US Christian Research Articles

Biosoteriology and the Postsecular (In)Human: The Religio-Racializing Assemblages of Evangelical Nephilim Demonology

Abstract This article explores the use of apocryphal narratives of the angelic Watchers and their offspring, the nephilim, in contemporary American evangelical demonology. It contends that such demonologies use the figure of the nephilim to galvanize reactionary political narratives of crisis, placing the source of cultural change and ecological collapse in an inhuman Other whose removal would permit the restoration of social and spiritual order. Drawing on Black studies and postsecular critique, the article contends that nephilim demonologies mobilize processes of “religio-racialization” rooted in antiblackness to create a paradigm of “biosoteriology”—a conflation of biological “purity” and soteriological possibility mobilized through religio-racializing assemblages. Situating this paradigm in the context of US Christian nationalism and a racialized “return” of religion, the article shows that the nephilim become figured as an alterity threatening white, cisheteronormative visions of the human and the futurity of (white, Christian) America.

Journeys to and among the Margins: Transnational Religio-Racial Identity on American Christian Palestinian Solidarity Tours

Abstract This article examines the intersection of racial and religious identity among progressive US Christians in the context of transnational travel. We approach our analysis through a comparative ethnographic study of two majority-Black and two majority-white Christian Palestinian solidarity tours, representing mainline, evangelical, and historically Black Protestant progressive theological traditions. We conceptualize majority-white tours as “journeys to the margins” and majority-Black tours as “journeys among the margins,” considering how the racial makeup and theological orientation of trips offer a range of affordances for meaning-making, identity construction, and solidarity-building. Using Judith Weisenfeld’s religio-racial framework, we focus on how participants’ progressive Christian values are embedded in divergent racial schemas. Attending to how the logics of these schemas are reinforced or interrogated in transnational encounters, we extend Weisenfeld’s concept from the nation-state to the transnational as we examine how participants reproduce, revise, and re-envision religio-racial frameworks.

Personal and Relational Processes of Repentance in Religious Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Families

Considerable social science research has illuminated religion’s profound and predominantly positive impact on individuals and families. Nevertheless, numerous noteworthy aspects of religion, including repentance, have not been explored in-depth from a social science perspective to understand their psychological and relational processes and implications. Further, the emphasis and importance of repentance across the Abrahamic faiths, combined with calls from social scientists to better understand processes of repentance and seeking divine forgiveness, indicate the benefit of repentance-focused research. Subsequently, we used team-based systematic qualitative coding to conduct secondary analyses of repentance processes in interviews with 127 exemplar US Jewish, Christian, and Muslim families ( N = 218). Analyses explored the: (a) motivations and antecedents of repentance, (b) processes of repentance, (c) resources to aid in repentance, and (d) perceived outcomes of repentance. Additionally, some participants described repentance as negative, neutral, or ineffective. The article discusses psychological and relational benefits of repentance in religious families despite some potentially adverse consequences, highlights implications for practitioners and interventions that incorporate repentance, and suggests topics for future research.

The interaction of human rights and religion in Africa’s sexuality politics

Abstract This article examines varieties of human rights appropriation in the context of sexuality politics in Africa. Noting how contested the landscape of human rights has been in Africa, it demonstrates how the human rights of lesbians, gays, bisexual, trans, queer, and intersex persons or sexual and gender minorities (LGBTQI+) are excluded from protection as a result of what are described as three interconnected predispositions. These predispositions are postcolonial, cultural, and religious tendencies within many African countries which adopt “othering” narratives that justify, and even sacralize, discrimination or violence based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The article analyzes the rights-based arguments—the appropriation of human rights language—used by anti-gay advocates in Africa, which emphasize rights to religion, culture, and family and exclude or deny the rights of LGBTQI+ people. This presentation of a human rights corpus and discourse which excludes LGBTQI+ rights, and which circulates both within and outside Africa, relies on alliances with the US Christian Right, and with the Vatican and Islamic leaders, to oppose sexual rights, and is often deployed by African politicians to retain political power. The article concludes by exploring the concept of ubuntu as a potential alternative to or as an accompaniment to human rights language, as a way of vernacularizing and Africanizing LGBTQI+ rights.

