Dear Revealer readers,

I am writing this letter as the Coronavirus death toll in the United States spirals past 100,000 people, as millions of Americans demand justice for the grotesque murdered of George Floyd and countless Black Americans like him, and as the country’s President ordered federal police to shoot peaceful protestors with tear gas so he could have his photograph taken in front of a church while holding a Bible. Before sitting down to write, I watched a video of Minneapolis police arrest Black protestors and a CNN reporter, all while thinking about the gun-carrying white men who recently stormed the Michigan capital and walked away without so much as a citation. Initially, I started this letter with the sentence, “We need to consider why the Michigan militias who charged the capital have not been arrested as domestic terrorists.” But I deleted the sentence because there is nothing to consider. They are white. And it is that simple.

This pandemic and our country’s chaos are producing profound pain and untold forms of grief. The grief of mass death, of separated families, of lost jobs, of feelings of safety, of disrupted daily routines, of pervasive and deadly racism. As the novel coronavirus ravages Black communities disproportionately, Black Americans face an additional, and no less terrifying, threat of death from the police. And all of these things are happening simultaneously.

Revealer Editor, Brett Krutzsch

We need to tend to the many manifestations of grief in this time of tremendous loss. We need to grieve for the dead and for the many changes to our lives, the grief that comes from lost ways of living, lost connections to other people, from the lack of loving touch. Our lives have altered radically since March 2020, maybe irrevocably, and the deadly assault on Black Americans has remained constant in spite of these enormous changes. We need to take care of our grief and acknowledge our associated rage. Grief and rage are so often connected.

As we enter the summer months, I am reminded of how different June 2019 felt. It was the 50^th anniversary of the Stonewall riots and New York City hosted a Pride festival that brought millions of visitors from around the world. People danced in the streets. Strangers hugged. Groups embraced in all sorts of ways. But travel is now dangerous. Celebrations are cancelled. And New York City neighborhoods with a higher density of people of color have been devastated by the pandemic. We are starting June 2020 in a period of intense grief and with no national plan to rectify the many problems we face.

The articles in this issue of the Revealer addresses grief, race, and LGBTQ people and religion. The issue begins with a reflection on a seemingly ordinary source of loss in Jodi Eichler-Levine’s beautiful essay, “What We Miss When We Miss Disney World.” In it she describes why the closure of Disney theme parks has been difficult for many and how she has turned to Jewish notions of exile to make sense of this loss. Next, in “The ‘Slave Bible’ is Not What You Think,” Jill Hicks-Keeton takes us inside a Museum of the Bible exhibit to explain how the museum presented misleading information to attract more people of color to their grounds. And since most Pride festivities are cancelled this year, we are bringing you two articles about LGBTQ people and religion. In the first, “Meet Father Bryan Massingale,” Olga Segura profiles a Black, gay priest who has been fighting for a more inclusive Catholicism for decades. And, in “AIDS and the Hidden Catholic Church,” Michael J. O’Loughlin describes the surprising things he learned while creating the acclaimed podcast series “Plague: Untold Stories of AIDS and the Catholic Church.”

The June issue also features articles on topics long discussed elsewhere, but that go deeper and offer more nuanced considerations. In “Value for Our Shareholders: Reading the Islamic State’s Media,” Suzanne Schneider explores why ISIS produces monthly newsletters that mirror capitalist corporate reports. And in an excerpt from his new book Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO, David Halperin applies his expertise as a religion scholar to make sense of people’s longings for life beyond our planet.

In this issue we are also sharing the third episode of the Revealer podcast: “The AIDS Epidemic, Queer Identity, and Catholicism.” Michael J. O’Loughlin joins us to expand on his article in this month’s issue, discuss reconciling queer identities with religion, and reflect on what the AIDS epidemic can teach us about today’s pandemic. You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play.

In this time of mass death, mass confusion, mass change, mass rage, and with no unified national plan to address all that has been lost, my thoughts turn to our grief. Like others, I still hope for a quick ending to the pandemic and to our culture of white supremacy, even as I know such hope is likely magical thinking. So I hold onto hope and grief together, mourning the ways our lives have been shattered, and doing what I can to demand a better and more racially just world than it was before the pandemic, or ever in this country’s history.

Yours,
Brett Krutzsch, Ph.D.