Out of the dust and ashes from apartment buildings burning in the streets of the Bronx, New York, among the disenfranchised Black and Hispanic youth rose Hip Hop. Hip Hop provided an identity and a voice to the voiceless; therefore, the exclusion of certain voices in contemporary Hip Hop is antithetical to the genre’s foundation. Particularly, the voices of Christians in Hip Hop, whose focus is to make God famous, are rarely included in discussions by academic and Hip Hop... Read more

Its website declares Yeezianity “THE BEST CHURCH OF ALL TIME!!!!!” Like any good religion, it has several pillars of the faith (“Money is unnecessary except as a means of exchange”) and rules about “Our Savior,” which include never speaking his real name and calling him only Yeezus. But it would appear Kanye West is the greatest savior our world never had. In a recent interview with VICE, the (anonymous) founder of this religion that worships Kanye West said that Yeezianity was not for real: “I... Read more

Divorce is higher among religiously conservative Protestants – and even drives up divorce rates for other people living around them, a new study finds. The study, slated to be published in the American Journal of Sociology, tackles the “puzzling paradox” of why divorce is more common in religiously conservative “red” states. If religious conservatives believe firmly in the value of marriage, why is divorce especially high in places like Alabama and Arkansas?To figure that out, researchers from the University of... Read more

In 1983–the year after I was born–President Ronald Reagan officially designated the third Monday in January as Martin Luther King Jr. Day. But it wasn’t until 2000–the year I graduated from high school–that it was observed by all 50 states for the first time. As the saying goes, “Justice marches slowly on.” As we celebrate yet another MLK Day, the occasion warrants asking how the 21st century Christian church can continue Dr. King’s legacy. Soong-Chan Rah—a popular speaker and author—is the... Read more

In the thousands of speeches and celebrations on the official Martin Luther King holiday since its inception, there is a crucial fact of his life, activism and thought that no major commemoration has ever celebrated: that King was a strong and uncompromising opponent of American capitalism. This was no late-in-life development for King. It spanned from his youthful years to his death while attempting to gain humane wages and working conditions for a public union. Why was Martin Luther King... Read more

Scholarly Production of the Religiously Unaffiliated        Sitting in the audience at the “Discussing the Nones” panel, I found myself nodding as the speakers offered their criticisms of the use and misuse of a much-discussed category. It surprised me, however, that the panelists focused mostly on the popular media rather than the work of social scientists publishing in peer-reviewed journals. In an attention economy in which clicks are dollars and “discursive production” is a job at a savvy marketing... Read more

I hated the way Reverend Jeremiah Wright was treated during the 2008 presidential campaign. Republicans used him as another means of fueling White racial fears that then Sen. Barack Obama was some militant Black man who, if elected, would force every White person to pledge allegiance to Bad Boy Records, start eating scrapple and be forced into slavery by way of some magical executive powers he was bestowed by a Kenyan demonic spirit. Obama had it right the first time... Read more

Cheryl Clarke once prudently instructed, “So, all of us would do well to stop fighting each other for our space at the bottom, because there ain’t no more room.” Clarke, a poet/scholar celebrated for fearlessly and brilliantly giving voice to the experiences of Black lesbian feminists, has always been acutely aware of the ways that myopic politics result in movement asphyxiation—the ways that one’s refusal to think beyond his own experience of oppression and liberation might easily result in the... Read more

1964 was a significant year in the relationship between Blacks and Jews in America. Black and Jewish lawyers meeting in the conference room of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism helped shape The Civil Rights Act. That Freedom Summer witnessed the arrest of Martin Luther King Jr. and leading American rabbis in St. Augustine, Florida, and days later the brutal murder of three Civil Rights coworkers outside Meridian, Mississippi — James Cheney, Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner — the... Read more

Bishop Joseph Walker’s response to the open letter initiated by Dr. Valerie Bridgeman in response to the SHIFT. Read more