How Pop Music Fandom Became Sports, Politics, Religion and All-Out War

In October, with “Chromatica” having registered as a modest hit, Grande’s own new album, “Positions,” leaked online before its official release. Cordero, who liked Grande well enough but found her new music to be lacking, shared a link to the unreleased songs, much to the consternation of Grande fans, who worried that the bootlegged versions would damage the singer’s commercial prospects.

Taking on the role of volunteer internet detectives, Grande fans proceeded to spend days playing Whac-a-Mole by flagging links to the unauthorized album as they proliferated across the internet. But Cordero, bored and sensing their agita, decided to bait them even further by tweeting — falsely — that he’d subsequently been fined $150,000 by Grande’s label for his role in spreading the leak. “is there any way I can get out of this,” he wrote. “I’m so scared.” He even shared a picture of himself crying.

“They were rejoicing,” Cordero recalled giddily of the Grande fans he’d fooled, who spread the word far and wide that the leaker — a Gaga lover, no less — was being punished. “Sorry but I feel no sympathy,” one Grande supporter wrote on Reddit. “Charge him, put him in jail. you can’t leak an album by the world’s biggest pop star and expect no consequences.”

This was pop fandom in 2020: competitive, arcane, sales-obsessed, sometimes pointless, chaotic, adversarial, amusing and a little frightening — all happening almost entirely online. While music has long been intertwined with internet communities and the rise of social networks, a growing faction of the most vocal and dedicated pop enthusiasts have embraced the term “stan” — taken from the 20-year-old Eminem song about a superfan turned homicidal stalker — and are redefining what it means to love an artist.

On what is known as Stan Twitter — and its offshoots on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Tumblr and various message boards — these devotees compare No. 1s and streaming statistics like sports fans do batting averages, championship wins and shooting percentages. They pledge allegiance to their favorites like the most rabid political partisans or religious followers. They organize to win awards show polls, boost sales and raise money like grass roots activists. And they band together to pester — or harass, and even dox — those who may dare to slight the stars they have chosen to align themselves with.

COVID was year’s top religion story, But which story?

… According to journalists who cover religion, this was the year’s … language: ‘Yeah, freedom of religion means freedom of worship, that … showdown was the most important religion-news story of 2020. … Hillsong pastor Carl Lentz.
As religion newsmakers of the year, …

‘The Bachelorette”s Ivan Hall explains the conversation about religion that led to his shocking elimination

ABC/Craig Sjodin(LOS ANGELES) — Following The Bachelorette‘s season 16 finale on Tuesday, Ivan Hall shed some light on his conversation with Tayshia Adams about religion that led to his shocking elimination.

Adams, whose Bachelorette journey ended with an engagement to Zac Clark, an addiction specialist from Haddonfield, New Jersey, cited differences differences in religious beliefs as the reason for sending the 28-year-old aeronautical engineer home.

“She only wants to date a Christian and I’m not religious,” Hall claimed in response to a message from Bachelor alum Caila Quinn after his elimination, according to the New York Post.

“I’m open to and have dated any religion,” he continued.

“I feel like we started off really strong, and we found that trust,” Adams explained in a conversation with Ivan before letting him go.

“But also, this past week, we talked about some important subjects that I feel like we both needed to have, but there are some things kinda posed concern,” she added.

“I wish I could say that there were a lot of red flags prior to this week, and there haven’t been,” Tayshia continued.  At the end of the day, religion is part of my morals, my beliefs.”

Adams has the Bible verse Psalm 46:5 posted in her Instagram bio, which reads: “God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.”

By George Costantino
Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Ivan Hall Spills All on His and Tayshia Adams’ Deal Breaker Conversation About Religion

Tayshia Adams just wasn’t down for an interfaith relationship. At least, that’s what Ivan Hall claims was the reason the pair didn’t work out on The Bachelorette.

