Reading Time: 9 minutes On Thursday, April 27, Senate Republicans blocked a measure that would have allowed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to be added to the US Constitution as its 28th Amendment. The action reveals how far the US has shifted into a discourse shaped centrally by Christian nationalism. It did not have to be this way.
editor’s pick
Posted inWar and Peace
‘An armed society is a polite society’
Reading Time: 5 minutes The libertarian mantra which asserts that gun ownership makes people more peaceful is more of a sick joke than ever after a rash of senseless shootings.
Posted inCulture
Accepting the reality of a less literate age
Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s hard to deny, and harder to accept, that reading and writing are in massive decline. But pull back for a wider view and the written word can be seen as a short-term innovation— and our current trend as a return to our oldest medium.
Posted inThe Future
What fifty years of struggle can teach us, going forward
Reading Time: 9 minutes The year is 1973. In January, Richard Nixon is sworn in for his second term as president, the US officially withdraws from its conflict in Vietnam, and an investigation into the Watergate break-ins expands from the burglars to the statesmen. In the coming months, Nixon will orchestrate a cover-up of a cover-up, trying to hold […]
Posted inReligion
Revisiting Hitchens’ challenge and the value of hope
Reading Time: 6 minutes Atheist Christopher Hitchens made a famous moral challenge to Christians. Let’s consider a second Christian response.
Posted inCommunity
What can the secular community learn from Black-majority churches?
Reading Time: 4 minutes As church attendance continues to plummet in the UK, Black churches buck the trend. Is there something seculars can learn from their success?
Posted inTechnology
Why AI isn’t an oracle of truth
Reading Time: 5 minutes Big Tech companies eager to find the next big thing have latched onto AI chatbots—but they’re racing ahead of what the tech can actually do.
Posted inArts
The priceless gift of attention
Reading Time: 4 minutes We writers aren’t just competing with our peers, but with all the greatest masterpieces of the ages. How’s a reader to choose?
Posted inMyth & Folklore
What the world can teach us about religiosity at home
Reading Time: 8 minutes The man who sells newspapers in my barrio is an Evangelical Christian, and also a deeply angry person living in a lot of pain. He lost his wife to COVID-19, he spent the vast majority of his life barely making ends meet, and he attributes not killing himself to the knowledge that his god will […]
Posted inMyth & Folklore
The folklore of tricks and tricksters
Reading Time: 4 minutes Ask a folklorist and you’ll get some of the history, but we’ll also go into how pranks and trickster figures in myth and folklore subvert the social order…in some cases just to circle back and uphold it. In other words, it’s complicated. Tricksters have been with us for a long time, populating myths, legends, and […]