’t have bothered me—except that I was nine months pregnant

07/07/2022

When religious minorities embrace public money for their own private schools, they provide ample cover for white conservative Christians to decimate secular public education.

As two Supreme Court cases decided this term demonstrate, white evangelicals want both religious schools funded by the state and religion in public schools—and the Supreme Court’s (Catholic) majority is eager to assist. The goal is religion-state consolidation, not separation. This development i...

30/06/2022

The decree of those six justices wasn’t just anti-American – it was also anti-religious.

During the autumn of 1831, as the United States was in the midst of fervent religious revivals known as the Second Great Awakening, the French intellectual Alexis de Tocqueville attended

28/06/2022

"What happens when a centrist group aligns itself with Republican extremists?"
Jane Eisner reports on AIPAC's controversial backing of Republicans who refused to certify the 2020 presidential election.

Can the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), arguably one of the most influential lobbying groups in the nation, still claim the middle ground it has long cultivated

21/06/2022

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone banned Nancy Pelosi from receiving communion in his San Francisco diocese. But his real showdown is with Rome and the other bishops.

When San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone announced last month that he was barring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving communion over her support for abortion rights, the move was widely

14/06/2022

"Today, more than ever, we must summon the courage to exercise a democratic faith, even as state repression continues to loom at home and abroad," writes Professor Randal Maurice Jelks.

“The shape of the world does not permit us the

07/06/2022

"White Christian nationalism can be understood in two ways—as a deep story about the past and as a political vision for the future."

Read Eric C. Miller's interview with Yale University sociologist Philip S. Gorski.

On January 6, 2021, when a mob of Donald Trump’s most fervent and militant supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election, Christian symbolism was on prominent display. Video and photography shot on the Capitol steps captured a mix of Christian and Ameri...

31/05/2022

"The evangelical feminists I met were clear that their feminism evolved from their Christian faith, that their interpretation of the bible and Jesus led them onto the feminist path, not the other way around," writes Katie Gaddini.
https://religionandpolitics.org/2022/05/31/evangelical-women-revisit-feminism-and-faith/

In the early 1970s, the radical feminist theologian Mary Daly made some startling pronouncements. First, she called herself “postchristian,” and declared that all religions “are infrastructures of the edifice of patriarchy.” Then, she called for “the castration of s*xist religion,” and d...