During Tuesday night’s season finale, fans were surprised when the Bachelorette suddenly revealed that “morals and my beliefs” came between them, as she instead accepted Zac Clark‘s proposal.

Ivan told Tayshia onscreen, “All the girls I have dated in the past, it never ended because of religion or anything, but I know that’s something that’s important to you.”

Viewers hadn’t seen the duo explicitly talk about their religious views before. So when they simply mentioned it was the deal breaker that ultimately swayed her decision, we needed to know what really went down.

Fortunately for fans, Ivan is now spilling the tea on what happened during their off-screen conversation and how he learned that religion was the major barrier between the ABC stars.

Behind the Scenes Secrets About Tayshia Adams’ Style on The Bachelorette

On PodcastOne’s Off The Vine podcast on Wednesday, Dec. 23, Ivan explained that the fantasy suites were their one opportunity to have hours of uninterrupted time to discuss raising kids and other life priorities. It turns out, religion got brought up then, as well.

The Texan revealed, “I knew we were going to have to talk about it eventually, because I could tell she was at least, that she was Christian, but we hadn’t talked about it in the past. But she said maybe once to me that she relied on her faith a lot.”

Ivan went on, “That’s how it came up, Tayshia was like, ‘So what do you think about raising kids with religion and what not?’ And that’s when we dove into it. And I kind of explained to Tayshia, ‘Listen, I’m agnostic. A lot of people confuse it for being atheist. Atheist is not what I am.'”

He views atheism as “taking a hard stance that there is not God,” which is not his belief. “Agnostic is strictly saying ‘I don’t know,’ basically. And that’s just how I feel,” he explained.

Story continues

The aeronautical engineer continued, “When she starts asking me my beliefs like, ‘Is there heaven or is there a hell?’ that kind of stuff, I’m going to be like, ‘Yeah, my answer is going to be different than yours because I’m going to tell our kids I don’t know what there is.'”

Ivan told his date he was “completely fine” with her telling their potential children about her views and taking them to church.

“In my past, I’ve dated women who are Christian, I’ve dated women who are Muslim. I’m completely open to it, it is what it is,” Ivan added. “You can have whatever religion you want, my main focus are the values and morals you have.”

It appears that’s where things may have differed between him and the 30-year-old former phlebotomist. He said on the podcast, “She wanted to date someone who is Christian. And that’s completely fine and that’s how a lot of people are.”

However, he hinted that it would have been easier for everyone involved if she would have been more upfront about it. Ivan dished, “It does suck or whatever that you probably could’ve just eliminated X amount of people in the beginning for that.”

The 28-year-old went on to say that when he brought up the term “interfaith relationship” when discussing their future, the Bachelor in Paradise alum didn’t understand what he meant. “I don’t think Tayshia even knew what that was or ever really thought about the idea of dating a non-Christian,” he explained.

Though he thinks interfaith relationships bring a lot of “value” to a dynamic, he feels that Tayshia was just “not into” it.

Furthermore, he wasn’t down to be with a life partner that didn’t “accept me for just who I am,” because he never wants to change himself for someone else. “I don’t really want to be with that person anyways. So that’s kind of how I rationalized it in my head,” he said.

It seems like it’s all water under the bridge now. As the science whiz put it, “The chapter is closed. It just is what it is. I still care for Tayshia, she’s cool, all that stuff. We had a good time.”

In the end, he’s happy she ended up with Zac. “He’s a great guy, I really do like him. I really appreciated the guys in the house that I considered to be real and didn’t do stuff for the camera,” Ivan continued. “He’s a class act. He’s a man, I respect the guy to death.”

The Filipino hunk said that Zac and Tayshia “had a ton of chemistry going on, and I didn’t realize that.”

He admitted that from the outside looking in on their relationship, “I guess one would question their lifestyles are on opposite coasts.” As Ivan pointed out, “He’s sober, it seemed like Tayshia honestly liked to drink… I don’t know how that plays into it.”

