sexual abuse

I don’t recall the specific date in late summer 1985—but I remember exactly where I was standing. In the sunshine, near the windows in the library of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. I was pulling…

On Sunday, May 22, a third-party investigation of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention released a nearly 300-page report detailing the cover-up of hundreds of abuse accusations and an…

On Sunday, an investigation firm called Guidepost Solutions released a 300-page report recounting a disturbingly familiar pattern of abuse and cover-up in the Southern Baptist Convention, the mostly…

Given that Western liberalism is defined by a desire for social and political equality, the tendency among liberals to support minority groups is both natural and in fact laudable. In practice…

Yesterday, August 24, 2020, was the first day of classes at right-wing evangelical school Liberty University. It also turned out to be the final day of the scandal-prone Jerry Falwell, Jr.’s…

At a recent Jesuit-sponsored conference in Brazil focusing on the first five years of Pope Francis’ papacy, scholars waxed poetic about papal documents, quoting chapter and verse, claiming that this…

The practice of commenting on religion and politics frequently takes one to strange places. Say, for example, having to parse a statement like this defense of former Alabama Supreme Court Justice and…

What inspired you to write PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire? I was fascinated by how fast PTL grew and how quickly it fell apart. What I really wanted to know…

Michelle Obama is overshadowed by the rhetorical gifts of her husband, but she is a powerful speaker in her own right.

Over the holidays, the New York Times ran a punishing profile of Marc Gafni, an ex-rabbi who reinvented himself as a New Age spiritual leader. A founder of the Center for Integral Wisdom and organizer…