Tag: Christians and Christianity

Trump’s Newest Venture? A $60 Bible.

Before he turned to politics, former President Donald J. Trump lent his star power and celebrity endorsement to a slew of consumer products — steaks, vodka and even for-profit education, to name just a few. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, added a new item to the list: a $60 Bible. Days […]

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America’s Most Overlooked Political Divide Is Also Its Most Revealing

It’s not often that a poll result causes me to do a double take. This month, however, a Pew Research Center survey grabbed my attention. As part of a comprehensive poll on the importance of religion in public life, Pew compared Americans’ knowledge of and support for Christian nationalism between September 2022 and February 2024 […]

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Mark Robinson, the Republican With a Right-Wing Vision for North Carolina

As Mark Robinson completed his rapid six-year rise from conservative internet sensation to the Republican nominee for North Carolina governor, he worked relentlessly to sell his political vision to evangelical Christians. Traveling from church to church and thundering away on social media, he condemned “transgenderism” and “homosexuality” as “filth.” He said Christians should be led […]

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Few Smartphones, Some Beer: A Christian Village Grapples With Modernity

It was early afternoon on a sunny winter Thursday, and the Fox Hill community looked like a well-manicured ghost town abandoned in the 1950s. Stately multistoried homes were scattered across a parklike landscape of gently rolling hills and ponds, a bucolic settlement of 60 acres in the Hudson Valley of New York State. But where […]

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‘Manifesting’ Is a Modern Version of a Centuries-Old Idea

Reality is what you make it — at least according to those who believe in manifesting, the art and quasi-spiritual science of willing things into existence through the power of desire, attention and focus. Want to improve your health or make more money or get more Instagram followers? Believe hard enough, a host of TikTok […]

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What Is Christian Nationalism, Exactly?

If you’re alarmed by the rise of Christian nationalism, the single worst thing you can do is define it too broadly. If you define it too broadly, then you’re telling millions of ordinary churchgoing citizens that the importation of their religious values into the public square somehow places them in the same camp or on […]

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What We Give Up for Lent Makes Us Who We Are

Chanequa Walker-Barnes, a professor of practical theology and pastoral care at Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia, has an unusual approach to Lent. Instead of giving up chocolate or fasting, “sometimes I’ll say I’m giving up self-neglect,” she told me. For Lent two years ago she began blogging through “40 Days of Self-Care.” She committed each […]

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An Atheist Chaplain, and a Death Row Inmate’s Final Hours

“God, that chicken.” Devin Moss has a voice that rumbles, low and slow like distant thunder, but this morning it was softer, more contemplative. His hands gripped the steering wheel of his rental car. He was dressed head to toe in white linen, his body glowing in an almost celestial way, as he drove toward […]

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The Deification of Donald Trump Poses Some Interesting Questions

Trump’s evolution into a Jesus-like figure for some, but not all, white evangelicals began soon after he launched his first presidential campaign. As David P. Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University explained by email: Some of Trump’s Christian followers do appear to have grown to see him as a kind of religious […]

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The Greatest Threat Posed by Trump

If Donald Trump storms through Iowa and easily seizes the G.O.P. nomination, as presumed, and then goes on to win back the presidency, his victory will trigger a wild political and legal melee. The primary motivating purpose of his campaign is vengeance. He’s told his base that he is their retribution and has promised to […]

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Donald Trump Is Connecting With a Different Type of Evangelical Voter

Karen Johnson went to her Lutheran church so regularly as a child that she won a perfect attendance award. As an adult, she taught Sunday school. But these days, Ms. Johnson, a 67-year-old counter attendant at a slot-machine parlor, no longer goes to church. She still identifies as an evangelical Christian, but she doesn’t believe […]

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Blessing of Same-Sex Couples Rankles Africa’s Catholics

The Vatican’s recent declaration allowing the blessing of same-sex couples caused a stir around the globe, but perhaps most of all in Africa, a rising center of the Roman Catholic Church’s future. In one statement after the next, bishops in several countries spoke of the fear and confusion the declaration has caused among their flocks, […]

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Chick-fil-A’s Closed-on-Sunday Policy Prompts a Highway Rest Stop Revolt

Kelli Bogacz had just spent a week camping in the Adirondack Mountains, and as she and her husband negotiated the five-hour drive back home to Buffalo, all they wanted was something to eat. Halfway through their journey, an oasis appeared: Chittenango Travel Plaza, a newly renovated rest stop on Interstate 90, just east of Syracuse. […]

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Biden’s Christian ‘Persecution’? We Assess Trump’s Recent Claims.