But he also gave Zac some credit, saying, “I know for certain, I could tell, that Zac was in love with Tayshia. Like, before all of us he was there first and he’s a great guy and he’s going to treat her right.” Ivan added, “I wish them the best though.”

How do Tayshia’s other men feel about her engagement? See what fellow runner up Ben Smith said during his candid conversation with Nick Viall on Wednesday.

Peacock is live now! Check out NBCU’s new streaming service here.

Christmas 2020 letter: Act of charity, service is the best religion

Farm Laws, Fertility And Religion

Mohkam Singh, a 65-year-old farmer from the Khalsa warrior community of Ludhiana, radiates a quiet conviction.

“What you see here is a Sachh Yug,” says Singh just outside a tent at the Singhu border. “Outside, there’s a Kal Yug where people are fighting to prove which religion is greater.”

Protesting farmers such as Mohkam are not only against the Centre’s new farm laws but are also against the erosion of the spiritual identity of agricultural communities across India. At both Singhu and Tikri borders, we witnessed a cry from farmers for recognition of their sacred relationship with the soil. For them, execution of the laws will not only play into the hands of private merchants but also disrupt their identity as “toilers and givers of grain.”

Not only that, the farming communities believe they are humanity’s call to conscience in the fight against climate change. Undermining them could shrink the scope of a collective movement towards a greener and more spiritually conscious planet.        

While demonstrations, poetry readings, film screenings and ladles of generosity at langars have been highlighted as the means to surcharge the community spirit at these protest sites, it’s also important to understand the religious underpinnings of the farmers’ protests.

In the expansive demonstration spaces we visited last week, we saw the critical role of religion in informing this grassroots movement. The Nihang Sikhs, for instance, with their ornamental attires and displays of martial skills are here to set a different tone from a purely ceremonial one. Part-farmers, part-religious leaders, they believe the protests are a reassertion of the rights of the underclasses—farmers, women and religious minorities—while they are there to merely provide the spiritual impetus in this “holy land.”

The Nihangs asserted that the political leadership has undermined the solidity of the movement shaped by eclectic traditions from Punjab and Haryana, along with interfaith work.

Muslims from Punjab’s Malerkotla district, who have been helping the farmers since the inception of these protests, have now set up community kitchens on the borders. In return, Sikh farmers are rallying around their Muslim brethren during prayer rituals. A Muslim man from Malerkotla told me the only religion at these protests is the urge to stand together.

Around these sites, Christian trusts and philanthropists are doling out free medicines to ailing farmers and their families. Trolleys and vans with banners announcing interfaith work by Christian charitable organizations suggest this isn’t a one-dimensional movement.

At the community kitchens, Sikh women can be found flipping rotis beside Hindu woman sorting vegetables for the day’s langar. A few steps ahead, Muslims are preparing Biryani.        

While the memories of the resilience of anti-CAA protestors across religious lines have invigorated the protests this year, the farmers want to keep their movement exclusive.

“The farm laws will tear apart the entire country,” said Mata Singh, a Sikh farmer. “Farming is fertility, and these laws will disrupt the cycle of life if they’re allowed to pass.”

Even the women have joined the chorus. They believe the protests are not just against the laws, but also against the upturning of the social and spiritual identities of farming women.

“Discrediting our value in the ecosystem is like discrediting the importance of tribal and agricultural deities across spiritual traditions,” they noted.

The farming women were especially critical of the inaction over the deaths at these protests, including that of Haryana-based Sikh priest Baba Ram Singh, who shot himself near Singhu “to express anger and pain against the government’s injustice.”

As the protests surge and the crackdowns escalate, more interfaith and community support groups will join to free the movement of the idea that it’s pandering to specific groups or communities. More religious leaders from different parts of India are already on their way to set up camp here.

It’s clear this isn’t just a reaction to the anti-farmer farm laws. This is a moment in time when political, social and spiritual forces have converged under unprecedented circumstances.   

