When I reread the prologue of my 2021 book, A More Perfect Union, I’m reminded just how badly so many of us underestimated the backlash that followed the racial awakening of 2020 — and how durable the forces of grievance, fear, and economic dislocation have become. I wrote about my hope that Trump’s Big Lie and his corresponding efforts to overturn the 2020 election results would serve as a wake-up call to protect and strengthen our democracy. Yet that lie only got worse and our urgent calls to save our democracy failed to break through. I hoped that lessons from the pandemic would inspire a greater commitment to build a more equitable economy, yet the backlash against shutdowns and vaccines seemingly exacerbated our culture wars and individualism.
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order setting up a task force to counter “anti-Christian bias.” Trump claims that the task force is necessary to fight discrimination against Christians. But in practice it seems designed to enforce a very narrow version of conservative Christianity. The task force will counter efforts to prosecute demonstrators who block access to abortion care and to allow for discrimination against LGBTQ+ people on campus. It will encourage the federal government to elevate right wing Christianity as a national ideology.
Imposing Christian morality on the U.S. seems out of step with the separation of church and state. But it’s not exactly out of line with American tradition. For example, at the height of the postwar Red Scare in March 1953, leftist poet and activist Langston Hughes was hauled before Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. PSI was looking to root out communist influence. But in that regard, many of the questions centered on religion — and on a poem which the subcommittee believed showed that Hughes was anti-religious and therefore pro-communist.
The poem in question was “Goodbye, Christ,” which Hughes wrote on a trip to Soviet Russia in 1932.
On March 11, the Department of Homeland Security sent the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande a letter insinuating illegal activities at a diocesan shelter, including human trafficking.
The culture war and a moral panic around "wokeness" has many in Christian higher education living in fear. Now, one former educator is charting a new path.
On March 8, the Trump administration escalated its attack on free speech and protests by detaining a lawful resident for his role in Columbia University’s campus protests for Palestinian rights, saying that it was the “first arrest of many to come.” Sojourners spoke to seminaries, divinity schools, and Christian colleges and universities to try and understand how schools are defending international students amid the crackdown.
A few months before he was arrested, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote an essay on Christian responsibility under authoritarianism. Reading it today is both eerily relevant and illuminating.
Similar to Parasite, Mickey 17 is ultimately about the ethics of revolutionary struggle. The film considers how Christian morality — especially as understood by thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, or Karl Marx, the latter of whom famously referred to religion as the “opiate” of the masses — prevents the downtrodden from standing up for their rights. Here, Pattinson’s Mickey is a clear stand-in for Christ and the model Christian. Resurrected ad infinitum, he humbly accepts the pain, suffering, and dehumanization inflicted on him by his apathetic, at times downright demonic coworkers as punishment for his perceived sins.
These first few weeks of President Donald Trump’s administration have already been grueling, with a blizzard of executive orders that run the gamut from trolling to hurtful to alarming. We all remember this feeling from the last time around — there are so many shiny objects of outrage for us to chase that after a little while it’s easy to just throw up our hands, admit defeat, and decide to wait out the maelstrom by streaming our favorite television series. So many people are hurt and scared; many are just exhausted.
During Trump’s inauguration in 2017, many responded by attending one of the hundreds of Women’s Marches around the country. Those who participated in these marches set the record for the largest single-day protest in United States history. During Trump’s inauguration this January, the protesters were sparse. It’s easy to feel isolated, alone, and hopeless. For us to get through Trump 2.0 together, we need to figure out new ways to organize.
Yanan Rahim Navarez Melo is a theologian getting his MDiv at Princeton Theological Serminary. He's also an artist pushing the boundaries of a burgeoning genre known as postclassical music. Here's how he sees these two areas of study overlapping.
Our Lord Jesus Christ could often be found on a mountain. He went to a mountain to pray, to seek solitude from the crowds. He fasted and prayed for 40 days and 40 nights on the mountain where the devil tempted him. He met Moses and Elijah on Mount Tabor and was transfigured before his disciples. His most famous sermon is the Sermon on the Mount.