All posts tagged: Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Should Christian men run America? Hell no, say abuse survivors in new documentary

Should Christian men run America? Hell no, say abuse survivors in new documentary

Published by skeptic

Christa Brown speaks about experiencing abuse, at a rally outside the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex, June 11, 2019, in Birmingham, Ala. (RNS photo/Butch Dill) (RNS) — Christa Brown has heard former President Donald Trump and his supporters boast of returning Christians to power in the United States — and returning the nation to what they say are its Christian roots. She wants none of it. Brown, a sexual abuse survivor and longtime advocate for abuse reform in the Southern Baptist Convention, has seen what happens when Christian men have power over women in the church. The thought of them having the same power over the country makes her quake. “I have seen what it means for the largest evangelical Protestant faith group in the country, and it is bloody awful,” Brown says in a new short film about the connections between abuse and Christian nationalism called “For Our Daughters.”  “That is not the country I want,” Brown says. “For Our Daughters” film poster. (Courtesy image) Brown is …

‘Hurting because we followed the rules’

‘Hurting because we followed the rules’

Published by Sam

(Sightings) — Calling a book “timely” feels like a backhanded compliment. It seems to suggest that the book’s greatest strength is its publication date. So let me be clear: Sarah McCammon’s “The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church” is both timely and superb. Timely, because it deals with the issues that will decide the 2024 elections — issues of religious power and bodily autonomy. Superb, because it discusses those issues with sensitivity, sophistication and no small amount of bravery.  McCammon was born and raised in America’s conservative Protestant subculture; she is now a correspondent for National Public Radio, an outlet her father once scorned as “National Perverted Radio.” “The Exvangelicals” is the story of her journey between these two points. And it’s the story of others who made similar journeys; McCammon intersperses her account with quotes from people in various stages of deconstructing their evangelicalism.  “The Exvangelicals” will inevitably be compared to Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.” That, too, was a timely …

‘God & Country’ shirks its opportunity to confront mainstream evangelicalism

‘God & Country’ shirks its opportunity to confront mainstream evangelicalism

Published by Sam

(RNS) — In the middle of “God & Country,” Dan Partland and Rob Reiner’s documentary about the rise of Christian nationalism, evangelical pastor and former Christian right activist Rob Schenck drops a bomb. Gerhard Kittel, the famed Lutheran theologian whose Theological Dictionary of the New Testament is still considered the standard in Christian seminaries around the world, was an avowed Nazi. And not just any Nazi: Kittel worked with Hitler himself to launder the Holocaust for German Christians. It is a genuine jump scare, shocking in delivery and chilling in implication. It’s the sort of energy that “God & Country,” which opens in theaters Friday (Feb. 16),  could have used a lot more of. After confronting viewers with this straight line between evangelical orthodoxy and the Third Reich, the documentary does not explore any of Kittel’s actual theology. It does not show why this theology was such an easy pipeline for genocide endorsement. Nor does it attempt to investigate whether Kittel’s legacy may still be warming American Christians to fascism. Partland’s narrative simply moves on, …