(Priyadarshini Sen is an Independent Journalist based in Delhi. She writes for Indian and US-based media. Views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of Outlook Magazine.)

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Computer scientist explains and challenges religion in new book

There is an explanation for everything.If there really was an Exodus from Egypt, why don’t we possess any archaeological evidence of this event, in the form of garments or vessels buried in the sands of Sinai?That’s easy. God said to the Israelites: “Your clothing did not wear out… these 40 years” (Ex. 8:4) and “I will rain down food from the sky for you” (Ex. 16: 4). Our ancestors trekking to the Promised Land never discarded their vestments or cooked a single meal! Ergo: no pants or pottery for the archaeologists to dig up.How about that annoying little chronological discrepancy between the 14 billion years it took the universe to emerge according to science and the six days of Creation depicted by the Bible?Come, now: the expansion of the cosmos from the infinitesimal mass-energy point following the Big Bang occurred at lightning speed, and Einstein proved that at such velocities time slows down. Billions of years shrank to exactly six days!I never met a “rational” defense of the truth or value of Judaism that didn’t make me want to laugh like a hyena or take a second look at lunch. I did meet a fellow once who had been raised a strict Maimonidean. He believed that every bit of the theology purveyed, and ordinances prescribed, by the Torah made logical sense. He got into Harvard Medical School, opened up his first cadaver, doffed his yarmulke and left the fold.The writer of these lines, on the other hand, was taught by his parents to love the Jews with a passion as his family. No matter how much nonsense I may descry in aspects of Judeo-classical literature or quotidian Jewish praxis, I’m staying put.

But it can’t all come down to the heart, if for no other reason than that ahavat Yisrael, that visceral affection for, and devotion to, the Jewish people that was imbibed cum lacte by so many previous generations, is no longer a given for millions of Jews in the Diaspora and even in Israel. The Archimedean fulcrum upon which to leverage the continued and – God willing – enhanced loyalty of those segments of our nation that are fast falling away must involve a powerful appeal to the head: a painstaking, empirical, cost-benefit analysis of why identifying and acting as a committed Jew is the most sensible choice for modern members of our tribe.FINALLY, SOMEONE has taken up the gauntlet, and without making me want to snigger or regurgitate. In Judaism Straight Up: Why Real Religion Endures, computer science professor Moshe Koppel does not insult our intelligence; he challenges it, and on a level that requires a cerebrum functioning at maximum capacity. Employing (like a good Jew) complex business models, as well as game theory, futurism studies and a host of other disciplines, Koppel undertakes to demonstrate to the thinking person that he/she has it all wrong. In the book’s introduction he writes:“Between Heidi of Princeton [representing the secular, liberal, cosmopolitan Jew] and Shimen of the Polish shtetl [representing the traditional, observant, insulated Jew], one is narrow and Orthodox and the other is worldly and realistic. I will argue… that most people are confused about which one is which…. Then I’ll explain why every long-lived society that we know about is more like Shimen’s than like Heidi’s.”As theses go, this is one of the more counterintuitive, not to say quixotic. Koppel is asserting that Jewish custom and communalism constitute a more effective and sustainable mode of living than that practiced by today’s unfettered and unaffiliated children of utilitarianism. He pits old-time religion against the purportedly inexorable juggernaut of modern “scientific” existence, the Yiddishkeit of yore against the creeping nihilism, pulverizing individualism and entropic universalism of the contemporary West.Koppel’s eggheaded pugilism is a delight: think Platonic dialogue meets advanced Gemara class meets The Moscow Puzzles – all rendered accessible. The author’s prose is crisp and confident, and laced with subtle and not-so-subtle humor (don’t trust any guy who can go two hundred and fifty pages without cracking a joke). His characters – because, for all its scientific method, this is a book about people – are colorfully drawn and easy to identify with. His insights into the underlying mega-trends transforming contemporary human (not just Jewish) society are not only fascinating; they have the added advantage of being dead-on.Perhaps the book’s only drawback is an occupational hazard. Koppel is a scientist, and his guarded optimism about the trajectory of Judaism in Israel (as opposed to America) gives off a slight whiff of Marxian determinism: things are moving in the direction of an organic, synthetic, national-religious culture that will know how to maintain its vitality and independence while interacting positively with the wider world. From where I’m sitting (in Hod Hasharon – Koppel lives in Efrat) we’re going to need a little more Lenin with our Marx. Those of us who share Koppel’s dream of a strong, cross-denominational, nondoctrinaire and unselfconscious Judaism still have an uphill battle to fight. Judaism Straight Up is the blueprint for where we should be headed. The writer is a professor of Arabic literature and Islamic history and the author of John Lennon and the Jews: A Philosophical Rampage.

