Want to know why the Tea Party so eager to grievously wound the Republican Party? The answer is as simple as it is counterintuitive: its leaders view themselves as modern prophets of the apocalypse. In the aftermath of the great government shutdown of 2013, the Tea Party continues to cause heartburn for establishment Republicans. Consider the results of last week’s elections, which offer clues to the internecine GOP battles that lie ahead. Although it’s much too early to draw hard... Read more

I keep reading these blogs about Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave claiming that black people are “tired” of seeing yet another slavery movie. Message board comments tell me that some non-black people are tired too, but these people are those who don’t understand why a majority of African Americans are inexplicably still a little troubled by slavery, Jim Crow, and ongoing inequality in labor, housing, education, and the criminal justice system. Go figure. Maybe I know what they mean. After all, we have all those... Read more

In this age of third-wave feminism, many Americans may not realize that Christian women continue to struggle with what many would deem outdated gendered notions. This includes things such as a woman’s calling being second to her husband’s, women as unwitting temptresses who therefore must hide their bodies, and that women may not lead (or sometimes even speak) in church. Both external and internal pressures and fears have historically kept women silent on these matters. In the recently released Talking Taboo:... Read more

Panels from the Hip Hop and Religion group of the American Academy of Religion that meets in Baltimore, Maryland November 23-26.  Theme: The Religion and Hip Hop Cipher: Ciphering the Critical Approaches Christopher Driscoll, Rice University, Presiding Saturday – 1:00 PM-3:30 PM Convention Center-326 In hip hop, the cipher is a locale where artists of various backgrounds, commitments, and training come together in a linguistic battle of wit and passion, where “aporetic flow” erupts into competing norms, and yet, community. To... Read more

This will probably come as no surprise, but I’m a fan of Pope Francis. A big fan. I’m under no illusions that he isn’t without his flaws, but when it comes to the Christian faith and in particular being Christ-like he just seems to get it, probably more than any other major Christian leader I know. From rejecting the luxurious papal apartment to washing the feet of a Muslim female inmate to his theology that seems more concerned with loving the... Read more

When we consider the typical church worship service in the United States, we discover certain trends. Lament and stories of suffering are conspicuously absent. In Hurting with God, Glenn Pemberton notes that laments constitute 40 percent of the Psalms, but in the hymnal for the Churches of Christ, laments make up 13 percent, the Presbyterian hymnal 19 percent, and the Baptist hymnal 13 percent. Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) licenses local churches for the use of contemporary worship songs. CCLI tracks... Read more

While the U.S. is generally considered a highly religious nation, African-Americans are markedly more religious on a variety of measures than the U.S. population as a whole, including level of affiliation with a religion, attendance at religious services, frequency of prayer and religion’s importance in life. Compared with other racial and ethnic groups, African-Americans are among the most likely to report a formal religious affiliation, with fully 87% of African-Americans describing themselves as belonging to one religious group or another,... Read more

R3 Contributor Gee Joyner will speak at the Lunch and Learn Series hosted by Gifts of Life Ministries November 12, at 12:00 noon. The church is located at 1542 Jackson Ave. in Memphis, Tennessee. Lunch and Learn is a new ministry of the church designed to foster a better understanding of topics that are germane to people in the community. Speakers in this series will typically speak on topics straight from the headlines. Professor Joyner’s talk will focus on contemporary topics from his newly published... Read more

It looked like a typical Sunday morning at any mega-church. Hundreds packed in for more than an hour of rousing music, an inspirational sermon, a reading and some quiet reflection. The only thing missing was God. Dozens of gatherings dubbed “atheist mega-churches” by supporters and detractors are springing up around the U.S. after finding success in Great Britain earlier this year. The movement fueled by social media and spearheaded by two prominent British comedians is no joke. On Sunday, the... Read more

What did the pope see when he embraced a disfigured man in St. Peter’s Square? If you read news reports about the scene, the answer is clear: the pope saw someone who was suffering; someone in need of compassion.And certainly that is what many of us saw as well. We witnessed an elevated religious leader touch someone whom many would find untouchable. Many of us also briefly imagined how much we ourselves would yearn to be embraced if we were covered in boils... Read more