Opinion

How the anime Demon Slayer films are driving ‘pop religion’ in Japan

The recent anime film both draws inspiration from Japanese religions and functions as a source of inspiration for religious practices.

(Photo by Kadyn Pierce/Unsplash/Creative Commons)

May 14, 2024
By Bruce Winkelman

(Sightings) — Visitors to movie theaters across the United States recently had the opportunity to see one of the most popular Japanese anime sensations of the last decade — not the Oscar-winning Hayao Miyazaki film “The Boy and the Heron,” but the film “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no yaiba — To the Hashira Training,” the third cinematic installment in the Demon Slayer franchise.

Although not nearly as familiar on these shores as Miyazaki’s critically acclaimed masterpieces, the Demon Slayer franchise is more popular in Japan than virtually any other pop cultural brand. The first Demon Slayer film, 2020’s “Mugen Train,” is the highest grossing film of all time in Japan — with a revenue of over 40 billion yen, it beats not only Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away,” but also “Titanic” and “Frozen.”

“Demon Slayer” is famously inspired by a wide range of religious traditions and practices. Much of its aesthetics and world-building derive from forms of mountain asceticism, worship of local spirits called Kami, and demon lore. What is less obvious are the ways in which this pop culture phenomenon itself is spurring on innovative religious practices of its own — what we might call “pop religion.”

The Demon Slayer franchise revolves around the story of Tanjirō Kamado, a youth in 1910s Japan. One day he comes home to find his family slaughtered by demons. The only survivor is his sister, Nezuko, who has been turned into a demon (not unlike how vampire bites turn victims into vampires). In an effort to restore his sister’s humanity, Tanjirō sets out into the world and finds himself amid a centuries-long war between humans and the demons that feed on them.

While this story began as a manga comic from the pen of graphic novelist Koyoharu Gotouge in 2016, it has since exploded into other media, including an award-winning animated series as well as the aforementioned films.

“Demon Slayer”’s depiction of demons, which also draws on global pop cultural tropes about vampires, is rooted in the demon lore of Japan’s religious traditions. For example, the prominent demon Hantengu is a reference, in name and in image, to mythical creatures called tengu, man-bird hybrids that have a millennia-long history in East Asian folklore. Tanjirō’s special technique for fighting demons, the hinokami kagura, is similarly inspired by Japanese religious practices. It is an adaptation of a real-life form of ceremonial dance also known as kagura that is frequently conducted at Shinto shrines across Japan.

Film poster for “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no yaiba — To the Hashira Training.” (Courtesy image)

Finally, “Demon Slayer” draws inspiration from Japan’s traditions of mountain asceticism. Since ancient times, mountains have played a crucial role in Japanese religious traditions as sites of power and arduous spiritual practices, such as standing under waterfalls while chanting mantras. In order to learn to fight demons, Tanjirō goes through a similar training regimen in the mountains, including waterfall training.

However, the influence between “Demon Slayer” and Japanese religions is not a one-way street. The franchise has also inspired new popular religious practices. Fans are making visits to existing shrines and other spiritual sites associated with the franchise. The Kamado shrine in the city of Dazaifu, from which Tanjirō’s last name is said to derive, is located on a mountain that in the past was an important center for ascetic practice. Fans now flock to this location in large numbers, and the shrine has begun to sell a new range of protective talismans directly inspired by “Demon Slayer.”

Another shrine, the Shōhachiman shrine in the city of Kitakyūshū, is home to a cleft boulder that is said to have been the inspiration for a similar boulder in “Demon Slayer.” This shrine, too, has become a popular destination among fans. Oftentimes, fans visit both in a single trip.

One may ask whether this pop fandom is really “religious” or not, but the terminology used to talk about these visits places them among millennia-old traditions of religious pilgrimage on the archipelago. They are referred to literally as “visits to the sacred sites” (seichi junrei).

The “Demon Slayer” phenomenon has also spurred new religious practices at these shrines. As part of traditional Japanese shrine visits, it is common practice to purchase a votive tablet called an ema, upon which one may write a wish or request to be granted. These wishes range from averting disaster in one’s personal life, to healing sickness, to passing important school exams. This tablet is then left at the shrine, in the hopes that the unseen powers will look favorably upon it and make it come true.

At shrines that fans associate with “Demon Slayer,” one increasingly finds ema tablets containing not just wishes, but drawings of characters or elements from the series. This is not simply a case of fan art in a new location. In Japanese religions, diseases and pandemics have a long history of being associated with demons. Including a drawing of a demon slayer like Tanjirō alongside, for example, a request to “vanquish COVID-19” can thus be said to constitute a new twist on centuries-old religious practices.

RELATED: Anime is packed with spirituality and gaining popularity among Gen Z

This is not to say that “Demon Slayer“ is a religion; rather it serves as a reminder that people’s religious practices don’t occur in a vacuum totally separated from their consumption of fictional media. It is well-known that franchises such as “Dune,” “The Avengers” and “The Good Place” draw inspiration from real-world religions. Yet in focusing on this one-way influence, we may well have overlooked the traffic that runs in the other direction.

Bruce Winkelman is a teaching fellow at the University of Chicago Divinity School. This commentary originally appeared in Sightings, a publication of the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion at the divinity school.

 The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.

DEMONSLAYER IS AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX

US Catholics more polarized than ever about still-popular Pope Francis, survey says

The Republican and Republican-leaning favorability rating represents a decline, creating the largest partisan gap in approval of Francis since his papacy began.

Pope Francis smiles at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square, at the Vatican, April 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

April 12, 2024
By Aleja Hertzler-McCain

(RNS) — U.S. Catholics are more polarized than ever in how they view Pope Francis, even though majorities on both ends of the political spectrum have a positive view of the pope, according to a new survey.

Pew Research Center, in a report released Friday (April 12), found that three-quarters of U.S. Catholics (75%) have a favorable view of Francis, with nearly 9 in 10 Catholic Democrats and those who lean Democrat (89%) expressing favorable views, and just under two-thirds of Catholic Republicans and those who lean Republican (63%) saying the same.

While the favorability rating from the Democratic camp was roughly in line with recent years, the Republican and Republican-leaning favorability rating represented a decline, creating the largest partisan gap in approval of Francis since his papacy began.

Of the 14 times Pew has asked about Francis’ popularity, the new survey records the pope’s second lowest favorability rate. The only time he received lower scores was in September 2018 — a factor possibly influenced by the survey being taken right after Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò alleged that he had warned Francis of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s sexually predatory behavior and that Francis had ignored the warning.

Francis’ highest favorability rating reached 90% in February 2015, just months after he had confirmed he would be visiting the U.S. during 2015.

“Three-quarters of U.S. Catholics rate Pope Francis favorably” (Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center)

According to the Pew survey, Catholics who view Francis unfavorably were more likely than Catholics who view him favorably to say he represents a major change in direction for the church, with just over half of Catholics who view Francis unfavorably (54%) holding that view compared with 4 in 10 Catholics who view him favorably (41%).

In the days before last October’s Synod of Bishops, Francis prayed the assembly would be a place where the Holy Spirit would “purify the church” from “polarization.” The October assembly followed a multiyear global consultation of the Catholic faithful, a process that church reformers hoped and traditionalists feared would lead to sweeping changes in the church.

Last month, the Vatican announced that, instead of addressing controversial issues at the concluding assembly next October, study groups have been formed to address those issues, and they will finish their work by June 2025.
RELATED: Vatican puts the brakes on Synod on Synodality, pushes ‘controversial’ topics to 2025

The Pew survey revealed that majorities of U.S. Catholics supported church reform measures, although Catholics who attend Mass weekly or more supported these reforms at lower rates than Catholics who attend less frequently. Just over a quarter of U.S. Catholics (28%) said they attend Mass weekly.

More than 8 in 10 U.S. Catholics (83%) expressed support for the church to allow birth control use, with 62% of weekly Mass attenders saying the same. Three-quarters (75%) expressed support for allowing unmarried Catholics who are living with a romantic partner to receive Communion, with 57% of weekly Mass attenders agreeing.