JUDAISM STRAIGHT UP WHY REAL RELIGION ENDURES
By Moshe Koppel
Maggid
161 pages; $24.95

Bachelorette’s Ivan Hall: Why Religion Was a Deal-Breaker for Tayshia Adams

Spilling the tea. Tayshia Adams shocked Bachelor Nation when she sent Ivan Hall packing during the season 16 finale — and now the fan-favorite is speaking out.

After a season filled with twists and turns, the former phlebotomist, 30, accepted Zac Clark‘s proposal during the Tuesday, December 22, episode of The Bachelorette. Earlier in the night, some viewers were heartbroken when Adams said goodbye to Hall, 28, after briefly discussing their differences in religion. While the conversation was cut short on air, the Texas native stopped by Kaitlyn Bristowe‘s “Off the Vine” podcast to detail the dramatic end to his relationship with Adams.

“In this short amount of time, you have to have deep talks and talk about a lot of different things,” the aeronautical engineer said on the podcast episode, available on Thursday, December 24. “I was always trying to kind of calculate when I could talk about certain things with Tayshia. … In fantasy suites, I knew that would be our one opportunity to have hours and hours of uninterrupted time.”

The pair spent an overnight date in an old-school Airstream trailer and got to talking about how they hoped to raise their kids should they end up together at the end of the show. Hall admitted that he “knew” the topic of religion would come up “eventually” — and that they might not see eye-to-eye. While Adams is Christian, Hall identifies as agnostic.

“We hadn’t talked about it in the past but she said maybe once to me that she relied on her faith a lot,” Hall explained. “In the fantasy suite, that was really the first opportunity I felt like we could really have a good amount of time to talk about it. For some people who aren’t familiar with people who aren’t religious … it’s a lot to take in, honestly.”

As the Bachelor in Paradise alum parted ways with Hall, she informed him that religion was a big part of her life and that she couldn’t quite find a way to compromise on her beliefs. The goodbye came as a shock to viewers, who didn’t get to see inside the pair’s deep discussion. While many speculated on social media that Hall had revealed he’s an atheist, he emphasized that there’s a big difference between atheism and agnostic beliefs.

“[Being] atheist is taking a hard stance that there is no God and that’s not what I believe at all,” Hall said on the podcast. “Agnostic is strictly saying, ‘I don’t know,’ basically. That’s just how I feel. I feel like I don’t know and I honestly feel like no one really knows.”

Though he doesn’t consider himself a religious person, Hall noted that he doesn’t have a problem with anyone else’s beliefs. “My main focus are the moral and values that you have,” he said. “That’s what’s most important to me. And for Tayshia it’s something different, where she, I guess, wanted to date someone who is Christian. … It is what it is and I don’t blame her for it.”

Adams, for her part, attempted to shed more light on the breakup during a joint interview with Clark, 36, after their engagement aired.

