Dear Revealer readers,

Last month, the Walton County School District in Florida published a list of 58 newly-banned books from its schools’ libraries. Walton County is but one of countless school districts across the country that is purging books, a trend that made national news earlier this year when a Tennessee school board banned Maus, the graphic novel about a Holocaust survivor. One of the books the Walton County School District banned is a children’s book by Elisabeth Kushner called The Purim Superhero. The story is about a Jewish child who is trying to find a costume for Purim with the help of his two dads. The school board decided  a book with two gay fathers, who – let’s not forget – are Jewish, is unacceptable and must be banned from all school libraries so children in the district never see that book again.

Banning books is but one strategy within a much larger and well-organized movement to make the United States a Christian nationalist state. In addition to attacking democracy through voter suppression, gerrymandering, and baseless lies about American elections, the right is engaged in numerous legislative and judicial moves to refashion America in the image of white, conservative Christians.

Revealer Editor, Brett Krutzsch

I should pause here to acknowledge that some readers may think I have become hyperbolic or alarmist. But I am afraid most of us in the media and the academy have not sounded the alarm loudly enough. For those of us who care about democracy, pluralism, equality, and maintaining a high wall separating church and state, the stakes are incredibly high.

The Walton County School District was emboldened to ban books because of Florida’s recently nicknamed “Don’t Say Gay” bill that the governor signed into law this year, making it a crime for educators to discuss queer sexualities and gender identities in lower elementary school grades. If The Purim Superhero had been about a child with straight parents who wanted an outfit for an Easter egg hunt, the book would have remained in the district’s libraries and probably even read aloud in classrooms.

In other states, legislators have turned their attention to transgender adolescents and abortion. Rather than applauding the supportive parents of transgender teens, the Texas governor and attorney general want those parents investigated by Social Services, a move that undoubtedly frightens innumerable trans kids and their families about where they can safely live. Further north in Oklahoma, the governor recently signed a bill into law prohibiting “nonbinary birth certificates,” ensuring that the only legal gender options in the state are male and female. And, the U.S. Supreme Court is now poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. Even if the justices do not reverse Roe, state legislatures across the country are making access to safe, legal abortions nearly impossible.

Attacks on the reproductive rights of women and LGBTQ people are nothing new, but we are witnessing a rapid shift where the power of state legislatures, federal and Supreme Court judges, and a well-funded conservative Christian movement is bringing the long-held dreams of white, conservative Christian culture into the mainstream and affecting everyone. And all of this is happening as countless school boards concurrently condemn Critical Race Theory and require educators to teach whitewashed versions of history. We should not dismiss any of these things, from banning children’s books to attacks on how educators teach history, as merely “culture war” issues. They are each carefully planned pieces within a larger strategic framework to make the country reflect a white, conservative Christian vision of American nationhood.

We are not without hope though. There is much people can do to preserve democracy and raise the wall separating church and state. We can organize and vote in high numbers in the 2022 elections. We can support institutions and organizations that are working to prevent and overturn laws that target LGBTQ people, women, and people of color. And, we can educate ourselves about the realities of the Christian right’s power, the roadmap they follow to win local elections that have national consequence, and their ultimate objectives. (If you are looking for a place to start, I find the writing and tweets by Jeff Sharlet, the Revealer’s first editor, especially insightful in this area.)

Part of resisting the turn to Christian nationalism is also staying on top of religion’s place in society. To that end, the Revealer is committed to providing you with well-researched, nuanced, and trustworthy articles that offer you important insights. This issue is no exception and covers an array of topics about religion in today’s world. The May issue opens with the newest installment of Kaya Oakes’ column “Not So Sorry,” where she explores the surfacing of sexual misconduct claims at Christianity Today, a popular evangelical publication, and questions what institutions can do to warrant forgiveness when the systems they have in place allow abuse to run rampant. Next, in part two of our series on Catholic horrors, Matthew Cressler examines reasons for The Exorcist’s popularity alongside credible claims of abusive priests to consider overlapping explanations for the film’s fame and the widespread abuse of children by Catholic clergy. Then, in “Exploitation and Abuse at Hillsong,” Jessica Johnson reviews a new docuseries that showcases multiple forms of abuse that took place within a massive global network of Christian churches.

Our May issue also looks at other pressing issues of religion in the twenty-first century. In “My Brain on Muse,” Andrew Aghapour tests a wearable device that measures brain activity to help people meditate with better focus. He questions if this is a breakthrough source of assistance for meditators or if it foreshadows a dystopic future where tech companies measure everything about us, including our brainwaves. Next, in an excerpt from her book Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition, Rima Vesely-Flad shares how Black Buddhists have interpreted Buddhist teachings about the “self” and “non-self” to find psychological liberation in a deeply racist world. And, in “Problems with How Journalists Write about Hindu Death Rituals,” Bhakti Mamtora illustrates how colonial stereotypes of Hinduism persist in the present day by highlighting how mainstream news media covers Hindu funeral rites.

The May issue also features the newest episode of the Revealer podcast: “Black Buddhists and Healing the Traumas of Racism.” Rima Vesely-Flad joins us to discuss why Black Americans have been turning to Buddhist teachings to deal with living in a white supremacist society. We explore how Buddhism has helped Black Americans confront misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, and how Black Buddhists have found a sense of stability despite the presence of profound structural racism. You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

As the articles and podcast episode in this issue attest, religion is neither solely a source of oppression nor of liberation, neither inherently good nor corrupt. But we must pay careful attention to how certain forms of religion are shaping our society, our laws, and foreclosing possibilities for equality. We are committed to doing just that at the Revealer. And we will continue to sound the alarm about the dangers to democracy and the wall separating church and state until such warnings are no longer necessary.

Yours,
Brett Krutzsch, Ph.D.