In terms of reform to the priesthood, 69% of adult U.S. Catholics expressed support for allowing married priests, with a little more than half of weekly Mass attenders (53%) saying the same. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. Catholics (64%) supported ordaining women priests, with 41% of weekly Mass attenders saying the same.

As for recognizing the marriages of gay and lesbian couples, more than half of U.S. Catholics (54%) expressed support, including a third of weekly Mass attenders (33%).

Beyond the divides in responses based on Mass attendance, there were differences in support for church reform based on partisan affiliation, with Democrats and those leaning Democratic showing significantly higher support for church reform. While smaller majorities of Catholic Republicans and those leaning Republican supported all church reforms studied, the exception was in recognizing the marriages of gay and lesbian couples, with only 36% of Catholic Republicans expressing support.

“61% of White Catholics align with Republican Party; 60% of Hispanic Catholics favor Democratic Party” (Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center)

The study also showed racial and ethnic differences in party affiliation among U.S. Catholics. Six in 10 Hispanic Catholics (60%) said they were aligned with the Democratic Party, while a similar percentage of white Catholics (61%) said they were aligned with the Republican Party.

While majorities of white and Hispanic Catholics across age demographics supported every church reform surveyed, older Catholics (aged 50 and older) and white Catholics were more likely to support church reform measures than the younger cohort and than Hispanic Catholics — except when it came to recognizing gay and lesbian marriages. On that question, Catholics aged 18-49 and Hispanic Catholics were slightly more supportive, with 56% and 57% supporting respectively compared to 53% supporting among the age 50+ group and 52% supporting among white Catholics.

The question on recognizing the marriages of gay and lesbian couples also revealed a substantial gender gap — under half of Catholic men (47%) supported recognizing those marriages, while 6 in 10 Catholic women (60%) expressed support.

Catholic men were a few points higher than Catholic women across most other church reform questions, except for on the question of allowing birth control, where 86% of Catholic women expressed support compared with 79% of Catholic men. Majorities of Catholic men and women supported every surveyed church reform, aside from the minority support among Catholic men for recognizing the marriages of gay and lesbian couples.
RELATED: Study: Unaffiliated Americans are the only growing religious group

On a question highly contested in U.S. politics, the difference between weekly Mass attenders and all Catholics was also visible in support for legal abortion in all or most cases. While 6 in 10 U.S. Catholics (61%) said they supported legal abortion, only about a third of weekly Mass attenders (34%) said the same.

“6 in 10 U.S. Catholics say abortion should be legal in most or all cases” (Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center)

There was also a substantial Catholic partisan divide in support for legal abortion, with Catholic Democrats supporting legal abortion at much higher rates. However, Catholic Democrats and those who lean Democratic were more likely to oppose legal abortion (22%) than all U.S. Democrats (15%), while Catholic Republicans and those who lean Republican were slightly more likely to support legal abortion (43%) than all U.S. Republicans (40%).

The differences between white and Hispanic Catholics on legal abortion views were narrower, with 63% of Hispanic Catholics supporting legal abortion in all or most cases compared to 59% of white Catholics. Pew did not report the views of Catholics of other racial and ethnic groups.

The Pew survey also reaffirmed previous research about the changing demographics of U.S. Catholics, who represent 20% of U.S. adults. A third of U.S. Catholics (33%) are now Hispanic, a 4 percentage point increase since 2007. White non-Hispanic Catholics, who represent 57% of U.S. Catholics, have declined 8 percentage points in the same time frame. Black non-Hispanic Catholics make up 2% of the Catholic population and Asian non-Hispanic Catholics make up 4%.

Hispanic Catholics are also younger on average than their white counterparts — only 43% of Hispanic Catholics are 50 or older, compared with 68% of white Catholics. Hispanic Catholics are the majority group in the western U.S., while white non-Hispanic Catholics make up the majority in the Northeast and the Midwest. In the South, 49% of Catholics are white non-Hispanic and 40% of Catholics are Hispanic.

White Catholics are much more likely to be college graduates than Hispanic Catholics. Four in 10 white Catholics (39%) have a bachelor’s degree, while only 16% of Hispanic Catholics do.

While roughly the same percentage of white and Hispanic Catholics said they attend Mass weekly, Hispanic Catholics were more likely to say religion is important in their lives (48%) and that they pray daily (55%), compared with white Catholics, where 44% and 49% agreed respectively.

The survey included 2,019 adult U.S. Catholics and was fielded from Feb. 13-25. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

SCIENCE VS FAITH

Carbon-dating of ancient tunics of Saints Peter and John separates legend from reality

Carbon-dating done by the Vatican Museums shows that the relics could not have belonged to the saints.

The interior of Sancta Sanctorum in Rome. (Photo by Antoine Taveneaux/Wikipedia/Creative Commons)

May 24, 2024
By Claire Giangravé

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Once shrouded in history and legend, the so-called tunics of St. Peter and St. John the Evangelist have been subjected to a full restoration and carbon-dating analysis by experts at the Vatican Museums. They will be displayed in a new and permanent exhibition that aims to shed light on the mysteries of these treasures of Catholicism.

The work on the garments, sponsored by the Vatican Patrons of the Arts, found that the tunic said by church tradition to belong to St. Peter dates to a period between the sixth and seventh centuries C.E., while that allegedly belonging to St. John the Evangelist, a type of religious robe known as a dalmatic, was dated to sometime in the first or second centuries. Both saints lived in the first century after the birth of Christ.

The head of the Vatican Museums, Barbara Jatta, said at a press conference on Thursday (May 23) that while the tunics may not have belonged to St. Peter or St. John, they still carry “devotional significance” for believers and that further studies will attempt to bring clarity to the provenance and long history of the artifacts.

The tunics, especially the one said to have belonged to St. Peter, were in a terrible state of disrepair. “The fibers would dissolve with a simple touch,” said Emanuela Pignataro, who worked on the restoration effort. The relics also had signs of “smearing,” with dark spots signaling a rapid decomposition process.

RELATED: Despite pope’s clear ‘no’ on CBS, promoters of women deacons hold out hope

For centuries, the tunics were kept in a cypress case inside the Sancta Sanctorum, or Holy of Holies, a chapel located near the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome and named after the sacred site in Jerusalem that allegedly once housed the ark of the covenant. The basilica, built in the mid-300s, was the papal residence for much of the first millennium, before the papacy moved to Avignon, in France. As the city’s cathedral, it is the episcopal seat of Pope Francis in his capacity as bishop of Rome.


The newly restored tunic of St. Peter, right, and the dalmatic of St. John the Evangelist, left, are displayed at the Vatican Museums in Rome. (RNS photo/Claire Giangravé)

The site contained “a collection of the most relevant relics in the history of Christianity,” said Luca Pesante, who heads the decorative arts department at the Vatican Museums, at Thursday’s press conference. “To look at them is like reading 2,000 years of history of the Roman Church.”

A visit to the Holy of Holies, where early popes went to make personal devotions, requires a climb to the top of 28 marble steps. It has been used to store relics at least since 772, according to documentation created under Pope Stephen III, though some historical documents mention relics being moved to a holy site in Rome centuries earlier.

It wasn’t until 816 that Pope Leo III had a reliquary box placed under the altar of the chapel on top of the stairs. Above the altar, the phrase “There is no holier place than this in the entire world” is engraved in Latin, and famed artists competed to decorate its walls.

The secrets of the Holy of Holies remained unknown until 1903, when Pope Leo XIII allowed experts to investigate its treasures just before his death.

“Until the 20th century the chapel’s vault had been an absolutely mysterious object that had never been seen by anyone,” said Alessandro Vella, expert of Christian antiquity at the Vatican Museums at the press conference, adding that they were “wrapped with a halo of sacredness and the object of devotion.”

The election of the anti-modernist Pope Pius X in 1903, however, slowed the unveiling process, but in 1905 the French Jesuit scholar Florian Jubaru and the German Jesuit historian Hartmann Grisar were allowed to plunder its secrets. It took several attempts to reach the treasures, which were kept in a massive iron cage with two bronze doors covered with 13th-century reliefs. A blacksmith was finally able to break the chains on the doors and open the vault.


