Dear Revealer readers,

Revealer Editor, Brett Krutzsch

This year, the holidays of Ramadan, Easter, and Passover overlap. In my house, we celebrate both Passover and Easter, although Passover typically requires more work. Before the pandemic, my husband and I hosted a large Passover seder every year. Our table always included people who were not Jewish, which I enjoyed because it meant we had to explain the rituals and traditions rather than take them for granted. The seder is well-suited for such an undertaking because it is a meal built around asking questions, telling stories, and talking with everyone assembled. I usually joke that Passover is one of my favorite holidays because it is based on eating. But the truth is that it opens up space for important conversations about society’s problems and a mandate to repair the world. The seder forces us to consider the plagues, literal and metaphorical, facing people today. And, in turn, we have conversations about what we can do in our communities to address such pressing matters. The process of asking questions and talking is literally the first step to taking action to improve our world.

It is in this spirit of thinking about the potential power that comes from conversations, and in the dangers that come from prohibiting such dialogue, that unites the articles in the Revealer’s April issue. The issue opens with an article examining an area of India where officials are trying to stop the intermingling of people from different religious communities. In “Forbidden Transactions Between Muslims and Hindus in Gujarat, India,” Sabah Gurmat investigates what is happening in one Indian state where officials can and do forbid Hindus and Muslims from selling property to each other – and what that law foretells about India’s future. Next, in “My Father’s Hardest Fight: Assisted Suicide and Hinduism” Puloma Mukherjee reflects on what happened when her father told her pious mother that he wanted to die, and what the entire family subsequently learned about Hindu positions on physician-assisted suicide. Then, in “Black Religion, Psychiatry, and the Crossroads Project,” contributing editor Kali Handelman has a conversation with distinguished scholar of African American religious history Judith Weisenfeld about Weisenfeld’s newest research on the history of white psychiatrists diagnosing Black Americans as mentally ill because of their religious experiences. Following that, in “Tragedy, Spirituality, and Black Justice” two scholars of African American religions, Vincent Lloyd and Terrence Johnson, have a conversation with each other about their recent books that explore religion within Black protest movements. Then, in “Women Talking and Reimagining the World,” Christina Pasqua and Pamela Klassen review the movie Women Talking and share why the film, focused mostly on scenes of women conversing in community, is so effective, and how it reflects and diverges from the real-life Mennonite community on which the movie is based. And, in “Worried White Evangelicals,” Sarah Diefendorf shares an excerpt from her book The Holy Vote: Inequality and Anxiety among White Evangelicals, where an evangelical community comes together following Donald Trump’s inauguration with much to say and with many concerns.

Our April issue also includes a conversation with Sarah Diefendorf for the newest episode of the Revealer podcast: “Evangelicals’ Anxieties and Their Politics.” We discuss why many white evangelicals, despite their political power, feel threatened by feminism, LGBTQ progress, and movements for racial justice. We explore their image problem among younger Americans, how they are recruiting new people to join their churches, and how white evangelicals are responding to issues like Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ equality today. You can listen to our conversation on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

As I think about the topics raised in the April issue and the many conversations it contains, I am reminded of the reasons why the youngest person at each Passover seder asks the night’s main questions: to instill from an early age, first, the idea that questioning is the foundational step to improving the world and, second, that we must do the work of repairing society’s problems in community, not in isolation. We must come together to overcome today’s plagues.

I hope the articles and podcast in this issue inspire you to be in conversation with others and to ask even more questions.

Yours,
Brett Krutzsch, Ph.D.