Confederate Theology: Robert Lewis Dabney and the Theological Afterlife of Slavery

AbstractIn the wake of social movements to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces and expose suppressed legacies of white supremacy in the United States, this article uncovers an influential and overtly white supremacist tradition of US Christian theology through a case study of the Reformed theologian Robert Lewis Dabney (1820‐1898). Regarded by his contemporaries as one of the most prolific theological teachers and scholars of his time, Dabney was also an unrepentant defender of racialized chattel slavery and white supremacy. He was also a leading contributor to Lost Cause revisionism after the Civil War. This reveals a troubling paradox: one of the leading theologians in the United States during the nineteenth century was also one of that century's most committed white supremacists. While Dabney's theological defense of a patriarchal, white supremacist society has too often been either conveniently forgotten or uncritically excused by later generations, this article offers a theological reckoning with Dabney's project in order to diagnose its ramifications for contemporary theology and articulate a constructive response.

Special Education: A Literature Review of US Christian Schools

This article provides a review of research conducted between 2000 and 2020 about special education in Christian schools in the United States. The article reflects information and research articles along with dissertations published during the time period. The Ebsco Database©. And ProQuest Digital Dissertations and Theses Global© database were used for publication searches. A total of 42 articles and 26 dissertations published between the given years were identified. Non-research articles were grouped into six topic areas: (a) theological/biblical, (b) narrative and positional, (c) positional and legal, (d) legal, and (e) program development and or special education models. Research articles and dissertations were coded and themed based upon the authors’ research findings and suggestions for further research.

Normalising intolerance: the efforts of Christian Right groups to block LGBTIQ+ inclusion in South African schools

Post-apartheid, South Africa has come a long way in making the inclusion of gender and sexuality equality explicit in its Constitution. To make schools more inclusive for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) identifying learners, the Department of Basic Education has developed what it claims are South Africa’s first guidelines regarding sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics (SOGIESC). Despite the emphasis on equality in South Africa’s post-apartheid policies, which set out to protect the rights of LGBTIQ+ individuals, there has been a backlash from conservative advocacy groups, many with links to the US Christian Right. This paper argues that contrary to the disinformation being propagated by anti-LGBTIQ + groups, it is queer and transgender individuals who experience extreme levels of violence and marginalisation in schools. The empirical research makes explicit the bullying and exclusion that transgender and gender-diverse youth experience in school; however, this evidence is neglected in conservative claims that SOGIESC (SOGIESC) guidelines and Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) endanger other learners. Notably, and in stark contrast to those advocating for measures to make schools safer for LGBTIQ + learners, far-right advocacy groups have no empirical basis to support their claims.