Faithful kneel on the Holy Stairs (Scala Sancta), which, according to the Catholic Church, is the stair on which Jesus Christ stepped on his way to the crucifixion, during a special opening, in Rome, on April 11, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Soon, however, the rivalry that broke out between the French and German scholars, Vella said, “led to the loss of important historical data.”

The Holy of Holies contained an immense collection of sacred objects made in silver and gold, pearls and ivory. Priceless relics from the most venerated saints, including St. Praxedes and St. Agnes, were kept in the vault, along with relics said to be the cradle and foreskin of Jesus, the chair Christ sat on at the Last Supper and his sandals. Purported pieces of Christ’s cross were also kept there, as well as keys allegedly forged from the chains that bound St. Peter during his captivity in Rome

The vault also contained the Uronica icon, an image of Christ as ruler of the universe, which, according to legend, was made by St. Luke, author of the Gospel with his name, and completed “by inhuman hands” — meaning it was crafted by angels. It also held the alleged vestments of St. Peter and St. John.

Despite 13th-century security measures, the items showed signs of tampering, and Pius X, in part to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Italian government, had the relics moved from the basilica to the Vatican Library, where they were eventually placed under the patronage of the Vatican Museums.

The recent investigation shows that the core artifacts date to the sixth and seventh centuries and mostly came as offerings from the sacred sites in the Holy Land, Vella explained. But he cautioned that in establishing the authenticity of the treasures, “there are few certainties, and confusion reigns supreme.”

Main altar of the Sancta Sanctorum in Rome. (Photo courtesy Wikipedia/Creative Commons)

The tunics’ condition suggests that they had a long career as gifts and showpieces for dignitaries and prelates. Relics have often been used in the church’s history as diplomatic instruments to forge alliances and build trust, Vella said.

A letter written by Pope Pelagius II in the sixth century dictated that any common object placed in contact with the grave of a saint would acquire its sanctifying power. This might explain why the tunics were attributed to the saints, even if they never actually wore them, Vella explained.

Jatta said the Vatican Museum is committed to preserving the relics and digging deeper into the secrets they hold. Whether the tunics, or the other relics in the Holy of Holies, are authentic remains a mystery, but the 1,000-year-old history that they contain is yet to be discovered.

Jesuit scientist who bridged faith and science recounted in PBS documentary

It is not surprising that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, an eminent paleontologist, got himself in trouble with church officials and his Jesuit superiors.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a French philosopher and Jesuit priest who developed the Omega Point concept. (Illustration by Prisma/UIG photo)

May 13, 2024
By Thomas Reese

(RNS) — In the history of the Catholic Church, too many innovative thinkers were persecuted before they were accepted and then embraced by the church.

The list includes St. Thomas Aquinas (whose books were burned by the bishop of Paris), St. Ignatius Loyola (who was investigated by the Spanish Inquisition) and St. Mary MacKillop (an Australian nun who was excommunicated by her bishop for uncovering and reporting clergy child sex abuse).

It’s not surprising, then, that a French Jesuit scientist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who tried to bridge the gap between faith and science, got himself in trouble with church officials and his Jesuit superiors in the 20th century. Only after his death was he recognized as the inspired genius that he was.

His story is magnificently told in a new PBS documentary, “Teilhard: Visionary Scientist,” which was produced by Frank Frost Productions in a 13-year labor of love. It took Frank and Mary Frost to four countries on three continents, a total of 25 locations, and included more than 35 interviews.

RELATED: Excommunication is not the church’s equivalent of capital punishment

Teilhard was born in 1881, entered the Jesuits in 1899 and was ordained a priest in 1911. His father nurtured in him a scientific curiosity, and he studied geology, botany and zoology at the University of Paris, ultimately becoming an eminent paleontologist who was involved in the discovery of the Peking Man.

If he had stuck to science, he would have led the quiet life of a scholar, but it was his attempt to bring together science and faith that got him in trouble. He went beyond the traditional argument that faith and science were not in conflict and used science as an input to theology and spirituality. Thus, his writings on Christ were enhanced by an evolutionary perspective.

He was not allowed to publish during his lifetime, although some manuscripts did circulate among friends and colleagues. Luckily, his literary executors were laypeople, not Jesuits, or his papers would have been buried in the archives.

After his death in New York City, “The Phenomenon of Man” (1955) and “The Divine Milieu” (1957) were published, leading to a condemnation of his writing by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1962.

His influence grew at and after the Second Vatican Council. Even Benedict XVI picked up on his thinking in an Easter homily where the pope spoke of the risen Christ as the next step in human evolution.



Teilhard believed that “(s)omeday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.”

“Teilhard: Visionary Scientist” tells this story well, with historical photos and onsite video of places where Teilhard lived and worked, including China. His important influence on theology is revealed through interviews with theologians and others who have been touched by his writings.

The film is a great opportunity to learn about a man who is still influencing the development of theology today.

“Teilhard: Visionary Scientist” will premiere on Maryland Public Television on May 19 and be available for national and international streaming for two years, beginning on May 20, on the free PBS app.
RELATED: New Vatican document combines modern transparency with eternal teaching

Another PBS documentary being released this month is “Hollywood Priest: The Story of Fr. ‘Bud’ Kieser” by Paulist Productions, which is also working on “Statue of Limitations: Father Serra and the California Natives.”



Silicon Valley bishop, two Catholic AI experts weigh in on AI evangelization

Catholic leaders who have worked with the Vatican on AI say that a recent experiment from Catholic Answers illustrates the ways AI evangelization can go wrong.

Justin, formerly Father Justin, is an artificial intelligence virtual apologist created by Catholic Answers. (Screen grab)

May 6, 2024
By Aleja Hertzler-McCain


(RNS) — It took a little more than a day for Father Justin, an artificial intelligence avatar posing as a priest, to be defrocked. After Catholic Answers, a site devoted to evangelizing for Catholicism, introduced the character to answer questions about the faith, Catholics on social media called the character a “scandalizing mockery of the sacred priesthood” that offered only “a substitute for real interaction.”

On April 24, Catholic Answers apologized for the experiment, and Justin was reintroduced as a lay theologian.

Catholics close to the Vatican’s work on artificial intelligence say that Justin captures the possible problems with AI evangelization and the reasons for caution in Pope Francis’ and other church officials’ attempts to tackle AI, even as the technology is becoming an increasingly buzzy topic at the Vatican.


The Rev. Philip Larrey. (Photo courtesy Boston College)

The Rev. Philip Larrey, a professor in the department of formative education at Boston College, said that while he thinks Catholic Answers are a good group, “they were a little bit too quick to enter into something which is extremely complicated, and that is interactive artificial intelligence.”

San Jose, California, Bishop Oscar Cantú, who leads the Catholic faithful in Silicon Valley, said that AI doesn’t come up much with parishioners in his diocese. Nonetheless, as a leader in the computing capital of the world, Cantú said he has engaged with AI as a global and moral issue, even if he hasn’t “delved into it too much.”

Pointing to the adage coined by Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, “move fast and break things,” the bishop said, “with AI, we need to move very cautiously and slowly and try not to break things. The things we would be breaking are human lives and reputations.”
RELATED: The Catholic Church wants to have a say on the future of AI

Experts agreed that Father Justin’s imitation of the sacrament of confession was highly inappropriate.

Cantú said, “If we have some sort of a robot in the guise of a priest, it can confuse” people about the fact that the sacraments must be celebrated in person. “Just because Father Justin recites the formula, that doesn’t make it a sacrament,” he said.

The bishop cautioned that AI chatbots should make very clear that they are AI. “It’s so critical that we be as transparent as possible, for the sake of the people we’re trying to guide,” Cantú added.

Even Justin introducing itself as a lay theologian is problematic. “A person who may be incredibly knowledgeable of Scripture and of church teaching but is not a person of faith does not do theology, because theology begins with faith,” the bishop said.