“We utilized fantasy suites for what they’re really meant for. Yes, you know, there’s a stigma behind it. But also, it’s an opportunity to have conversations that you might not want to have on camera,” she told Us Weekly exclusively of her final moments with Hall. “And we had a lot of conversations about what we thought our future would look like, what it looked like raising kids and our beliefs and everything like that. So, religion is one thing that we did talk about, but we talked about many other things. And I feel like there were reasons why we both felt like, you know, it might not align.”
Listen to Here For the Right Reasons to get inside scoop about the Bachelor franchise and exclusive interviews from contestants

Episode 7: ‘The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’ deal with depression, religion and … maybe an affair?

The most intriguing books on religion we read this year

(RNS) — Our reading list this year, like the rest of our lives, was colored by the triple whammy of 2020: the pandemic, the racial justice protests and the presidential election. But given the unpredictability of these 12 jam-packed, crisis-filled months, how did the thinkers, researchers, preachers and their publishers of the books we clung to know to furnish us with such timely analyses? As several of the authors of the most interesting books have noted, the answer is all too grim: In many cases, we only reaped in 2020 what we had long sown.

But among our favorite histories, travelogues and memoirs below, there are as many solutions as there are jeremiads, and books as fun as they are enlightening.

Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO
By David J. Halperin
A retired professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Halperin has been fascinated with the heavens at least since he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the biblical prophet Ezekiel’s vision of a chariot blazing across the sky. In this exploration of UFOs as myths, Halperin discusses the profound implications of our beliefs in a wide swath of UFO phenomena.
Read more about this book.

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Witch Hunt: A Traveler’s Guide to the Power and Persecution of the Witch
By Kristen J. Sollée
Sollée, a second-generation witch, chronicles her travels to the sites of the most infamous witch hunts in Europe and the United States, exploring not so much the history of witchery as that of how the archetype of the witch has been depicted in culture — pop and otherwise. Sollée offered her book as a timely meditation on “the magic of place” when most of us could not travel.
Read more about this book.

White Christian Privilege: The Illusion of Religious Equality in America
By Khyati Joshi
A professor of education at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Joshi upends our usual approach to race questions by focusing not on marginalized communities’ troubles, but how white Americans have preserved their advantage over centuries. Joshi shows how even our idea of religion as an island of racial equality is an “optical illusion.”
Read more about this book here and here.

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The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
By Deesha Philyaw
These nine short stories consist not of the chatter you might hear in the pew of a Black church, but a mixture of religion, sex, love and grief that crosses generations and families. The Pittsburgh writer and editor’s finely crafted stories were shortlisted for a 2020 National Book Award.
Read more about this book.

Human(Kind): How Reclaiming Human Worth and Embracing Radical Kindness Will Bring Us Back Together
By Ashlee Eiland
The Mars Hill preaching pastor’s argument that kindness can bridge the nation’s divides was published just as a polarizing election and a polarizing pandemic was sweeping the U.S. Shortly afterward, racial justice protests broke out over the death of George Floyd. While cynicism about what can bring Americans together has only seemed to deepen, no one has come up with a more tenable solution than Eiland’s, which shouldn’t be dismissed, she said, as a call to “meet each other in the middle … and this will all be OK.”
Read more about this book.

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We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders
By Linda Sarsour
This memoir by one of the country’s most outspoken Muslim activists and an organizer of  the Women’s March is a surprisingly quiet account of the sometimes desperate moments in her personal life that remind her and inform the reader about what grounds her commitment to religious liberty.
Read more about this book.

See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love
By Valarie Kaur
The Sikh filmmaker, lawyer and civil rights activist, known for her popular TED Talk, is at her most vulnerable in this book as she shares the stories of being sexually assaulted and attacked for race and how these experiences led to her activism. It also includes a manifesto for her Revolutionary Love Project, a pragmatic plan drawn from Sikh wisdom for making love the motivating principle of our own lives. 
Read more about this book.

