The unmistakable boom of an indie bass can be heard coming from the Rock n Roll Hotel. The scent of seasoned mussels and fresh-baked sour cherry pie emanates from either side of the street. Cursing the long-awaited street car, residents artfully dodge taxicabs and speeding bikers to get around the plaid-clad, bespectacled foodies waiting patiently outside of Taylor Gourmet and H & Pizza, eager to devour their fried risotto balls or custom-made soy cheese slices. Walking along H St. NE... Read more

More than half a century after John F. Kennedy dismissed the role that his Catholic faith would play when he was elected president, today’s candidates for the nation’s highest executive office still have to navigate the electoral implications of religion. In a talk sponsored by Harvard Divinity School (HDS), four religious scholars took up the question of “Religion and the Election: Does it Matter?” The panelists suggested that while the faith of any individual candidate seems less important now to... Read more

Many people describe depression as a kind of intense grief. It is a deep sadness. It’s like heartbreak, agony and despair all at once. I think depression is worse than grief. Grief usually has an identifiable cause. There are stages. People understand why you are sad. It eases with time. I find that depression is more like death. In every depressive episode, something is lost. Sometimes it’s the belief that I’m not that sick. Sometimes it’s a dream. Sometimes it’s... Read more

Join R3 contributors and a host of others as we facilitate a live tweet chat of the Presidential Debate on Monday October 22, 2012 starting at 8:00pmCST. We will also facilitate a 30 minute post debate tweet session as well. Join the discussion by using hashtag #R3debate and follow R3 on Twitter @rhetoricracerel Read more

U.S. Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia recently noted in a speech at Liberty University that evolution and much else he was taught in college were “lies straight from the pit of hell.” These were “lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.” He went on to note that he believes that the earth is about 9,000 years old and was created in six days because this is... Read more

by Brian FoulksR3 Contributor I am the first to admit that I am far from being well informed in politics. But as I get older and wiser, I start to understand that there is this theo-political tension that engulfs the life of the believers. There is this resounding intent that God’s sovereignty aligns itself with “the least of these”-in certain cultural containers this collectively embodies different people groups. The theo-political tension is the reflective of a theological perspective that can... Read more

Across many different cultures and faiths, the way prayer is delivered can be as important as its message. William FitzGerald, an assistant professor of English at Rutgers–Camden, casts prayer as a rhetorical art to find its common threads across all faiths in his new book Spiritual Modalities: Prayer as Rhetoric and Performance (Penn State University Press, 2012). Rhetoric is the art of conveying a point in a convincing, eloquent, and effective way. According to the Rutgers–Camden scholar, these are the... Read more

I’m happy to announce the publication of Interconnections: Gender and Race in American History, edited by yours truly and Alison M. Parker , the latest entry in our Gender and Race in American History series at the University of Rochester Press. (By the way, we welcome inquiries from prospective authors!). The volume features articles by Meredith Clark-Wiltz, Kendra Taira Field, Rashauna Johnson, Vivian M. May, Michele Mitchell, and Hélène Quanquin. The goal of the collection is to apply the theory... Read more

Last weekend, hundreds of conservative churches participated in “Pulpit Freedom Sunday”, during which pastors preached about electoral politics and sent recordings of their sermons to the Internal Revenue Service. It’s a provocation: these pastors and their legal counsel hope to challenge the rarely-enforced IRS rule prohibiting candidate endorsements by tax-exempt organizations, including houses of worship, and take it all the way to the US supreme court. A new survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life , which... Read more

After the first presidential debate last week, I wrote “when Mitt Romney mentioned the ‘Creator’ in the debate tonight, he owned it. ‘We’re all Children of the same God,’ he said.” “That’s about 85 percent of the country he was talking to,” I said. “That should have been President Obama’s constituency but he let Romney have it, as he let Romney have the debate.” As it turned out, that was true. A poll by the Pew Research Center for the... Read more