Bishop Oscar Cantú. (Photo courtesy Creative Commons)

Noreen Herzfeld, a professor of theology and computer science at St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict and one of the editors of a book about AI sponsored by the Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education, said that the AI character was previously “impersonating a priest, which is considered a very serious sin in Catholicism.”

The leaders don’t dismiss the usefulness of AI when used properly. Cantú said that AI can do “tremendous work” as “a tool that can be used for good for doing research.” But, he added, “A person of faith doing theology then needs to judge the credibility of each source and the authority of each source.”

Larrey, who has worked closely with both Vatican and AI leaders on the ethical issues surrounding AI, emphasized that Pope Francis is interested in “person-centered AI,” meaning that AI must be used “for the good of human beings” and “not the detriment of people.”

The best example of AI being used for evangelization, Larrey said, is Magisterium AI, a chatbot developed by Longbeard, a digital strategy firm founded by a former seminarian named Matthew Harvey Sanders, a friend of Larrey’s. The bot explains church teaching in a format like ChatGPT, by drawing on official church teachings, as well as select writings such as the works of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, linking to the documents that informed its answer.

Larrey distinguishes such automated research from generative AI, which learns and experiments with its newfound knowledge. “When you have a generative AI, if you’re not careful, it gets out of hand,” he said.

Accuracy issues, Herzfeld said, is one of many reasons it should not be used for evangelization. “As much as you beta test one of these chatbots, you will never get rid of hallucinations” — moments when the AI makes up its own answers, she said.



The Magisterium AI interface. (Screen grab)

“The problem is actually built into how they work,” Herzfeld continued. “They work on statistics, on probabilities as to what words and phrases should follow, and they do not have internal mental models of the world. And without that, they will always get off track.”

Herzfeld said that an AI is only as good as the data it is trained on. On issues where the church is divided, she said, “I could see bots out there giving competing answers, for example, on the desirability of the Latin Mass or the role of women in the church.”

Herzfeld expressed concern, too, that people who are not well-versed in technology may believe computers have a “certain level of infallibility,” and she worries that turning to AI bots will lead to spiritual “de-skilling,” convincing young people to think “religion is just about answers.”

“When I was their age, I was shy, and if I’d had a bot to answer my questions, I’d have gone to a bot instead of going to my pastor or even going to my parents to ask questions about religion,” Herzfeld said, adding that forming relationships with AI instead of with other people or God could become a type of idolatry.

Larrey, who has been studying AI for nearly 30 years and is in conversation with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is optimistic that the technology will improve. He said Altman is already making progress on the hallucinations, on its challenges to users’ privacy and reducing its energy use — a recent analysis estimated that by 2027, artificial intelligence could suck up as much electricity as the population of Argentina or the Netherlands.

Larrey understands that Catholic Answers’ Justin was designed to “get people who would otherwise not be interested in the Catholic faith,” but also thinks chatbots should not vie with real priests. “Why don’t you just go down to your parish and talk to a priest? They’re not extinct, you know,” he said.

For evangelization, “I think you need people to contact and to attract other people,” said Larrey. “We will never eliminate that step.”

Cantú believes this is the ultimate lesson to be drawn from the ill-fated Father Justin. “The faith is not just about answers. It’s not just about information. It’s about encounter, a personal encounter with Christ, with real people,” he said.
RELATED: Artificial intelligence program poised to shake up Catholic education, doctrine

Just as rank-and-file Catholics should exercise caution with AI for evangelization, Cantú suggested similar care from priests who might turn to ChatGPT for an assist when writing their homilies.

While the AI’s suggestion can be a good starting point for priests who are “pressed for time,” Cantú said, the priest must make the homily his own.

“When anyone within the church, a person of faith, expresses the truth, to some degree, they’re opening a window to the mind of God because God is truth.” In the end, the bishop said, “It has to be my words and my act of faith.

“A robot can’t do that because it’s not an act of faith.”

Netanyahu frequently makes claims of antisemitism. Critics say he’s deflecting from his own problems

The war has reignited the long debate about the definition of antisemitism and whether any criticism of Israel amounts to anti-Jewish hate speech.

Pro-Palestinian Pasadena City College students walk out of class as they demonstrate against the Israel-Hamas war in Pasadena, Calif., on April 30, 2024. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly accused critics of Israel or his policies of antisemitism, including the U.S. college campus protests and the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. 

(Sarah Reingewirtz/The Orange County Register via AP, File)

May 29, 2024
By Tia Goldenberg


TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — After the International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor sought arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his defense minister and top Hamas officials, the Israeli leader accused him of being one of “the great antisemites in modern times.”

As protests roiled college campuses across the United States over the Gaza war, Netanyahu said they were awash with “antisemitic mobs.”

These are just two of the many instances during the war in which Netanyahu has accused critics of Israel or his policies of antisemitism, using fiery rhetoric to compare them to the Jewish people’s worst persecutors. But his detractors say he is overusing the label to further his political agenda and try to stifle even legitimate criticism, and that doing so risks diluting the term’s meaning at a time when antisemitism is surging worldwide.

“Not every criticism against Israel is antisemitic,” said Tom Segev, an Israeli historian. “The moment you say it is antisemitic hate … you take away all legitimacy from the criticism and try to crush the debate.”

There has been a spike in antisemitic incidents since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, according to researchers. And many Jews in North America and Europe have said they feel unsafe, citing threats to Jewish schools and synagogues and the pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations in the U.S., although organizers deny that antisemitism drives the protests.

The war has reignited the long debate about the definition of antisemitism and whether any criticism of Israel — from its military’s killing of thousands of Palestinian children to questions over Israel’s very right to exist — amounts to anti-Jewish hate speech.

Netanyahu, the son of a scholar of medieval Jewish persecution, has long used the travails of the Jewish people to color his political rhetoric. And he certainly isn’t the first world leader accused of using national trauma to advance political goals.

Netanyahu’s supporters say he is honestly worried for the safety of Jews around the world.

But his accusations of antisemitism come as he has repeatedly sidestepped accountability for not preventing Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. Hamas killed roughly 1,200 people and took 250 hostage, which many in Israel’s defense establishment acknowledge they shoulder the blame for.

Netanyahu has continued to face criticism at home and abroad throughout the war, which has killed 35,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between fighters and noncombatants. The fighting has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe, and ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has accused Netanyahu and his defense minister of using starvation as a “method of warfare,” among other crimes.

Segev, the historian, acknowledged there is a rise in “violent hate” toward Israel and, speaking from Vienna, said he wasn’t sure if speaking Hebrew in public was safe. But he said Netanyahu has long used Jewish crises to his political benefit, including invoking the Jewish people’s deepest trauma, the Holocaust, to further his goals.

At the height of the campus protests, Netanyahu released a video statement condemning their “unconscionable” antisemitism and comparing the mushrooming encampments on college greens to Nazi Germany of the 1930s.

“What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific,” he said.

In response to Khan seeking the arrest warrants, he said the ICC prosecutor was “callously pouring gasoline on the fires of antisemitism that are raging across the world,” comparing him to German judges who approved of the Nazis’ race laws against Jews.

Netanyahu has compared accusations that Israel’s war is causing starvation in Gaza or that the war is genocidal to blood libels — unfounded centuries-old accusations that Jews sacrificed Christian children and used their blood to make unleavened bread for Passover.

“These false accusations are not levelled against us because of the things we do, but because of the simple fact that we exist,” he said at a ceremony marking Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day earlier this month.

Netanyahu previously made repeated allusions to the Holocaust while trying to galvanize the world against Iran’s nuclear program.

Israeli leaders and the country’s media also made such comparisons about Oct. 7, describing the Hamas attackers as Nazis, comparing their rampage to the historic violence inflicted on Eastern European Jews, and referring to the images of Jewish victims’ burned bodies as a Shoah — the Hebrew word for Holocaust.

Israelis have been jarred by the global rise in antisemitism, and many view the swell of criticism against Israel as part of the rise. They see hypocrisy in the world’s intense focus on Israel’s war with Hamas while other conflicts get much less attention.

Moshe Klughaft, a former advisor to Netanyahu, said he believes the Israeli leader is genuinely concerned over rising antisemitism.