“Citādāks reps” vai “kristīgā glance”: Dievs un pasaule Latvijas kristīgajā repā

Historically, Christian rap emerged in the context of Evangelical Christianity in the US. Since its birth in the 1970s, it has been often represented as a tool for evangelization and outreach in the modern urban environment. Although there are stories of purported success of these attempts, most US Christian rappers have since turned to Christians as their primary audiences. There are two main attitudes towards the world and its culture among Christian rappers that are manifest in their approach to the style of their songs. Nevertheless, the general attitude towards the world and culture in Christian rap is that of distancing from these aspects, and Christian rappers want to transform or educate the faithless society, Thereby denying the world its capacity to acquire genuine meaning and truth without Christian assistance. There is a discussion on terminology for engaging Christian rap from an academic perspective. Although some Christian rap scholars prefer to use a definition such as “Christians and hip-hop” to include all the possible interactions of Christians, rappers, and hip-hop culture, throughout the article the studied phenomenon is called “Christian rap” to distance the study of the actual rap lyrics and theology they contain from the analysis of hip-hop beats, breakdance, graffiti and/or other elements of hip-hop culture. This problem with definition mirrors the discussion common to the study of Contemporary Christian music genres, where there is debate on the question of criteria that can be employed to define “Christian music”. Latvian Christian rap represents an array of attitudes towards the world. There are examples of “worship rap” or separational approach to Contemporary Christian music and examples of integrational approach. These two approaches represent different attitudes towards the world, although fundamentally all Latvian Christian rappers that are mentioned in the article distance themselves from the world and wish to enlighten it or reach the faithless with their appropriation of popular contemporary music. Latvian Christian rap is a marginal phenomenon because it struggles with acceptance in Christian circles as much as among non-Christians that are to be its main and desired audience. Rap and hip-hop are perceived to be connected to protest, violence, drugs and other things that are foreign to the image of Christianity in Latvia.

“In God We Trust?”: Christian Nationalists’ Establishment and Use of Theistnormative Legislation

ABSTRACT This essay examines how US Christian nationalists have come to rely on the motto “In God We Trust” as a piece of theistnormative legislation that they believe legitimizes their understanding of the United States as a Christian nation. Through an analysis of archival documents and congressional hearings, I demonstrate how Christian nationalists played a key role in the establishment of “In God We Trust” on coins and as the national motto that has allowed contemporary Christian nationalists to point to the motto as “proof” that the United States is a Christian nation. This project challenges the taken-for-granted historical narrative that the motto “In God We Trust” is a secular celebration of US religious heritage through demonstrating how the motto, from its beginning, has functioned to promote and mask Christian nationalism, often at the expense of marginalized groups.

The Development and Validation of the Practicing Faith Survey

We introduce a new instrument, called the Practicing Faith Survey (PFS), to assess faith formation among students in K-12 Christian schools. We begin by describing the conceptual and theological background of the PFS, underscoring the ways it differs from existing instruments of faith formation because of its particular focus on Christian practice within the context of learning and the vocation of the student. We then describe the procedures behind developing the PFS and its five domains: Intellectual, Relational, Introspective, Beneficent, and Formational Practices. We then provide evidence of validity and reliability based on a pilot study that involved 1,200 US and Australian Christian school students in fifth through 12th grades. We conclude with recommendations about how Christian school educators, students, and parents can use the PFS in practice.

Canine Ministries:Co‐Instrumentalityof Human and Dog in a Christian Ontology

SUMMARYWithin the last century, US Americans have come to humanize dogs and place a greater personal value on them than ever before. In response to this cultural change, some US Christians have begun to use therapy dogs in ministry work. For this exploratory study, six chaplains in a canine ministry share their experiences and beliefs about their use of therapy dogs. Their stories reveal a unique form of human‐animal partnership emergent in contemporary society distinguished by a faith‐based context. The chaplain and ministry dog act together as co‐instruments of God, both being subject and object simultaneously. The dogs occupy an ontologically complex position of being subordinate to humans while also embodying virtues that Christians idealize. This paper focuses on the chaplains’ conceptualization of the relationality between themselves, their dogs, and God. Their accounts reveal changing perceptions of what it means to be human vis‐a‐vis our relationship with animals. [multispecies ethnography, dogs, religion, Christianity, ontology]

A Fairy Tale Gone Wrong: Social media, Recursive Hate and the Politicisation of Drag Queen Storytime