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            “See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love” by Valarie Kaur. Courtesy image
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            “Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God” by Kaitlin B. Curtice. Courtesy image
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Native: Identity, Belonging and Rediscovering God
By Kaitlin B. Curtice
Curtice, a Native American and a Christian, describes her journey of finding herself and finding God, and connecting with her Potawatomi identity. Along the way she reckons with the church’s historic treatment of Indigenous people and other marginalized groups and the impact that has had on her Christian faith as a former worship leader.
Read more about this book.

Can Robots Be Jewish? And Other Pressing Questions of Modern Life
Edited by Amy E. Schwartz
This collection of 30 provocative questions, each answered in 200 words or less by 10 different rabbis from different quarters of the Jewish world, is drawn from Moment magazine’s “Ask the Rabbis” columns. The book addresses, besides the title question, addiction, transgender people, and the gene editing process CRISPR, and it operates as “a model of civil disagreement for our time,” according to its editor.
Read more about this book.

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            “Fierce, Free and Full of Fire: The Guide to Being Glorious You” by Jen Hatmaker. Courtesy image
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Fierce, Free and Full of Fire: The Guide to Being Glorious You
By Jen Hatmaker
Once a “darling” of evangelical Christianity, Hatmaker saw her books pulled from Christian bookstores’ shelves in 2016 after she expressed support for the LGBTQ community. In this book, Hatmaker encourages her readers to experience the same freedom she has found by living into their authentic selves, no matter what the cost.
Read more about this book.

Outsiders at Home: The Politics of American Islamophobia
By Nazita Lajevardi
Lajevardi, who grew up in Southern California’s Iranian American community, is well versed in how Islamophobia manifests itself in American life, and how it affects those touched by it. Now a professor of political science at Michigan State University, Lajevardi shares her experiences of a world unfamiliar and foreign to most Americans. 
Read more about this book.

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            “Jesus and John Wayne: How Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation” by Kristin Kobes Du Mez. Image courtesy of Liveright Publishing Corporation
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Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
By Kristin Kobes Du Mez
The Calvin College historian argues evangelicals’ seduction by Donald Trump has been decades in the making. As Du Mez connects the dots of militant patriarchy and what she calls “family values evangelicalism,” she tells the story of the religious right’s beginnings as a partisan political force in the 1970s as they fought the rise of feminism and mourned the loss of the Vietnam War.
Read more about this book.

The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

By Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett
Best known for his groundbreaking communitarian treatise “Bowling Alone,” Putnam and his co-author note today’s income inequality, racial tensions and threats to democracy are a replay of the similarly polarized Gilded Age of late 19th-century America. As then, they argue, the country must look to religion and its moral crusaders to reform our economy and our politics and restore balance.
Read more about this book.

By our authors:

American Prophets: The Religious Roots of Progressive Politics and the Ongoing Fight for the Soul of the Country
By Jack Jenkins
Religion News Service reporter Jack Jenkins takes a sweeping look at the modern religious left, uncovering untold or long-ignored stories of how faith-rooted liberals have made a lasting impact on contemporary progressive causes. 
Read an excerpt from this book.

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            “American Prophets: The Religious Roots of Progressive Politics and the Ongoing Fight for the Soul of the Country,” by Jack Jenkins, publishes April 21, 2020. Courtesy images

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Fauja Singh Keeps Going: The True Story of the Oldest Person to Ever Run a Marathon
By Simran Jeet Singh
This picture-book is a biography of Fauja Singh, a Sikh who suffered disability as a child who grew up to become the oldest person to ever run a marathon. Written for children, the book is an exercise in reimagining what our heroes look like.
Read more about this book.

Sacred Rites: New Religions for a Godless World
By Tara Isabella Burton
The undeniable fact that organized religion is losing its influence and followers in the U.S. doesn’t mean Americans are abandoning the higher planes altogether. Our Religion Remixed columnist chronicles the spiritual traditions, rituals, and subcultures — from astrology and witchcraft to the alt-right to Soul Cycle — that are filling the spiritual void.
Read more about this book.