“It is his duty to condemn antisemitism as prime minister of Israel and as head of a country that sees itself as responsible for world Jewry,” he said.

Many Israelis view the war in Gaza as a just act of self-defense and are befuddled by what many think should be criticism directed at Hamas — blaming the group for starting the war, using Palestinian civilians as human shields and refusing to free the hostages. The ICC warrant requests have likely bolstered such feelings.

When Netanyahu leans on accusations of antisemitism, he is doing so with the Israeli public in mind, said Reuven Hazan, a political scientist at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

Hazan said Netanyahu has leveraged the campus protests, for example, to get Israelis to rally around him at a time when his public support has plummeted and Israelis are growing impatient with the war. He said Netanyahu has also used the protests as a scapegoat for his failure so far to achieve the war’s two goals: destroying Hamas and freeing the hostages.

“He deflects blame from himself, attributing any shortcomings not to his foreign policies or policies in the (Palestinian) territories, but rather to antisemitism. This narrative benefits him greatly, absolving him of responsibility,” Hazan said.

Shmuel Rosner, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, a Jerusalem think thank, rejects the notion that Netanyahu stifles criticism by calling it antisemitic, pointing to just how much criticism the country receives. But he said using the antisemitic label to achieve political ends could cheapen it.

“I’d be more selective than the government of Israel in choosing the people and bodies they tag ‘antisemitic,’” he said.

Christian organizations come together to take boycott, divestment action as Rafah campaign continues

‘A core practice of nonviolent resistance, including within our tradition, is economic non-cooperation with injustice,’ the Christian organizations wrote.

Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli strike where displaced people were staying in Rafah, Gaza Strip, May 27, 2024. Palestinian health workers said Israeli airstrikes killed at least 35 people in the area. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

May 29, 2024
By Aleja Hertzler-McCain


(RNS) — Amid global outrage over an Israeli airstrike that killed at least 45 displaced Palestinians sheltering in tents in Rafah, a coalition of Christian groups is calling for a boycott and divestment of companies “supporting Israel’s military oppression of Palestinians.”

“As Christians, we seek to illuminate the sacred dignity of all people. We have tirelessly advocated for our U.S. government to stop the mass slaughter in Palestine,” the organizations wrote in a Wednesday (May 29) statement.

RELATED: Dozens of Christians arrested after shutting down Senate lunch in protest of Gaza famine

“Yet, more leverage is needed,” the statement continued.

Citing the New Testament story of Jesus overturning sellers’ tables in the Temple, the organizations called “economic non-cooperation with injustice” a core practice of nonviolent resistance within the Christian tradition.

The letter links to a list of companies that American Friends Service Committee, a major advocacy organization for Quakers, has identified as involved in specific human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories and Israel.

The signatories of the letter include the Alliance for Baptists, American Friends Service Committee, Christians for a Free Palestine, Friends of Sabeel North America, Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace and Pax Christi USA.

More than 36,000 people have been killed and more than 81,000 injured in Gaza, according to health officials there, since Israel began a military operation in Gaza after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which left an estimated 1,200 people dead and more than 200 taken captive.


Palestinians inspect the damage of buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes on Jabaliya refugee camp on the outskirts of Gaza City, Oct. 31, 2023. (AP Photo/Abdul Qader Sabbah, File)

Eli McCarthy, a peace activist involved in organizing the letter, said organizers had already heard from additional Christian organizations interested in pledging to join the collective boycott efforts, including the United Church of Christ Palestine Israel Network.

“The Christian call to boycott and divestment deepens our practice of active nonviolence. It illustrates how the way of nonviolence challenges us to withdraw our cooperation from the resources and material power which enable injustice and mass atrocities,” McCarthy told Religion News Service in an email.

The letter also specifically highlights a boycott campaign against Chevron organized in part by the American Friends Service Committee as well as anti-fossil fuel advocacy groups. “The Chevron corporation supplies Israel’s war machine with light and power via the operation and co-ownership of the major gas fields off the coast of occupied Palestinian land,” the organizers of the Chevron campaign wrote on their campaign page.

Chevron began producing natural gas again on a platform 12 miles offshore from the Gaza Strip about a month after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, according to The New York Times.

Judy Coode, communications director for Pax Christi USA, told RNS: “We have to keep doing creative and more significant actions to have a real change in the Middle East. We support any nonviolent effort to draw attention to this issue and make people in this country aware of how we’re connected to this crisis.”

The Christian organizations, which have all previously been involved in peace activism in various ways, are also advocating for a military embargo, which they explain would involve governments, unions and universities ceasing to do any business with Israeli military and security companies.

The letter comes after more than 3,000 people, including college students and professors, were arrested at protests calling for universities to divest from Israel. It also comes a week after the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity for Israeli and Hamas leaders.

The effort echoes an international strategy known as BDS, or Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, which aims to exert economic and social pressure on Israel’s government to force it to uphold Palestinian rights. The movement draws inspiration from the boycotts used during the fight against apartheid in South Africa. However, the Christian letter organizers emphasize that they are not calling for sanctions, which makes their strategy different from BDS.

The Anti-Defamation League and other pro-Israel organizations have denounced BDS as antisemitic because they argue that the movement calls for “the eradication of the world’s only Jewish state.”

Despite those concerns, several Christian denominations, including the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ and Mennonite Church USA, as well as the United Methodist Church’s pension board, have all approved specific divestment measures long before Israel’s current military campaign.

RELATED: Mennonite Church to divest in protest of Israeli policies

In the letter, the Christian organizations write, “This strategy of nonviolent non-cooperation is not against the existence of the state of Israel, but is for the sacred dignity, well-being, security, and human rights of all Palestinians as well as Israelis.”

This article has been updated to clarify that the letter’s organizers are only calling for boycott and divestment, not sanctions.

JESUS WAS PALESTINIAN

Opinion

At ‘Christ at the Checkpoint,’ Palestinian Christians rail against Western church’s response to war

Attendees at a conference called for global church leaders to be held accountable for one-sided support for Israel

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Attendees listen to a presentation during the biennial Christ at the Checkpoint conference at Bethlehem Bible College in the West Bank in late May 2024. (Photo by Alaa Khoury/Bethlehem Bible College)

May 30, 2024
By Daoud Kuttab

(RNS) — Daniel Bannoura, a Palestinian and a Ph.D. candidate in theology at the University of Notre Dame, was disappointed in Russell Moore. Bannoura had been reading the Christianity Today editor-in-chief’s recent book, “Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America,” in which Moore bemoans Christian nationalists’ rejecting Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as “weak.” At the same time, Bannoura said, Moore had failed to consider the Sermon on the Mount in his Oct. 7 commentary in his magazine, justifying Christian support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

“How can you quote ‘love our enemies’ when you are supporting bombing them? How can you talk about just-war theory?” Bannoura asked the audience crowded into the auditorium at Bethlehem Bible College, in the West Bank, on May 24 at the biennial Christ at the Checkpoint conference.

Noting that Moore serves on the council of The Gospel Coalition, Bannoura chided him for his association with a group that compared Hamas to the Amalekites, the biblical enemies of the Israelites, before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the comparison as justification for annihilating Hamas.

“Maybe Russell hasn’t read his own book, maybe, like MAGA Christians, he also thinks the Sermon on the Mount is too weak,” said Bannoura.

RELATED: On Nakba Day, some Palestinians dream of a single, secular state

The divide that has opened during the Israel-Hamas war between Christians in the Holy Land and Christians in the West was a prominent theme at Christ at the Checkpoint, held May 22-26 this year under the banner “Do Justice, Love Mercy,”

The Rev. Munther Isaac, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, and the Bible college’s academic dean, said the past seven months have created a huge chasm between Palestinian Christians and the global church.

The Rev. Munther Isaac, pastor of Bethlehem’s Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, addresses a vigil at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington, Nov. 28, 2023. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)

Isaac called for a more vocal action to hold Western church leaders accountable. “We need to be more strategic. General calls are not enough. We need to think of specific calls, such as a possible campaign against Christianity Today signed by evangelical leaders.”

