Evan Derkacz
Religion Dispatches
Brooklyn, NY, United States
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Past articles by Evan:
Andrew Sullivan Really Took This Opportunity to Misread Intersectionality?
"Here’s the latest in the assault on liberal democracy," writes Andrew Sullivan, as he decries the recent student shut-down of controversial author Charles Murray's talk at Middlebury College earlier this month. But it was the headline that grabbed our attention: “Is Intersectionality a Religion?” → Read More
Jesus Backs Gender Equality at the Oscars
In her acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress, Patricia Arquette called for equal rights for women, specifically calling for wage equality... ...which, as many noted, had Meryl Streep and J-Lo (among many others) shouting vehement amens... ...yet one Twitt → Read More
Tsarnaev Trial: Catholics Need Not Apply?
Last week on RD, Anthony Santoro presciently wrote: > Since nearly half of [Massachusetts’s] six million residents identify as Catholic, however, a sizable number of potential jurors—those who follow the Church’s teaching on capital punishment—are likely to be excluded from jury service for their religious beliefs. And indeed, there’s this from today’s NY Times: > Another potential juror, a… → Read More
Why the Evangelical Dissonance Over Obama Immigration Action?
According to a new PRRI poll, 60% of white evangelicals “support the goals of Obama’s executive action” on immigration (which isn’t too far below the nation at large, at 72%). Yet 67% of white evangelicals believe that Obama shouldn’t have taken that executive action. So what gives? Perhaps it’s similar to Matthew Avery Sutton’s explanation for evangelical opposition to health care. In an… → Read More
Gay Marriage isn’t About Christianity So Much as Christian Nationalism
Eerie coincidence or scholar-geist?* From last month’s RD interview with Leslie J. Harris, associate professor of communications at the UW-Milwaukee: > I’ve become convinced that today’s debate about same-sex marriage is not simply about preserving a seemingly sacred and unchanging institution, or securing particular rights and privileges. Rather, it is about negotiating the boundaries of… → Read More
Louisville Diocese Throws Teacher Under the Bus Over Ebola Hysteria
As if its white-knuckled (often damaging) opposition to birth control and ongoing issues with sexual abuse didn’t provide young Catholics and potential converts enough reason to choose another path, one diocese is doing its part by showing that it’s the little acts of fecklessness that really matter. According to the Courier-Journal: “A teacher at St. Margaret Mary Catholic School who had… → Read More
ISIS, Walking Dead and Our Zombie Moral Compass
Honestly, after a good bit of Googling I’m surprised to find just a single mention of ISIS connected to the Walking Dead Season 5 premiere. In a ghastly early scene, Glenn, Darrell, Rick and Bob (in that order) kneel over a trough beside several extras whose throats are cut by “the bad people” at Terminus after they’re whacked in the head with a baseball bat. It is, as Vulture’s Richard Rys put… → Read More
Thanks, Tony Perkins, for Defending those Violent Jewish-y Parts of the Bible
I try to ignore emails from the Family Research Council. They arrive with cringe-worthy puns in the subject line (e.g. “Is the Penn Mightier Than the Sword”… get it? It’s about Penn State!) and generally function as fundraising pitches, regardless of whether the ask comes, as this one did, several hours later in the next email (“Powerful institutions have sworn to abolish your religious freedom. Will… → Read More