Controversy over Drag Queen Storytime (DQS) childhood literacy events in many Western liberal democracies between 2018 and 2020 occurred within a broader rise in reported ‘hate crime’, notable in the United States and in England and Wales. Outrage from conservative US Christian anti-LGBTQ hate groups and activists, and far-right groups, included online bias-motivated harassment, in-person bias-motivated harassment, and alleged assault and property damage. This article analyses news media and public discourse on hateful conduct against DQS events in the United States and related conduct in the UK and Australia. This hateful conduct draws on legacies of the criminalisation and pathologisation of same-sex attraction, and the framing of non-conforming gender identities as ‘deceptive’. The findings emphasise the recursive nature of bias-motivated hateful conduct based on medico-legal and pseudo-scientific stigmatisation of same-sex attraction and gender fluidity, and the amplificatory capacity of social media networks to engender hateful conduct. The article analyses the broader implications of hateful conduct given the limits of the criminal law in the United States (and other Western liberal democracies such as the UK and Australia) in addressing the translation of online hate speech into bias-motivated in-person hateful conduct. In the United States, these limits are often defined through the unqualified invocation of freedom of speech protections. The article applies ‘digiqueer’ criminology as a frame to consider the harms of bigotry against LGBTQ people amplified through digital media technologies and their intersection, particularly in the US, with Christian righteousness and right-wing ideology through a ‘hate feedback loop’.

The Attitudes of American Jews and Christian Zionists towards Politics of Israel

For Israel maintaining strong relations with Diaspora remains one of the key goals as the Jewish State. American Jewry, American Zionist organizations and Pro-Israel lobbyists have been playing an important role in organizing support and providing assistance for Israel in the US. However, in the XXI century there is a deepening crisis between the Jewish state and American Jewish community, mainly, because of dissatisfaction of Israel’s domestic and foreign policy. Managing the risks of lowering support from the US, that are the most important strategic partners for Jerusalem, Israel has intensified its rapprochement with the US Christian Zionists, who are the most consistent supporters the Jewish state as “the Zionist project”. The Christian Zionist’s interest in Israel is based on the Bible's theological interpretation of the significance of the gathering and preservation of the Jews in Palestine (and then in Israel) for the ultimate salvation of mankind. Despite the controversy of this concept to the core principles of Judaism and Zionism, the significance of their support, primarily political, for Israel is currently increasing.

Daniel G. Hummel. Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations.

In the heyday of the Moral Majority, one of many grassroots organizations representing US Christian Zionists called itself “Goyim for Israel” (178)—it’s something of a shame that the group’s moniker didn’t catch on in the public consciousness as it illustrates the central dilemma of this movement: What’s particularly “Christian” or “Zionist” about Christian Zionism? Daniel G. Hummel’s new book Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations takes the reader back in time to the 1948 “roots” of the Christian relationship with Israel, following the “shoots and branches” of this history over the past five decades, both domestically and globally, as a transnational movement that has blossomed into a force to be reckoned with across the world. At the heart of Hummel’s argument is the religiopolitics of “reconciliation” between Christians and Jews, a “dialectic between religious belief and political action” (237)—dispelling popular mythology about the end times rapture and the fire...

Hillary Kaell, Christian Globalism at Home: Child Sponsorship in the United States