Former President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly tried to appeal to Christian voters in recent weeks by accusing the Biden administration of criminalizing Americans for their faith. On multiple occasions this month, Mr. Trump has claimed that President Biden has “persecuted” Catholics in particular. Mr. Biden himself is Catholic. “I don’t know what it is […]

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Tim Alberta on Why Evangelical Politics Was Ready for Trump

Tim Alberta: Well, it’s easy to forget now, but much of the high-profile evangelical leadership in 2016 was really resistant to Donald Trump and helped to organize behind Ted Cruz. It wasn’t until Trump had sealed up the nomination, really, that support from white evangelical figureheads started to coalesce. And it was understood, I think […]

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Pope, in Christmas Message, Laments Loss of Life in Israel-Hamas War

Pope Francis on Monday focused his Christmas address on the violence in Israel and war in Gaza that had caused an “appalling” loss of civilian life and brought “sorrow” to Bethlehem, traditionally seen as the birthplace of Jesus, as he called for the release of Israeli hostages and an end to devastating military attacks. Delivering […]

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What Lies Beneath the Vatican of the Zapotecs?

The ruins of Mitla sit about 30 miles from Oaxaca in the mountains of southern Mexico, built on a high valley floor as a gateway between the world of the living and the dead. The site was established in roughly 200 A.D. as a fortified village, and then as a burial ground by the Zapotecs, […]

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No Better Time to Be a Catholic

These are general questions, not just Catholic ones, but they are distilled in specific ways in the clash between Francis’s liberalization project and the conservative and traditionalist resistance. And how the world’s largest hierarchical religious institution passes through this crisis, how these questions are fought over and resolved inside a billion-member church, will play a […]

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Christmas Lunch at a Korean American Church

At the Dongsan Korean Reformed Church in Yonkers, N.Y., the cafeteria is twice the size of its worship space. The spacious, high-ceilinged room is filled with more than 40 round dining tables encircled by white folding chairs. After the 11 a.m. service every week, lunch is served and the tables fill up like a high […]

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During War, We Must Press a Theological Truth

I am ordained, but I do not pastor a church. Still, I am often invited to be a guest speaker or lecturer in congregations and universities. Lately, when people ask me questions afterward, they want to know my opinion about the war between Israel and Hamas. I am happy to answer them. Members of the […]

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Sprawl, Climate Change, Fading Memories Endanger Praise Houses of the South

The Rev. Kay Colleton will never forget the time she first laid eyes on Moving Star Hall, a tiny white clapboard building with a leaning chimney, a crooked roof and a storied history. The hall is a rare surviving example of a praise house — humble one-room structures used as places of worship by enslaved […]

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‘MAGA Mike Johnson’ and Our Broken Christian Politics

There are two moments from Mike Johnson’s early days as speaker of the House that almost perfectly encapsulate the broken way that so many Republican evangelicals approach politics. The first occurred just after the House elected Johnson. ABC’s Rachel Scott started to ask Johnson about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But before she […]

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Get to Know the Influential Conservative Intellectuals Who Help Explain G.O.P. Extremism

It’s easy to become inured to the extremism that has suffused the Republican Party in recent years. Donald Trump, the dominating front-runner for the party’s presidential nomination, spends days in court, in a judicial system he regularly disparages, charged with a long list of offenses and facing several trials. In the House, Republicans recently chose […]

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I Grew Up in Mike Johnson’s District, Where Kindness Can Mask Cruelty

I don’t know Mike Johnson, the brand-new speaker of the House of Representatives, but I feel as if I do because we’re from the same neck of the woods. He’s from Shreveport, in Caddo Parish, La., where I was born and where one of my brothers died. Johnson’s district encompasses my childhood hometown, Gibsland, about […]

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Christian Nationalism ‘Is No Longer Operating Beneath the Surface’

More recently, however, some of Johnson’s out-of-the-mainstream views and alliances have begun to surface. In a July 20, 2005 editorial that Johnson wrote for the Shreveport Times, Johnson argued that All of us should acknowledge the real emotion and strife of the homosexual lifestyle and should certainly treat all people with dignity, love and respect. […]

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For Mike Johnson, Religion Is at the Forefront of Politics and Policy

In the moments before he was to face a vote on becoming speaker of the House this week, Representative Mike Johnson posted a photograph on social media of the inscription carved into marble atop the chamber’s rostrum: “In God We Trust.” His colleagues celebrated his candidacy by circulating an image of him on bended knee […]

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Welcome, Speaker Johnson, to the Worst Job in Politics

Congratulations are due to Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who as the new speaker of the House has inherited the worst job in politics. Mr. Johnson was a decidedly unlikely choice at the beginning of this process. For many in Washington, he is a cipher. Unlike well-known leaders like his fellow Louisianian Steve Scalise, the […]

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The Worst Scandal in American Higher Education Isn’t in the Ivy League

Those of us who write about higher education can pay too much attention to America’s elite universities. Schools like Harvard, Yale and Stanford are seen as virtual cultural superpowers, and the battle over these schools is sometimes seen as a proxy for battles over the future of the country itself. It’s not that this argument […]

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In the Heart of the Italian Alps, the Sacri Monti Offer a Trove of Art

The Italian Alps are renowned for their stunning scenery, fine wine and good food. But many travelers are unaware that the region also hosts exquisite Renaissance and Baroque art. Nestled in the mountains and hills of northwestern Italy, just an hour’s drive from Milan, a cluster of Catholic sanctuaries brim with sculptures and frescoes by […]

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