Matthew Stewart wants to make one thing perfectly clear: The United States was not founded as a Christian nation. The principles that inspired the American Revolution, he argues in “Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic,” belong to an intellectual tradition dating to ancient Greece and reviled by every variety of Christian — early church fathers, Catholic clergy and Protestant divines alike. Rooted in the philosophy of Epicurus, who saw happiness as the highest good, this tradition flowered... Read more

Hillary Clinton once described her faith as the background music of her life. Whether she hears it as Chopin, Bach or even U2, she did not say, but the tune, she said, never fades away. “It’s there all the time. It’s not something you have to think about, you believe it,” she said in an interview with the New York Times. “You have a faith center out of which the rest flows.” It can be easy to tune out background music,... Read more

Even in an increasingly Red vs. Blue nation, the public’s political attitudes and values come in many shades and hues. Partisan polarization – the vast and growing gap between Republicans and Democrats – is a defining feature of politics today. But beyond the ideological wings, which make up a minority of the public, the political landscape includes a center that is large and diverse, unified by frustration with politics and little else. As a result, both parties face formidable challenges... Read more

The past week’s events have sent shock waves of despair throughout our community.  Prominent Mormon Feminist Kate Kelly was excommunicated by a group of men in white shirts and ties in an act hauntingly named, “A Court of Love.”  Many of us have called out the spiritual violence of the process. We had no idea the sting we would feel, even if we anticipated this decision.  Some of us can barely harness the grief.  It just seems so wrong.  Many, many of us are... Read more

In the next few weeks, you may come into work and find your co-worker taking a power nap at 9:30am. At break time, you’ll notice she is missing in the discussion about Harry Potter over at the water cooler. At the staff meeting, you will be shocked when she is offered coffee and cookies and refuses! By lunch time, your concern about her missing at the water cooler compels you to investigate the situation. Then you remember what she had... Read more

A few months ago, an odd news story out of St. Louis caught my eye. A Christian-owned dog-walking business had fired, so to speak, a customer who supported legalizing marijuana. “We simply said it was against the idea of being clean and sober-minded and treating your body as a temple to the Holy Spirit,” one of the service’s owners told The Huffington Post. The service, Pack Leader, Plus (motto: “Faith. Family. Dogs.”), is not alone in its determination to shut its... Read more

On September 12, 1960, a young Democratic presidential nominee named John F. Kennedy made history. Addressing a group of Protestant ministers in Houston Texas, he swore – despite his Roman Catholic background – to uphold a belief in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which allows for freedom of religion and advocates a separation between church and state. Kennedy was effectively making religion redundant in American public life. When he was elected the following January, Kennedy set... Read more

It has almost become an axiom of public theology that theological content is co‐determined by context. This does not mean that the influence a particular context exerts on public theology is always easily detectable. In fact, it is quite possi‐ble that even the closest examination of a particular theological text cannot trace any link to the context in which it was written. Take, for example, the contribution the well‐known theologian of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, prof Jo‐han... Read more

What was Jesus talking about when he talked about hell? Well, that’s actually a great question. Growing up I was often told that “Jesus talked more about hell than he did heaven”, but I don’t once remember being encouraged to actually research from a historical and grammatical perspective what Jesus was actually talking about when he used the word “hell”. (In their defense, I don’t think I ever had a religious leader with advanced theological training, so they probably didn’t... Read more

by Andre KeyR3 Contributor *Read Part 1 hereI think that the obsession with the critique of whiteness found in the Five Percent Nation teachings and other black nationalist oriented religious traditions found in the African American community misses the point entirely.  A question that is not often asked is, ‘what should the religious mythologies and theology of Black folk reflect if not a response to the experiences of…well…Black folk?’   The fact that after centuries of racial enslavement, brutal and oppressive Jim Crow... Read more