Reviewed by: Christian Globalism at Home: Child Sponsorship in the United States by Hillary Kaell Allison Kach Hillary Kaell, Christian Globalism at Home: Child Sponsorship in the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021) US Christians see themselves as global citizens intrinsically engaged in God’s worldwide plan. In Christian Globalism at Home, Hillary Kaell explores exactly how such Christians imagine and experience themselves, others, and the world without travelling beyond their geographic borders. Through the lens of child sponsorship and the mechanisms that support, extend, and perpetuate its predominance in US Christian practice and meaning-making, Kaell disentangles US Christianity from the globalism it is assumed to embody. With a special focus on the “immobile global,” Kaell weaves together history, experience, practice, and belief coalescing in the dynamic relationships and connections created, facilitated, and maintained by child sponsorship from the West to the rest. Kaell’s multifaceted analysis combines archival work, participant observation, and surveys with her keen ability to integrate qualitative and quantitative research findings. The result reads like a smooth conversation between friends that simultaneously unearths complex relational, identity, and power dynamics. Kaell’s interdisciplinary approach traces the long-term development of child sponsorship’s fundraising method over a two-hundred-year period. Her treatment reveals the substructure of sponsorship which “provides an archive [End Page 130] of the development of a particular form of universalism, shaped by modern orientations and aspirations, and expressed through U.S. Christian conceptions of body, self, and soul” (229). The study’s broad goal is to track the development of one type of Christian globalism while highlighting the need to extend and expand studies of similar “world making” to other regions and religious groups. With creative complexity, Kaell constructs her study of child sponsorship as it relates to relevant history, identifiable themes, and contemporary trends and offers insightful cues for a variety of academic disciplines and everyday readers interested in globalization and modern US culture, the history of US and global humanitarianism, and World Christianity. Christian Globalism at Home is grounded in a central paradigm of the immense and the particular, a concept the author draws from Timothy Morton’s ecotheory on hyperobjects. Kaell masterfully tailors Morton’s idea of immensity to the story of child sponsorship, demonstrating that the immensity of the real problem of starving, orphaned children across the world animates US Christian global engagement through particular action. Child sponsorship is sustained and promoted by the overwhelming reality of the problem (the immense) that is connected to conceptions of God, the world, and US Christian identity and moral responsibility (the particular) in global and local contexts (160). The book follows a loose chronological history of child sponsorship, beginning with the early nineteenth-century advent of US Christian mission concern for foreign children through the work of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Mission (ABCFM). From this starting point, Kaell weaves one hundred years of globalizing US Christian history together with a focus on key themes and developments of child sponsorship. She gives special focus to Christian organizations, four Protestant and one Roman Catholic, that grew around the work and fundraising model of child sponsorship—Save the Children, China’s Children’s Fund, World Vision, Compassion, and Unbound. Chapters one and two explore how emerging nineteenth-century practices of systematic giving and caring for children coalesced with US evangelical ideas of love to fuel Christian globalization. Chapter three traces the use of visual media in the late nineteenth century through World War I to facilitate visceral reactions and ultimately to mobilize sponsorship in US audiences. Chapter four focuses on the development of Protestant promises of “heart conversion,” international Christian relationships, and racial unity through sponsorship in the 1950s and1960s. Chapters five and six explore how sponsorship’s global relationships, moral interpretations of success and the future, and economic practices and inequalities trouble the already complex global connections formed and sustained by sponsorship practices. Chapter seven examines globalization theory as it relates to the space-time construction of sponsorship. [End Page 131] Kaell’s corrective to the historical record is a significant reminder for readers and scholars alike; child sponsorship, like other socio-religious phenomena akin to it, is...

The Religious Perfectionism Scale: A Cross-cultural Psychometric Evaluation Among Christians in the United States

The Religious Perfectionism Scale (RPS) was first developed among Chinese Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims. It consists of the following two subscales: Zealous Religious Dedication and Religious Self-Criticism. In this study, a cross-cultural psychometric evaluation of RPS was performed in a US Christian sample ( N = 233). The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) results presented a strong data-to-model fit statistics for the two-factor oblique model (CFI = .977, SRMR = .051, RMSEA = .034) in the US sample. The measurement of invariance between US and Chinese samples was examined by multiple-group CFA. The results indicated that the RPS fulfilled invariance for factor loadings and residual variances, but intercepts were partially invariant. The internal consistency reliability coefficients for the two subscales were adequate (above .70). The construct validity test results confirmed our hypotheses that the ZRD was positively correlated with Religious Commitment ( r = .56), and the RSC was positively correlated with Scrupulosity ( r = .58). Overall results suggest that the RPS is a promising measure of religious perfectionism for Christians in the United States. The implications of this were discussed.

