Theology & the City

09/03/2026

"This is the running theme that connects the white evangelical right to a twice-impeached, twice-divorced, criminally convicted, grifting, demonic president they've decided is God's imperfect vessel. They twist Bible verses into convoluted logic to justify treating him like the second coming. In doing so, they become just as demonic and just as guilty of sin as he is — as do the pastors who praise him."

The most disturbing part of Netflix’s Death of a Pastor’s Wife is not only what JP Miller preached, but how few people appeared willing to question him, writes John Casey.

08/31/2026

For anyone who didn’t grow up evangelical and is shocked by the death of a pastor’s wife doc, you should know that the sermon excerpts you heard are taught regularly in churches all over America.  

In fact so much of what you saw is common place.  Women are threatened that if they don’t always satisfy their husband, he might leave them for someone else.  Charismatic lead pastors have no accountability or meaningful oversight.  Young girls are groomed by people in authority and grow up to believe their entire life purpose is to serve God (Aka their pastor) and the church.

This is why I say the white evangelical church project can not be rehabbed. It must be demolished and something else built in its place.  This is the FRUIT of white evangelical theology, not the aberration of it.

08/27/2026

Dolly Parton grew up steeped in Scripture and hymns with a congregation as her first audience. The bathed-in-the-blood granddaughter of a Pentecostal preacher who “preached so plain a child could understand” did not particularly like going to church. She called herself a Jezebel, yet woke up every morning at 3 A.M. to pray and, often, ask God two questions: “How can you use me?” and “What can I do today?” “Unlike most of us who ask questions like that, it seems like she really heeded the answer,” Casey Cep writes. Read more about Dolly’s outlaw Christianity: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/gqEMF4

08/21/2026

Read more: https://relevantmagazine.com/current/survivors-just-built-the-first-national-database-of-accused-protestant-abusers/

08/18/2026

After a fire killed 32 people in a New Orleans gay bar in 1973, almost no church in the city would hold a service for the dead.

The UpStairs Lounge burned on 24 June. It was the deadliest attack on a gay gathering in the United States until the Pulse shooting in 2016. Several families refused to claim the bodies, and three of the dead were never identified at all.

One man said yes. The Reverend Bill Richardson, of St. George's Episcopal Church, held a small prayer service the next day for about a hundred people. His bishop rebuked him for it. Hundreds of hate letters arrived in the weeks that followed.

A week later, St. Mark's United Methodist opened its doors for a full memorial. More than three hundred people came, and photographers from the newspaper and the local television station waited outside to film every face that walked out.

Mourners were offered a side door.

08/18/2026

“Trauma in religious spaces is not limited to physical and sexual abuse. It can also include social, mental, and emotional abuse.”

– Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans (read ⬇️)

08/17/2026

Dan Everett went to convert the Amazon's Piraha people to Christianity. When he learned their language, he began to question everything.

As a young Christian missionary in the 1970s, Dan was sent to speak with a small indigenous group called the Piraha, who live in the Brazilian Amazon.

He had a talent for linguistics, and was given the task of learning the Piraha’s famously difficult language. Two other teams before him had already failed.

"The idea that I was being asked to take on a situation that others had failed at... was very appealing," he says.

When he arrived at the Piraha's remote village in the middle of the Amazon jungle, everyone came running out to meet him.

"I had read so much about them from the previous missionaries that it was like meeting a group of celebrities," he says.

Soon, Dan had moved his wife and three children to live with the Piraha, in a large thatched house in the centre of their village.

Dan says the Piraha felt at home with his family, and often gathered in their house after a day of hunting and fishing.

Dan became increasingly integrated into Piraha society. He went out on hunts with them and helped them in the fields. He loved how gentle and relaxed they were, and how much they cared for animals. Their village was full of their pets, including a huge eagle which they used to feed with live snakes.

"This oneness, near oneness with nature was extremely appealing to me," Dan says.

Dan quickly realised that Piraha is a tonal language, like Mandarin Chinese, and as he became more fluent, he began to set about the task he'd come there for - to convert them to Christianity.

It didn't exactly go to plan.

Once, the Piraha asked Dan if Jesus was brown, or white like him. Dan told them he'd never personally seen Jesus, or met anyone who had – to which they replied: "If you don't even know anybody who saw him and you never saw him, why would you tell us about him?"

Dan came to realise the Piraha didn't believe anything unless they'd seen it with their own eyes, or knew someone who had. And the more time Dan spent with them, the more he questioned his own faith – until finally, he gave it up altogether.

It was a difficult thing to admit. His first wife left him, and for a while his family didn’t speak to him, though their relations are good now.

But when he told the Piraha he no longer believed, they only laughed and said they didn’t believe either.

"To them, it was just common sense, and they couldn't understand what took me so long," says Dan.

Dan gave up missionary work and entered academia, spending his career arguing for the uniqueness of the Piraha's language.

And he still counts some of the Piraha people he met back then as his oldest and dearest friends.

🎧 Outlook: https://bbc.in/4fWoKoQ

08/16/2026

"For many American Christians, revivalism means they want to spend the weekend at a church 'like the one in the book of Acts' – with supernatural exploits and continual devotion to Jesus. What this claim fails to recognize is that the Book of Acts, following the Gospel accounts in the Christian scriptures, had its own share of problems. It is hardly worth 'restoring' or reviving."

by Randall S. Frederick From left, former Presidents Jimmy Carter (1977-81), Gerald Ford (1974-77), and Richard Nixon (1969-74). Significant changes were taking place outside the orbit of Evangelic…

08/14/2026

"The title of Thiel’s paper is never mentioned in 'Communion' but a professor would be within her rights to mark it as uncited source material."

Elizabeth Harper on JD Vance's new book, "Communion" and its roots in the work of Peter Thiel: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/jd-vance-communion-straussian-peter-thiel-plagiarism-maga/