Emily Joy tweeted out her #ChurchToo story a full decade after the alleged abuse had ended. “I’m sure I’ll tease this out more in the months to come,” Joy wrote, “but after ten years I finally felt like now I could come forward. It’s a weird story. It’s ‘not that bad.’ It’s the kind of story women self-gaslight…
Almost 15 years ago, Mel Gibson directed The Passion of the Christ, a biblical drama that’s in many ways the ultimate Christian film. The movie made $84 million in its opening weekend and sent a thunderclap across an industry that was once considered (rudely, but perhaps not unfairly) to be the dominion of the godless…
The rigid minds in the industry love to call the Met Gala “fashion prom,” but this year, it’s something else: the afterworld. A world of neverending happiness; you can always see the sun, day or night. There’s a lot of wiggle room in its 2018 theme, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” and with…
We’ve dedicated a couple episodes of DirtCast to Hollywood religions (listen to our episodes on Scientology and the rise and fall of Kabbalah here and here), but thus far we’ve yet to immerse ourselves in the fad religions ourselves. We’ll leave that to this week’s guest, E! News anchor and author of the new book The…
The first Monday in May is still many moons in the future, but the theme of the Met’s 2018 Costume Institute exhibition and accompanying gaaa-la is already reportedly in place. According to WWD’s multiple sources, next year’s exhibition will reportedly focus on fashion and religion. Hmm.
A Jerusalem court has ruled in favor of 83-year-old plaintiff Renee Rabinowitz, who sued Israel’s El Al airline for asking her to move seats at the request of a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) man, the New York Times reports. The court found that asking people to move due to their gender violated Israel’s anti-discrimination…
Donald Trump visited his enemy Pope Francis on Wednesday in Vatican City, and by the looks of it, everyone had a lovely time.
On April 23, the English celebrated their patron saint, St. George, Christian nobleman and alleged dragon slayer. And on that same day, Worcestershire kicked off its annual Asparagus Festival. To honor the occasion, the crop was blessed in Worcester Cathedral with much fanfare.
The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the finest dystopian novels ever written, and it is, inescapably and fundamentally, about women’s oppression under an ultra-conservative regime. The much-anticipated Hulu series based on the book doesn’t shy away from the original subject matter; it couldn’t, really, and remain the …
The school district of Mercer County, West Virginia—population 61,984—has been thrust into the national spotlight now that a lawsuit, filed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, challenges the constitutional legality of the county’s voluntary weekly Bible study class for elementary and middle public schoolers.
Fresh on the heels of Kendall Jenner’s man-made disaster of a Pepsi commercial, sister Kim Kardashian West has officially decided to Try It. Unfortunately for her but probably not for us, this decision was ill-advised and is going to invoke the wrath of my mother and all 32 of my Titis. How bout yours?
After speaking with dozens of former congregants of the Word of Faith Fellowship in Spindale, North Carolina, the Associated Press has uncovered years of brutal physical abuse—often perpetrated against children—ordered by church leaders, namely the husband and wife pastor duo, Sam and Jane Whaley.
A pastor in California is part of a faction of Christians upset about Octavia Spencer’s role as God in the movie adaptation of William P. Young’s controversial 2007 novel The Shack. Spencer is black, you see, and God is a white man.
It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and my husband, our four year-old son, and I are coasting through the hills of rural Kentucky. Two days before, we’d driven from Brooklyn to Indiana to visit my family. Now we are en route to the Ark Encounter: a life-size recreation of Noah’s Ark, which happens to be nearby.
The Associated Press reports that atheist and brave patriot Bennie Hart is suing Kentucky transportation secretary Greg Thomas after his request for a personalized license plate reading “IM GOD” was denied. I intend to stay up-to-date on the results of this lawsuit and any ensuing loosening of custom license plate…
In episode two of its third season last night, Black-ish tried to carve through the idea of atheism and religious hypocrisy among black people, and while it did so in unprecedented fashion for a primetime family show, it’s a shame there was little room to be more offensive.
A few days after Nice became the latest French town to ban the burkini, the Guardian published photographs on Tuesday of four male police officers on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice surrounding a woman and apparently ordering her to remove a long-sleeved cover-up.
CLEVELAND — “Art creates conversation,” Julian Raven, a painter from upstate New York tells me. Raven, an alternate delegate and true Donald Trump believer, drove the print of the original 8' x 16' painting from his Elmira studio which apparently has a 25-foot Trump banner hanging outside of it. He’s standing on a…
I have some fairly significant news to share with you: Noah’s Ark is real, officially.
Lyle Jeffs, the acting head of the polygamous, child-bride-marrying Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, has disappeared, the FBI says. Jeffs was awaiting trial on federal food stamp fraud and money laundering charges. His brother, Warren, is serving life in prison plus 20 years for raping…
