Dear Revealer readers,

I do not have children. But recent public conflicts have led me to think about children more regularly – not about having them, but about how frightening the world must seem for so many of them. The first conflict that has consumed me is the banning of mask mandates in school districts across the country. The pro-life and family values movements, self-described champions of protecting children, are leading the way to putting adolescents at risk. As the Delta variant surges, children under twelve are caught in a ridiculous conflict about whether or not masks prevent the spread of COVID-19 and if schools have the right to require masks to protect the community. The second issue occupying my attention is the conflict in Afghanistan, the Taliban’s quick takeover, and the image of parents handing off their children to people who were able to flee the country. I have watched the families torn apart with anguish and I worry for the parents who do not know what the future holds for the children still in Afghanistan as the conflict there continues.

Revealer Editor, Brett Krutzsch

With these thoughts in mind, the Revealer’s September issue explores conflicts of many types: international, personal, political, racial, sexual, and familial. The issue opens with Amy Fallas’s “El Pueblo de Israel: Latino Evangélicos and Christian Zionism,” where she explores the prevalence of Christian Zionism among evangelical Latinos and why they support Israelis in their conflict with Palestinians. Then, in “Evangelical Women Leaders as LGBTQ Allies,” Mihee Kim-Kort examines the conflict among American evangelicals over LGBTQ Christians and reports on several women evangelical leaders who, despite financial and professional backlash, have come out as LGBTQ allies. Next, in “A Baby at the Shiva,” Sharrona Pearl offers a review of the film Shiva Baby and how it portrays intense familial and sexual tensions that can arise at a common Jewish mourning ritual. Kristy Slominski then continues the focus on sexual conflicts with an excerpt from her book Teaching Moral Sex, where she explores how competing religious leaders fought to control what adolescents learn about human sexuality. Next, Kali Handelman interviews Suzanne Schneider about her new book The Apocalypse and the End of History, and how the violence that ISIS enacts is not so different from violence here in the United States. Finally, in “Bombing American Religion to Save It,” Megan Goodwin reviews Richard Kent Evans’s book MOVE: An American Religion about the Black religious movement whose conflict with Philadelphia authorities in 1985 led the mayor, horrifically, to authorize the police to drop a bomb on MOVE’s headquarters.

The September issue also includes the newest episode of the Revealer podcast: “Sex Education and Religion in Public Schools.” Kristy Slominski joins us to discuss why progressive Protestants fought to get sex education in America’s schools, what messages sex educators promoted about gender and monogamy, and why the Christian right’s push for abstinence-only education became so prominent throughout the country. You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

As children and young adults return to school this month, too many of them are entering a political battlefield where their health and emotional wellbeing, not to mention that of their teachers and professors, are of little importance to people who, eighteen months into a pandemic, still oppose mask mandates. The situation is absurd and criminal. Meanwhile, children and families fleeing Afghanistan must contend with becoming refugees while still trying to protect themselves from COVID-19. All of it seems daunting. And, as our September issue demonstrates, these are but two of the many possible conflicts facing people right now. I hope the articles in this issue give you, as they did me, insights to better understand our world and ideas for how to look to the future with hope.

Yours,
Brett Krutzsch, Ph.D.