Religion Dispatches

Trump, “Big Fan of Hindu,” To Force Thousands of Nepalis Back to Disaster Zone

Murali Balaji

With Trump's cancellation of protected status, the Nepali quake survivors who reached the US will have to return to a country that has so far failed to recover from the devastation.

Tony Perkins will Fit Right in at Religious Freedom Commission

Caroline Matas

While Perkins has expressed interest in using his new position as an opportunity to support “religious freedom and the defense of religious minorities,” he might find that the USCIRF actually doesn’t require a significant change in focus from his own preoccupations with Christians’ rights.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s Legacy of Eugenics and Racism Can’t Be Ignored

John P. Slattery

Teilhard’s insistence on a super-human, of not just spiritual but physical existence, dominated his thought over the last decade of his life—well after the death camps permeated the public consciousness.

Is Alcoholics Anonymous a Religion?

Galen Watts

Attempts to criticize the efficacy of AA on the basis of its scientific credibility, or its degree of rationality (not to mention attempts to defend it on these bases) reflect a grave misunderstanding.

Must We Burn Something to Get Attention?: 50 Years After the Catonsville Nine

Jason C. Bivins

If we think about Catonsville not just as a curiosity, a minor episode in the history of radical chic, but as a provocation or a template, what do we learn? Must Americans burn something to get attention? Must religious protesters be arrested?

Faith-Baiting in Minnesota and Elsewhere Follows the “Project Blitz” Playbook

Frederick Clarkson

Critics say any such display of the Ten Commandments in this way, may also violate the Oklahoma state constitution. But whatever the fate of these bills, the Christian Right and the politicians who cater to it have a long game in mind, and most seem unaware of the game itself.

We Regret to Inform You That You Do Not Mirror the Holy Family

Patrick Hornbeck

Catholic Charities might rather go out of business than allow same-sex couples to adopt a child.

Why Has the Critique of Hypocrisy Run Out of Steam?

Christopher Douglas

It’s not that Republican politicians and strategists had become convinced of critical theory’s questioning of how scientific knowledge is produced. It’s that their desire to undercut the “realist attitude” and their love of uncertainty about the true had appeared to strangely dovetail with some postmodern theorists.

What We Cannot do is be Revolutionaries Except When We’re Mothering

Kentina and Naomi Washington-Leapheart

Sophia is being mothered by two Black, queer-identified ministers who work full-time in activist/movement spaces. To the unimaginative and close-minded, these identities are contradicting impossibilities.

To Fight White Supremacy We Must Resist Essentialism: The Author Responds

Andrea R. Jain

I do not aspire to be a gatekeeper here. On the contrary, I think it is simply worth asking the question: how can we open the gate and connect with the public in a way that best achieves our shared goal of dismantling capitalist and white supremacist orthodoxies?