media criticism

Pundits, academics, and church leaders alike decry our current age as a time of partisan rancor and disunity. People, we are told, are locked in “ echo chambers, ” and they refuse to listen to those…

Being of voting age in an American presidential election year is messy business. This has always been the case. A two-party system often means choosing the lesser of two evils—deciding which of one’s…

Is it valid to be annoyed when, as your plane pulls up to the gate at your destination, a flight attendant tells you and your fellow passengers, just before deplaning, to “have a blessed day”? Perhaps…

In a recent front-page article, New York Times religion reporter Ruth Graham explores a historic gendered shift in church attendance. As the data show: survey after survey reveals a marked increase in…

Dedicated to Fred Moten, inspiration and friend. After listening to a 90-minute comprehensive webinar on campus protests and antisemitism, led by a prominent Hillel rabbi at an elite university, I was…

As a transgender person who grew up evangelical and is now an atheist, I feel the consequences of the “ myth of Christian innocence ” that profoundly shapes American society in ways that many…

Since 2016, I have been arguing here at RD that former president Donald Trump’s politics, and his appeal to White evangelical Christians, are best explained through the lens of authoritarianism…

Almost as soon as presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, attacks focused on his association with the Evangelical Lutheran…

Eight years ago here at RD I noted that women were fleeing organized religion —as measured by attendance at religious services—faster than men, a trend that showed no sign of letting up. Historically…

Today’s public discussion of Christian nationalism is led in part by a group of conservative anti-Trump evangelicals, many of whom write for centrist or center-left publications. Yet, for all their…