Bannoura, who is on the conference’s steering committee, urged his colleagues to issue a strongly worded rebuttal to evangelical leaders like Moore who have defended Israel.

That document, “A Call for Repentance: An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians,” quickly garnered backing from Christian Palestinian leaders. Posted on Change.org, the petition quickly received more than 21,500 signatures.

This year’s conference, which drew about 250 participants from around the world, took place despite challenges presented by the war’s security measures. Israel turned back two South African registered members at the King Hussein Bridge, the only operating land entry point to the West Bank. An American participant was refused entry at the Tel Aviv airport. (Isaac, his travel permit revoked by the Israeli government due to his activism, was not allowed to make a visit to Jerusalem with other conferees.)

Those who were able to attend heard a wide range of speeches and participated in workshops with such titles as “Mobilizing for Peace in the U.S.,” “Reconciliation to Coexistence” and “Media Bias in Coverage of the War on Gaza.”


George and Sara Salloum, of North Carolina, pose with letters of hope they brought to the 2024 Christ at the Checkpoint conference at Bethlehem Bible College in the West Bank. (Photo by Alaa Khoury/Bethlehem Bible College)

Varsen Aghabekian, the first member of the Palestinian cabinet from the Armenian Palestinian community, read Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ address to the conference, saying, “Peace will prevail when questioning the plight of Palestinians for self-determination and accessing their rights is not understood as anti-Jewish, antisemitic or an attempt to demonize or delegitimize Israel, which has been recognized by Palestinians on 78% of historic Palestine.”

The speech, the sole nontheological presentation at the conference, nonetheless appealed to the audience in familiar terms: “We all need to expend effort to maintain hope,” the address declared. “Hope in a better future where there is no occupation of another people’s land, and when the Bible is used for promoting peace rather than war, killing and suffering.”

Jack Sara, president of the Bethlehem Bible College, also spoke in terms that any Sunday school child would understand. Repeating one of the best-known Bible verses, he said many Western church leaders seem to have forgotten its words. “’For God so loved the world’ also includes Palestinians,” Sara said. “God’s love for all includes Palestinians and is not conditional.”

But the Christian gathering pointed to solutions, and healing. Salim Munayer, founder of the Jerusalem nongovernmental organization Musalaha, which facilitates reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, noted the significant power imbalance in the conflict. “An honest diagnosis reveals we are dealing with settler colonialism aimed at eliminating the other,” Munayer said.

Effective reconciliation, he argued, must therefore be twofold: It must both restore relationships and address systemic injustices. “Without tackling these root issues, any efforts at reconciliation will merely perpetuate victimization,” Munayer asserted. “For true reconciliation, we must confront the reality of the situation and the structures of injustice nonviolently. This requires a change in attitude and approach, especially among fellow Christians.”


Daniel Bannoura, from left, the Rev. Fares Abraham and Lamma Mansour participate in the 2024 Christ at the Checkpoint conference at Bethlehem Bible College in the West Bank. (Photo by Alaa Khoury/Bethlehem Bible College)

Fares Abraham, the Palestinian American CEO of Levant Ministries, made a passionate call for a “Christ-centered response,” saying, “Followers of Christ can’t ignore the suffering in Gaza.” But he expressed regret for all the deaths that have led to the current situation. “We mourn every loss of life. We mourn those killed on Oct. 7,” he said, “and we pray for the release of the hostages, and we mourn all Palestinians killed in this war.”

Abraham, who said 25 members of his wife’s family have taken refuge in Gaza’s churches, insisted that his call for compassion for both sides should not be controversial. “This is who we are as Christians,” he said. “We need to follow Christ’s example and respond biblically to human suffering with unconditional compassion.”

The calls for a Christian response to the war were present in the 100 handwritten messages of hope and support for the church in Palestine that an American couple from North Carolina, Sara and George Salloum, delivered to the conference organizers, who posted them at the Bible college and sent copies to the churches in Gaza.

RELATED: Latin Patriarch Pizzaballa’s visit provides Palestinians a basic human need: Hope

But there was a more defiant strain of hope in some of the speeches. Lamma Mansour, a researcher in social policy at the University of Oxford and a Rhodes scholar, called on Palestinians to become an example of hope. “Not the naive kind of hope but the hope with power to be bold, to defy arrogance of the oppressor and hope that speaks truth to power.”

Mansour noted that “hope gives us the power to defy the arrogance of oppression and to persist. It renews our strength to love our enemy and to keep protesting, and hope gives us the power to imagine.” Her concluding words brought a standing ovation: “We may be persecuted, and hope ensures us that we will not be abandoned.”

(Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian journalist from Jerusalem and the publisher of Milhilard.org. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Mainline Protestant clergy are increasingly pro-Palestinian. Their congregants may not follow.

Will mainline leaders be swayed by their silent pro-Israel majorities?

Palestinians wait for aid trucks in central Gaza Strip on May 19, 2024.

 (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

May 29, 2024
By Motti Inbari, Kirill Bumin


(RNS) — Mainline Protestant churches are often linked in the media to support for the progressive agenda — same-sex marriage, for instance, and abortion access — and their clergy are increasingly active on racial inequality, civil rights and environmental issues. But over the past few decades, they have also become significantly more pro-Palestinian than the average American when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

With the collapse of the Oslo peace process in 2000, mainline criticism of Israel exploded. Since 2004, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has made a significant breakthrough among mainline churches, with 10 resolutions supporting divestment passed by clergy and their most involved lay leaders at their denominational conventions. The United Methodists at their General Conference just last month passed such a vote, following the lead of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Church of Christ, which did so in 2014 and 2015, respectively.

Pastors and their parishioners are typically assumed to be aligned on these types of issues, but our most recent national survey examining American Christian opinions about Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reveals that 80% of mainline attendees have never even heard of the BDS movement and only 7% support it. The views of the clergy on these issues, in other words, are often out of sync with the views of the congregants.

Since 2018, we have surveyed the public opinion of different U.S. Christian movements to understand their views of Jews, Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For this most recent survey we reached 2,000 self-identifying Christians in the United States in March 2024, months after the start of the war in Gaza. The survey polled evangelical and born-again Christians (such as Baptists and Pentecostals), mainline Protestants and Catholics.

RELATED: Survey: Mainline clergy are more liberal than their congregants

Despite their lack of knowledge about BDS, mainline Protestants tend to be the best informed about the conflict, with a larger percentage of them correctly identifying the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as the ones in the chant “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea” (49% versus 44% for evangelicals and 39% for Catholics).

We were both surprised and encouraged that this group had not been swayed by the prevailing anti-Israel media narrative. In fact, 22% of mainline respondents said their support for Israel increased as a result of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, while 47% said their support remained the same. A majority of this group — 54% — blame “mostly Hamas” for the current war in Gaza, the highest percentage among the three groups that we surveyed.

“In relation to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, where do you place your support?” (Courtesy graphic)

Half said the Israeli response had been mostly justified, almost 7% higher than the evangelicals who said so.

As these numbers show, the congregants of this important Christian movement clearly support Israel over the Palestinians, as most Americans do, and see greater justification for the Israeli, rather than Palestinian, actions in the current war in Gaza.
RELATED: Are white evangelical pastors at odds with their congregants? A new study says no.

As mainline denominations continue to respond to the war, it is certain to generate heated discussions. The calls for more resolutions condemning Israel, more boycotts of Israeli businesses and more divestment of funds will likely follow.

Will the mainline leaders be swayed by the vocal minority of their pro-Palestinian members, or heed to the significant but silent pro-Israel majority?

(Motti Inbari is a professor of Jewish studies at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Kirill Bumin is associate dean of the Metropolitan College and director of summer term at Boston University. They are the authors of “Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century: American Evangelical Public Opinion on Israel.” 

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Adults raised in the ‘Christian parenting empire’ of the ’70s-’90s push back

Leveraging social media, these parents and professionals aim to show that this parenting approach can result in trauma, estrangement and views of God as abusive.
(Photo by Monstera Production/Pexels/Creative Commons)
May 30, 2024
By
Kathryn Post

(RNS) — For Tia Levings, it was blanket training.

