holidays

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus is not calling for peace in Ukraine, and the fact that some in the Western media seem to think he has done so is evidence of how much the West has to learn about…

In January 1994, a week after the King holiday, I walked into the lobby of my dorm to listen to representatives from the Israeli School of Universal Practical Knowledge (ISUPK), a Black Israelite…

Excuse me, reader, but would you have a moment to talk about the obnoxious practice of asking people to talk about “our” lord and savior? In a previous piece for RD , one of the reasons I gave for why…

So here we are, some of us, still calling out “peace on earth, goodwill to all!” as another ghastly year grinds to a close in a season ostensibly given to light and hope. Peace on earth: it’s a nice…

Are you the kind of person who thinks “more religion” is the answer to all our social ills? Does news about American secularization send you into a sort of frenzied moral panic , in which you feel the…

Like clockwork, my social media accounts are slowly being populated with posts about the true origins of Thanksgiving or the need to declare the fourth Thursday in November a day of mourning in…

In the American ritual calendar, two days celebrate those who’ve served in the armed forces. Memorial Day is poignant, set at the end of May in the context of life’s seasonal burgeoning — flowers…

It’s spooky season again, the time of year when we’re drawn to horror ; when The Great Pumpkin arrives to teach us how to live with the blockheads ; when the pagan outrage machine is fired up; and…

As we reflect on the implications of the Trump years there have been several books exploring the convergence of white evangelical Christianity, right-wing nationalism, and Trumpism as it morphed into…

Over the last year, I’ve scrolled past social media posts by members of diverse religious backgrounds and political opinions. However, because my ethnographic research is based in Mormon…