Here are the top five posts from Rhetoric Race and Religion this week. To contribute to R3, click here. Number 1 Book Review: Radical #Spiritual #Motherhood by Andre E. Johnson R3 Editor The study of African American religion is enjoying a renewed resurgence as of late. Many in the area of religious studies have embarked upon the African American religious phenomenon producing works in theology, ethics, preaching, and the Black Church. However, what have also contributed to the offerings within this ever-expanding field are... Read more

Poverty is the primordial fact of human existence, for we did not earn our existence, we were given it by our dear, darling parents, and all subsequent earning, owning and wealth is contingent upon this being given — upon receiving existence like a welfare check. But we are poorer still, for even after the gift of existence we lie unfurnished, waiting to be given language, virtue, identity, belonging, continued existence — donations that make all later owning, earning, and wealth possible. The... Read more

With the shutdown I’m tempted to say “I told you so.” What did you expect?Religious morons hijack the GOP (with a big assist from my dad and me in the 1970s and 1980s) and now the lobotomized GOP has hijacked the rest of us and taken the country and world economy hostage. The shutdown is the religious right’s biggest “victory” and a loss for the rest of us that threatens everything we love. But it’s not all “their” fault. Some... Read more

The only female presenter at the Latino Pentecostal Theological Summit, Dr. Miriam Figueroa, spoke on the oppression of female pastors in the Puerto Rican Church of God and in the Church of God worldwide. “I am used to being invisible. The one with no voice … but today the oppressed becomes the hero of justice,” Figueroa said.Figueroa is a pastor in Agua Buenas, Puerto Rico. After her son-in-law challenged her to present her lecture, Figueroa chose to give it in English.... Read more

Amidst the national reflection, some Protestants have been led to critically reexamine the doctrine of the “spirituality of the church” which has had a foothold within segments the Presbyterian Church for nearly two centuries. Emphasizing the church’s responsibility for the salvation of the individual rather than social and political engagement, the “spirituality of the church” played a significant role during the civil rights era. Unfortunately, much of the theological conversation around “spirituality of the church” lacks concrete historical references to... Read more

When I was little my mother use to always tell me to “stand up straight.” It is probably because of my mother’s plea that one particular bible story became one of my favorites. It is a story that comes from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 13.  In this story Jesus heals a woman who had been crippled and bent over for 18 years. As he does so he tells her “to stand up straight.” For me, these are some of... Read more

by Crystal St. Marie LewisR3 Contributor First published at the blog Crystal St. Marie Lewis  In his book titled “Why Christianity Must Change or Die,” a controversial bishop named John Shelby Spong wrote in very frank terms about Christianity’s growing conundrum. He explained that his faith (and mine) is simultaneously experiencing, among other hurdles, a science problem, and an exclusivity problem, and a history problem, and a doctrine-believability problem, and consequently a credibility problem. He wrote that the Christian faith’s... Read more

Our blog ‘critical religion’ receives contributions from many people, and they usually have the terms ‘critical’ and ‘religion’ in them somewhere. Some are much more clearly theorised than that. My own understanding of ‘critical religion’ is specific. For me, ‘critical religion’ is always about ‘religion and related categories’, because I argue that religion is not a stand-alone category, but is one of a configuration of categories. On its own, ‘religion’ has no object; it only seems to do so. Religion... Read more

Let’s get this out of the way right away: Jesus was political. His preaching was tinged with political statements. His healings carried massive political implications for the ways we structure our world and understand our neighbor. His execution was of the kind reserved for acts of political disruption. That is, he died on a cross because the political authorities of his day saw him as a threat to the political structures and order of his day. Jesus was political. His... Read more

For many of us who grew up evangelical, the word “compromise” has always been a bad word. It means to allow non-Christian values and influences to corrupt your devotion to Biblical truth. Frank Schaeffer, the son of the evangelical leader who started the modern Religious Right, claims that our government shutdown and its Tea Party architects cannot be understood apart from this fundamental characteristic of the evangelical ethos. Insofar as the Tea Party is an evangelical phenomenon, I think he may be... Read more