A method where a parent places an infant or toddler on a blanket and punishes them — often by hitting them — if they stray, blanket training was a line Levings refused to cross, and a technique that made her question the teachings that enveloped her as a young mother in the Christian patriarchy movement.

“We were not to listen to our instincts,” said Levings, who raised her kids in Jacksonville, Florida, in the 1990s. “Our mother instincts would lead us to make weak choices that cater to the flesh, and instead we needed to raise our babies the way God would.”

When Levings spoke about corporal punishment in the hit documentary series “Shiny Happy People,” her story didn’t just resonate with viewers raised in fundamentalism. Though the series focused on Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles, the idea that spanking results in obedient, righteous children was a hallmark of mainstream evangelical parenting in the ’70s-’90s.

“Dobson taught people, spank your kid, but sit them down and put them on your lap and hug them,” therapist Krispin Mayfield said about psychologist and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, whose book “Dare to Discipline” has sold more than 3.5 million copies since 1970. This combination of pain and affection, Mayfield told Religion News Service, can shape how children view parents and authority figures. And, according to Mayfield and Levings, it can impact their view of God.

Tia Levings. (Courtesy photo)

“It leaves you without any spiritual solace,” said Levings, author of the forthcoming book “A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape From Christian Patriarchy.” “You don’t know where to turn for any kind of safe spirituality because the Divine was used … as the justification for why you were being hurt.”

In the late 20th century, a specific, often white evangelical brand of authoritarian parenting emerged. Framed as being God-glorifying, it was characterized by rigid hierarchies, demands for children’s immediate and cheerful obedience and the absence of negative emotions among children. It was enforced by spanking, often starting when a child was just a few months old.

Now, some of the adults raised in that context are pushing back. Leveraging social media, they aim to show that this parenting approach can result in trauma, estrangement and a view of God as abusive. Their warnings are often paired with a plea to raise kids in a way that honors children’s agency.

Books like Dobson’s were an explicit response to the perceived disruptions of the feminist movement, Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War protests and 1960s youth culture, several experts told RNS. Evangelical authoritarian parenting prioritized parental authority as a stabilizing force and were also an answer to parenting models seen as permissive, including those popularized by such authors as Dr. Benjamin Spock and, later, Dr. William Sears.

As Dobson’s reach extended beyond the evangelical parenting world, other self-appointed experts such as Gothard, Tedd Tripp, Gary Ezzo, Michael and Debi Pearl and Nancy Campbell emerged. Their advice proliferated via conferences and parenting books, some with provocative titles such as Larry Tomczak’s “God, the Rod, and your Children’s Bod” or Reb Bradley’s “Born Liberal, Raised Right: How to Rescue America from Moral Decline.”

Author Marissa Burt said that, barring Dobson, most of these authors were pastors who lacked relevant credentials.

“They marketed themselves well, they made claims to spiritual authority, they generated fear in parents, and they presented their opinion as God’s way to hundreds of thousands of people,” said Burt.


Marissa Burt, left, and Kelsey Kramer McGinnis. (Burt photo by Janeen Sorensen 2021; McGinnis photo © 2024 KC McGinnis)

Together, these authors created a cohesive movement or, as Burt and scholar Kelsey Kramer McGinnis say in their forthcoming book, from Brazos, a “Christian parenting empire.” These writers viewed parents as God’s representatives charged with using physical punishment to enforce instant obedience, constant composure, strict hierarchies and gender binaries. This approach, parents were taught, would preserve the nuclear family and, by extension, society as a whole — and would prevent their children from losing their souls.

“Parents are being told, you have to do this or your kid is going to either end up in hell, or end up a criminal,” said R.L. Stollar, author of “The Kingdom of Children.”

As writers D.L. and Krispin Mayfield note in their new multimedia “Strongwilled” project, these authors often rejected the authoritarian label. But the Mayfields developed the term “religious authoritarian parenting” to discuss those like Dobson, Gothard and the Pearls whose impacts and techniques, they argue, are nevertheless authoritarian in nature.

“It wasn’t marked by having to wear skirts or like not going to the movies or those sorts of things. It was marked by, do you submit to the authority figures in your life?” Krispin Mayfield said.

Krispin, left, and D.L. Mayfield. (Courtesy photos)

For many parents, the promises of this movement never materialized. Rather than a lifetime of happiness with compliant, Christian children, several sources told RNS, parents in some cases have become estranged from children who eventually sought autonomy beyond the parent-child relationship.

“The parents feel utterly betrayed, and the only way they can handle that is by saying, I didn’t do something wrong. It’s my children. They are not grateful for the sacrifices that I made,” said Abbi Nye, an anti-abuse advocate raised with the Quiverfull ideology, often characterized by large families, homeschooling and female submission. Parents who refuse to acknowledge the harm caused by Christian authoritarian parenting, she said, risk alienating their kids long-term.

Nye is one of several Christians and former evangelicals, or exvangelicals, speaking out against Christian authoritarian parenting and seeking different approaches. As she teaches her son to regulate, rather than stifle, his emotions, she said, she draws inspiration from child liberation theology, an emerging Christian movement that says children have the same worth as adults.


Abbi Nye in New York in 2023. (Courtesy photo)

One of the leaders of that field is Stollar, a child of evangelical parents who were “somewhat resistant adopters of some of the more authoritarian aspects of parenting,” he told RNS. Now, he argues in blogs and articles that adults can parent without exerting force to exact compliance.

“I want parents to know there are different ways to read the Bible that are valid, that understand and respect who Jesus and God are, and are still treating children in a way that is humane and respectful,” said Stollar.



R.L. Stollar. (Courtesy photo)

Deciding to parent differently than their evangelical parents was part of what led the Mayfields to eventually depart Christianity. Their “Strongwilled” project suggests kids raised by religious authoritarian parenting are more susceptible to political authoritarianism — including that of Donald Trump.

“We’ve been traumatized for political purposes,” D.L. Mayfield told RNS. “All of this was done to undo the progress made in the 1950s in the United States of America … and us as kids, we’re just collateral damage.” Through “Strongwilled,” the Mayfields hope to build a community for those reckoning with their childhoods.

As they share findings from their book research, Burt and McGinnis, both Christian parents themselves, have reached hundreds of people trying to unpack the Christian parenting empire they belonged to. People who’ve left Christianity, too, tune in to YouTube or Instagram to hear Burt and McGinnis discuss corporal punishment, perfectionism and spiritual authority in Christian parenting.

“There’s a way to talk about this that is absolutely accusing my parents’ generation of being either these authoritarian, spiritual tyrants or just sheep to people like James Dobson, and neither of those is true,” said McGinnis, who is also a correspondent for Christianity Today. “I think there’s a way to talk about this that welcomes those folks. So I’m really thankful when someone from that camp chimes in.”
RELATED: Child liberation theology says God is a child, too


Yolanda Williams. (Courtesy photo)

The parents and professionals analyzing the previous generation’s Christian parenting are doing so amid a culturewide shift away from punitive parenting tactics. But as gentle and conscious parenting becomes more mainstream, it can also become whitewashed, warned parenting coach Yolanda Williams, who argues that true conscious parenting — which teaches parents to be mindful of their own trauma — must reckon with how colonization interrupted Indigenous parenting methods.

“There were reports that Indigenous people were appalled by the way that the Europeans treated their children like property,” Williams, creator of the Parenting Decolonized social media accounts and resources, said. “The roots of conscious parenting are from Black, Indigenous and other people of color.”

But though the tides of parenting culture seem to have turned, some artifacts of Christian authoritarian parenting have remained, with new iterations gaining popularity on social media, where self-platformed experts and “tradwife” influencers have been doling out parenting advice in what they see as a revival of old-fashioned Christian family values. To those raised in the original Christian parenting empire, these freshly packaged lessons about obedience, discipline and strict gender roles are grimly familiar.

“Whether we are exvangelicals, whether we still consider ourselves Christians, wherever we are on the political spectrum, we’re saying, what we experienced was not OK,” said Nye. “We want to warn the next generation.”

