Dear Revealer readers,

At earlier stages in my career, I had to make the case to friends, students, and strangers alike that religion is nearly everywhere and that it shapes much of our lives. Today, I rarely have to make that point. People already know that religion is at play almost anywhere they look, given world and national events. Take the war against Iran as one example. Donald Trump launched a social media attack on the Pope simply because Pope Leo preached peace over war. Then, JD Vance, infamously now nicknamed a “Popesplainer,” returned the matter to the news cycle by criticizing the pope’s concerns about the war and said the pontif should “be careful when he talks about matters of theology.” But Pope Leo remained undeterred by the threats coming from Trump and Vance. He proclaimed that “God won’t listen to war leaders.” And there you have that.

Revealer Editor, Brett Krutzsch

If one thought this feud, or the backlash to Trump posting an image of himself as Jesus, might quiet the Trump administration in matters of religion, that would have been wrong. Instead, the Trump administration ramped up its religious rhetoric. Americans got to behold Trump read from a Protestant Bible as he sat in the Oval Office. There’s no reason to debate why he did it. The Trump administration wanted to proclaim from the White House that America is a Christian nation, and—sorry Pope Leo—a Protestant one at that.

Meanwhile, one doesn’t have to look to the Trump administration alone for constant signs of religion. A federal appeals court recently ruled that Texas can require all public schools in the state to display the Christian Ten Commandments in every classroom. The law’s author, state Senator Phil King, said, “We want every kid, K…through 12, every day in every classroom they sit in to look on the wall and read, ‘it’s wrong to kill, it’s wrong to steal, it’s wrong to lie.’…We want them to see those words that God says.” Evidently, the Texas government wants to force children to look at something that some Christians believe God spoke. Every day. In every classroom. Christianity might literally be in children’s faces soon.

With these introductory examples of religion’s pervasiveness in our lives, I am pleased to share The Revealer’s May issue, which examines religion’s presence in all sorts of places, starting with the Epstein Files. In “Jeffrey Epstein Used Dr. James Dobson’s Advice to Groom a Victim,” McKenzie Watson-Fore investigates why evangelical leader James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, appeared in the Epstein Files and why Epstein recommended Dobson’s work to a young woman. From there, we turn to connections between opposition to vaccines and religion. In “Vaccine Hesitancy is More Like a Religion than a Disease,” Kira Ganga Kieffer considers the moral commitments of people who worry about vaccine’s harms and how they came to align themselves with political conservatives. After that, we take a look at religion in American foreign policy. In “European Antichrist,” Miguel Petrosky explores why American evangelicals feel disdain toward Europe and how that attitude is shaping the Trump administration’s approach to working with our longtime allies. From there, we have two pieces that examine religion in film. First, in “On Hollywood, Catholicism, and How It’s Hard for Patriarchy to Fight the Good Fight,” Noah Berlatsky reflects on Wake Up Dead Man, Conclave, and The Exorcist to consider how all three, much like the Catholic Church itself, present men as the solution to the problems facing the world, thereby solving little. Next, in, “Palestinians on Screen and the Ethics of Witnessing,” Kristian Petersen compares recent movies by Palestinian directors with viral social media footage of Gaza and reflects on how the two together can motivate the world to insist on justice for Palestinians. And, finally, we return to a focus on religion in politics with “Who Speaks for British Muslims,” where Ken Chitwood reports on Muslim political representation in the United Kingdom and how Muslim voting patterns are changing following decades of repression and Islamophobia.

The May issue also includes the newest episode of The Revealer podcast: “Vaccine Hesitancy and Religion.” Kira Ganga Kieffer joins us to discuss the factors that contributed to large numbers of people expressing skepticism at pharmaceutical companies and medical authorities, how predominantly Black churches have tried to promote vaccines as safe, why the Covid vaccine became such a prominent religious freedom issue, and what needs to happen so that vaccine-preventable diseases are not a danger in the United States. You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

As I reflect on religion’s prevalence, I find it helpful to remember that religion is neither inherently conservative nor progressive, neither essentially repressive nor affirming. Religion shapeshifts. It can promote peace, as with Pope Leo, and it can promote patriarchy, as with Pope Leo’s Catholic Church. For every Christian in Texas eager for the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms, there are countless other Christian Texans who do not want Christianity in their public schools. And because religion shapeshifts, that means religious people who support such things as abolishing ICE, protecting trans youth, and making reproductive healthcare widely available, can be as loud and as visible as people who oppose those things. Because religion is everywhere, such voices should be as prominent as any other.

Yours,
Brett Krutzsch, Ph.D.