Dear Revealer readers,

Welcome to our first issue of 2024! We are excited to share some new things coming your way. Starting with this issue, we are welcoming a new columnist to The Revealer, Gillian Frank, whose column “More than Missionary” will explore issues of sexuality, gender, religion, and reproductive rights. Gillian has previously written for The Revealer on transgender youth and pro-choice clergy, and we are excited for the insights this column will spotlight about the interplay of religion, gender, and sexuality at a crucial time in the country’s history.

Revealer Editor, Brett Krutzsch

While we will continue to publish articles and podcast episodes that cover a diverse range of topics, this year we are paying special attention to conservative religion and politics in light of the 2024 U.S. election. To that end, the Revealer podcast is starting the year with a three-part series on conservative Christianity and American politics. The series will explore the ex-evangelical movement and its insights about white evangelicals’ devotion to Trump, the role of contemporary Christian music and connections between conservative Christian pop culture and U.S. politics, and the place of LGBTQ Republicans alongside anti-queer religious groups within the party.

Our February issue, and our exploration of conservative religion and politics, opens with the first installment of our new “More than Missionary” column with Gillian Frank’s “The Mourning After,” where he explores a memorial the Arkansas government is erecting at the state capitol for aborted “children,” and what this new monument, placed next to a controversial statue of the Ten Commandments, reveals about today’s Christian nationalist movement. Next, in “Evangelicals Make Themselves Essential to the Next Insurrection,” David Congdon and Jason Bruner explore why white evangelicals are primed to resist government authority, from Covid-19 restrictions to accepting election results. After that, in “Elisabeth Elliot, Flawed Queen of Purity Culture, and Her Disturbing Third Marriage,” Liz Charlotte Grant investigates why Elliot, the popular evangelical promoter of female submission, stayed with a controlling husband and how her teachings harmed countless evangelical women. Then, in “An Evangelical Culture of Child Discipline,” an excerpt from The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church, Sarah McCammon spotlights parenting methods within evangelical communities that focus on physically punishing children and what various ex-evangelicals report that discipline did to them spiritually and emotionally. 

Our February issue is not only focused on conservative religion and politics; we are also featuring two articles that explore more playful sides of religion in popular culture. In “Monk Mode,” Catherine L. Newell questions why so many people are drawn to apps that promise to make them more productive and less distracted by instilling them with the qualities of monks, and what this monk marketing reveals about our lives under capitalism. And, in “My Year of Magical Baby Making,” Corey Wozniak investigates the popular “Babydust Method,” a series of techniques purported to ensure a future child’s biological sex, and compares these strategies to religious practices both ancient and modern.

The February issue also includes the newest episode of the Revealer podcast: “Ex-Evangelicals and U.S. Politics.” Sarah McCammon joins us to discuss why so many people are leaving white evangelical Christianity and how that exodus is influencing the broader culture. We discuss ex-evangelicals’ insights about why most white evangelicals remain loyal to Trump, why so many evangelicals are primed to accept “alternative facts,” and what all of this portends about the 2024 U.S. presidential election. You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

As 2024 commences, The Revealer is committed to paying close attention to the influence of Christian nationalism and the prevalence of white Christian dominance throughout the country, a situation that long pre-dates the Trump presidency. And even as we focus on covering and analyzing conservative religious and political movements, we also remain committed to bringing you articles and podcast episodes about a wide spectrum of topics on religion around the world. We will provide you with both robust content about religion, in its many forms, and do our part to educate the public about the legitimate threat of Christian fascism in America. We can do both and we will do both.

Yours,
Brett Krutzsch, Ph.D.