GNOSTIC    ANTINOMIANISM 

‘Bad Faith’ sounds the alarm on the past and future of Christian nationalism

Filmmakers Stephen Ujlaki and Chris Jones trace the origins of Christian nationalism from the Ku Klux Klan to the election of Donald Trump.

In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo, a man holds a Bible as supporters of Donald Trump gather outside the Capitol in Washington. The Christian imagery and rhetoric on view during the Capitol insurrection sparked renewed debate about the societal effects of melding Christian faith with an exclusionary breed of nationalism. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

May 30, 2024

By Jim McDermott

(RNS) — In 1980, conservative political operative Paul Weyrich approached evangelical Christian leaders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson with a proposal: If they would mobilize their believers to begin voting Republican, he would help them in their quest to roll back many of the civil rights protections they chafed against. Over the next 40 years, Weyrich and his Council for National Policy would guide these groups to greater and greater political success while slowly radicalizing them into a potent force — the Moral Majority — whose particular ideas of Christianity and Christian values drove nearly all their voting decisions.

Weyrich was not subtle in his motivations for a reigning political class, telling a group of evangelical leaders in 1980 that “our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

In “Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy,” filmmakers Stephen Ujlaki and Chris Jones trace the origins of Christian nationalism from the Ku Klux Klan in the 19th century through the creation of the Moral Majority, the sudden rise of the tea party and the election of Donald Trump. What they uncover is an essential aspect of our current political situation, one that puts evangelical Christianity in new light.

Where many liberals have long dismissed evangelical Christians and their fundamentalist beliefs as ridiculous and absurd, Ujlaki and Brown work to understand them on their own terms — and discover not hypocrisy but a deeply consistent, radically dualistic theology that, for many, is worth defending, even to the point of violence.

Religion News Service spoke with Ujlaki by phone in Los Angeles about the making of “Bad Faith” and the story it tells of how a large swath of religious voters came to believe that President Joe Biden is in league with the devil while Trump is essential to the spiritual salvation of America. The film is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Tubi and other platforms.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What initially made you want to tell this story?

When Trump got elected, I was shocked. Nobody thought he had a chance. He was obviously a joke. It was never going to happen. When he got elected, I realized I didn’t really know anything about what was going on. I was in a bubble.

Stephen Ujlaki. (Photo by Jon Rou/courtesy of Loyola Marymount University)

More than anything, my wanting to make the film was just to find out: How did he do it, how did he win, and who were the Christian evangelicals (who supported him)? But then I discovered all of this plotting, all of these deals, and the fact that those behind them were anti-democratic from the beginning.

The heart of the film is the story of Paul Weyrich and the deal he made with evangelical Christian leaders to use abortion to motivate their people to begin to vote for Republicans. How did that all work?

There were a couple of congressional elections in which the people who were running for office were very anti-abortion. And Weyrich, who had been a Catholic, found that they were successful campaigns, more so than they should have been. Abortion was very successful in ringing people’s bell.

Evangelicals had nothing against abortion. Frankly, they thought it was a good way to keep the Black population down. The Southern Baptist Convention applauded Roe v. Wade in 1973. But Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson agreed to start telling people this is bad, in return for which they were going to get help turning back all the progressive things they hated that the Supreme Court had done and that Lyndon Johnson had done. The Great Society, all of those progressive things that gave a lot of us hope in the 1960s and ’70s were anathema to them, and they were determined to turn that back. So they would faithfully help elect Republicans, and they would get rewarded.

It (abortion) was a great way to cover the fact that they were really trying to stop integration. It’s much better to say that we’re trying to defend the rights of the unborn.
I was surprised to learn that Christian evangelicals were not always so politically engaged.

For many, many years they were completely opposed to political involvement. The public square was the devil’s playground. To convince them to get involved and to vote Republican, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson applied the Manichaeanism of their theology. There’s a good and bad; there’s evil, and there’s God. The Republican Party is the party of God, and the Democratic Party is the party of the devil. They got that.

But this has nothing to do with theology, nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with God or with Jesus. I don’t even consider Christian nationalism as a religion. What is its ethos? What is its morality? It’s actually amoral, which is why it uses the church. The church lends it that moral, ethical authority that it doesn’t have otherwise.

Jesus is anti-democratic and God likes authoritarian governments? It’s the antithesis of anything Christian.

Would it be fair to say Christian nationalism’s goal is fascism?

“Bad Faith” poster. (Courtesy image)

Yes. It’s pure fascism. It’s pure power. They have been wanting and plotting the same thing for 40-plus years. They were incredibly adept at concealing what their motives were. You had to decode what they were saying. When they were talking about re-creating the kingdom of God on Earth, if you thought they were talking about something theological and spiritual, you would be mistaken. They were talking about replacing democracy with theocracy.

The one exception, and this to me is like the smoking gun in the film, was the Weyrich Manifesto (“The Integration of Theory and Practice,” 2001). Born of his complete frustration with the knowledge that his followers were never going to be the majority, Weyrich argued the only way they were going to create a Christian nation was to bypass democracy. They had to weaken and destroy it, creating a vacuum, which leaves room for the strongman to appear.

If you look around you at the divisiveness and the distrust of institutions that exist today in this country, you will realize how incredibly successful they have been in executing their plan. It’s been like a slow-motion revolution in a way, happening bit by bit all over the place.

And yet even so, Donald Trump seemed like such a reach for people concerned about goodness and morality.

Everything he stood for was against what they believed in. A number of people were saying they would do it but they would be holding their noses, because they didn’t really believe in it.

Then you had his spiritual adviser, a charismatic, Paula White, who had befriended Trump a year or so earlier and was his sort of secret adviser. She started the ball rolling by telling her group that Trump had become a Christian. That was one attempt to deal with the thing. But more was needed.

Then, looking in the Bible, another charismatic Christian came up with the idea that God sometimes uses pagans to accomplish good works on behalf of the Jews. King Cyrus was this horrible pagan who did all kinds of bad things, but he was very good for the Jews.
And so Trump becomes reinterpreted as, in a sense, part of salvation history?

The notion was that looking at the Bible, we see that what was really happening was God using Trump in order to redeem America and bring it back to God. And as (evangelical Christian and former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security) Elizabeth Neumann says in the film, the notion that they could be living out the prophesies got evangelical Christians so excited they all got behind this notion of Trump as King Cyrus. That’s what God was doing. That was the answer. They figured it out.

There comes a point in the film where you interview a man who seems very thoughtful about Biden’s desire to unify the country. But then his conclusion is that it’s impossible because good and evil cannot work together.

That’s one of the scarier parts of the film. Because he seems like a reasonable, intelligent person, and yet he’s deeply convinced of this, even sad about it, not triumphant. It’s simply a fact, good cannot unify with evil.

The notion that over half the country is in fact demonic and evil, and evangelical Christians are the holy ones and should be allowed to do whatever they need to do in order to take control from the devil, it’s incredible when you think about it.

Watching the film, it certainly sounds like the leaders of the Christian nationalist movement see civil war, or something like it, as the path to power.

That’s right. That’s the only way they’re going to get it. They’re not going to get it through democracy, they’re never going to be the majority. They are going to weaken and destroy and then conquer. That’s the game plan.

It’s so hard, people aren’t willing to accept the fact there are sizable numbers of people in this country who don’t believe in democracy. And the national media doesn’t know how to deal with it. They’re constantly accommodating, normalizing, and not fulfilling what I would take to be the mandate of proper newsgathering. They call them “conservative” in The New York Times. They’re not conservative. These are seditionists, treasonous, anti-democratic.

People with this kind of liberal notion of fair and balanced think we’re not going to be over the top like them. But the thing is, one is following the rules and the other isn’t.

It’s so difficult, because you don’t want people to be so terrified that they think it’s hopeless. You don’t want to have to think “I better stay out of this.”

On the contrary, what it should show you is that you need to fight for your democracy if you want to keep it.

RNS is the recipient of an ongoing grant from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, founded and led by Todd Stiefel, who is an executive producer of “Bad Faith.”