Capitol and Cathedral
Dear Readers,
Last summer, I was invited to contribute to Patheos’ coverage of religion and the 2016 election. I focused most of my posts on how faith was shaping the nominating contests and general election campaign. In particular, I focused on how Donald Trump‘s co-opting of the Republican Party creates long-term credibility problems for the Religious Right political movement, which in my view had rehabilitated its image and restored its integrity somewhat in recent years.
But to be honest, I found the election to be sad and boring. I actually enjoyed writing about other topics, like religious freedom, Christian intellectual life, as well as controversies within evangelicalism, American Catholicism, and mainline Protestantism. In addition, I often have thoughts on cultural items with religion angles.
Some other fun posts included:
- An essay, Religion and politics: Promise and peril
- Social conservatives’ “religious objections to LGBT people”
- Does Christianity = opposition to homosexuality?
- Does religious liberty protect child neglect?
- A gripe about C.S. Lewis and conservative politics
- Stop sharing fake news and internet garbage
- Visiting a cemetery in the Old South
- Is The New York Times ignorant about religion?
Since I do not enjoy writing about every faith angle in the day-to-day unfolding of national politics, I’m going to free myself to move away from that expectation. I still do some speaking and consulting on religion and politics — the subject of my doctoral dissertation at Georgetown — but it will not be my primary focus here. Instead, I am going to write about the internal affairs and public-facing aspects of U.S. faith traditions. From time to time, I may also comment on how government entities and political actors engage with religious leaders and institutions.
Thanks for reading and sharing my work. In addition to my writing here, I am a contributing editor at Religion News Service, a nonsectarian news agency that provides news and commentary on faith, values, and ideas to nearly 200 print and web-based media outlets. From time to time, I enjoy freelancing at publications including The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, The Atlantic, Commonweal, and others.
I am on Facebook and Twitter. My personal website is www.jacoblupfer.com.
-Jacob Lupfer
Baltimore, Maryland USA
February 15, 2017
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