DeMille-the-Businessman and the Mini-Me Mirroring of Samson in Young Saul withinSamson and Delilah

Legendary producer-director Cecil B. DeMille was a master of the American biblical epic and a devout Hollywood businessman whose films inspired numerous extra-cinematic products plus screen characters designed to match market demographics whilst promoting public piety. For example, his main biblical protagonists within his family-friendly Samson and Delilah were crafted to appeal to adult audiences, but it is argued that DeMille also meticulously crafted young Saul (Russell Tamblyn) as a mini-me mirror of Samson (Victor Mature) to directly appeal to his youthful audiences, thereby assisting box office sales and helping shape US Christian culture. DeMille’s filmmaker status, businessman background, and ten Samson-Saul parallels are explicated here, guided methodologically by humanist film criticism plus a selective review of the critical literature. This original investigation reveals that DeMille was a far more insightful, creative, and business-savvy filmmaker than previously acknowledged. Further research into DeMille studies, biblical epics, and the emerging interdisciplinary field of religion and film is recommended.

Malagasy art on the move: Materiality, home displays, and problems in decolonizing Christianity

This article explores how white US Christians’ home displays, including their decorative presentation of paintings, small sculptures, and other memorabilia of foreign travel, play a critical role in representing imperial geographies. Drawing upon long-term ethnographic research on the current aid partnership between Lutherans in the US and Madagascar, which stems from American Lutheran mission work in southern Madagascar (1888–2004), the article studies the relationship of contemporary white Minnesotans’ home displays about Madagascar with more historically-established projects of colonial knowledge production. The visual dimensions of materiality have been significant for building traces and imaginaries of far-flung places for home or metropole audiences in Christian colonization. Thus, by placing theories of Christian souvenirs and devotional objects in dialogue with work on Christian colonialism, the author examines home displays as a lesser-considered aspect of the colonial project in the metropole and considers the problems they raise for contemporary efforts to decolonize Christianity.

The sign of contradiction: Church defense and the liturgical gun

In recent years, high-profile church shootings have captured the attention and the moral imaginations of US Christians. The reasons for the shootings are multitude, but in practice the response among churches has been the same: the rise in armed protection of churches. In this article, I explore not only what is at stake in establishing an armed presence to protect a church, but also how such actions cohere with the nature of the church’s core acts of baptism and Communion. I argue that the way to combat increased militarization of church space is not by either embracing firearms or disavowing them, but contemplatively unlearning and reorienting their power.

“I Just Beared Through It”: Southern US Christian Women's Experiences of Chronic Dyspareunia

Background: Research has shown that up to 53% of adult women, at some point in their lives, suffer from pelvic floor dysfunction in the United States, although it is frequently underdiagnosed. Dyspareunia is a type of pelvic floor dysfunction that is identified as pain with sexual intercourse, tampon insertion, vaginal examinations, vaginal stimulation, and other occurrences involving vaginal touch. There are a limited number of studies that use qualitative approaches investigating women's experiences of dyspareunia. Objectives: The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the emotional, physical, and psychological experiences of self-identified Christian women from the Midsouthern United States who have been recently diagnosed with dyspareunia associated with pelvic floor muscle overactivity. The research question was: How do self-identified Christian women in the Midsouthern United States experience dyspareunia? Study Design: Narrative inquiry was the qualitative methodology used for this study. Methods: Methods of data collection included questionnaires followed by semistructured interviews with 8 women. Results: Thematic analysis was used to discuss 4 themes: (1) misdiagnosis and dismissal (personal and medical) of chronic dyspareunia; (2) individualized strategies for coping with chronic dyspareunia; (3) sex (mis)education: influences of abstinence-only approaches, purity culture, and peer pressure; and (4) understandings about sex, religion, and pelvic pain. Conclusion: Primary care physicians, gynecologists, and pelvic floor physical therapists are encouraged to recognize the importance of factoring sociocultural aspects, such as religion, into their patient care and treatment, and to proactively discuss them during patient assessment. Pelvic floor physical therapists are encouraged to address women's sociocultural contexts, including potential exposure to religious messages of shame and fear, during patient intake, and possibly throughout treatment.