WOMEN UNDER PATRIARCHY

As US debates gender roles, some women in male-led faiths dig in on social and political issues

(AP) — Outspoken women from the Catholic Church and the ranks of conservative evangelicals are engaging with gusto in ongoing political and social debates even as their faiths maintain longstanding rules against women serving as priests or senior pastors.

David Crary and Holly Meyer
November 21, 2025

The U.S. feminist movement’s perpetual quest for gender equality has suffered notable setbacks during President Donald Trump’s second term — including the dismantling of various nondiscrimination programs and the ouster of several high-ranking women in the military.

Yet strikingly, outspoken women from the Catholic Church and the ranks of conservative evangelicals are engaging with gusto in ongoing political and social debates even as their faiths maintain longstanding rules against women serving as priests or senior pastors. Many of these women see these ministry barriers as a nonissue.

In a Dallas suburb, more than 6,500 conservative Christian women attended an Oct. 11 conference organized by commentator Allie Beth Stuckey. “Welcome to the fight,” was her greeting.

Ahead of the conference, Stuckey evoked the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, saying she had been inundated with messages from Christian women saying, “We’re done sitting on the sidelines of politics and culture.’’

“We’re not backing down; we’re doubling down,” Stuckey declared. “We’re unapologetically saying no to the lies of feminism and progressivism and yes to God’s Word.”

Some Catholic nuns are on the front lines

Among Catholic women, there is a different kind of passion exhibited by sisters from religious orders who are on the front lines of social-justice advocacy.

A striking example came in September after Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, praised Kirk as “a modern-day St. Paul” who was a worthy role model for young people.

Leaders of the Sisters of Charity of New York, an order founded in 1809, issued a public rebuke.

“What Cardinal Dolan may not have known is that many of Mr. Kirk’s words were marked by racist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-immigrant rhetoric, by violent pro-gun advocacy, and by the promotion of Christian nationalism,” the nuns said. “These prejudicial words do not reflect the qualities of a saint.”

“In this moment,” the nuns added, “we reaffirm our mission: to walk with all people who are poor and marginalized, to welcome immigrants and refugees, to defend the dignity of LGBTQ+ persons, and to labor for peace in a world saturated with violence.”

Another religious sister, Norma Pimentel of the Missionaries of Jesus, is a leading migrant-rights activist along the U.S.-Mexico border. She runs Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, including a respite center for beleaguered migrants in McAllen, Texas.

At a recent forum in Washington, she recalled visiting immigrant families at a detention center in a “terrible condition,” and being moved to tears.

“I saw Border Patrol agents looking at us, and they, too, were moved and were crying,” she said. “When I walked out of there, the officer turned to me and said, ‘Thank you, sister, for helping us realize they’re human beings.’”

Natalia Imperatori-Lee, a professor in the theology department at Fordham University, praised Pimentel’s advocacy and the Sisters of Charity leadership’s statement as “the model of the way women show up in the public square.”

“Women religious are the face of the church,” she said.

Overall, Imperatori-Lee said she was disheartened by “this moment of very serious backlash to the gains that women and other minorities have made.” Yet she finds reasons to be encouraged.

“A lot of undergrads are passionate about women’s equality in the church,” she said of Fordham, a Jesuit school now with a woman as its president for the first time.

“Even if the headlines about our cultural backsliding are true, the on-the-ground activism that you’re seeing among young people shows they’re are up to the task,” she said.

Conservative evangelical women navigate a patriarchal doctrine

After the Catholic Church, the second largest denomination in the U.S. is the Southern Baptist Convention, whose evangelical doctrine espouses traditional gender roles at home and in the church. That includes barring women from being pastors, a belief that has put the SBC in the spotlight in recent years following high-profile ousting of churches that disobeyed the prohibition.

But this doesn’t mean Southern Baptist men are domineering nor that the women are doormats, said Susie Hawkins, a Bible teacher in Texas and wife of a former denominational leader.

“That’s not what complementarianism is,” said Hawkins, referring to the doctrine that men and women have distinct God-given roles. “The women I know have the freedom to speak their mind to their husbands, and to work through problems in situations with them, within certain boundaries.”

Many embrace being wives, mothers and women in the church, said Hawkins, who has watched Erika Kirk, the wife of the late Charlie Kirk, publicly demonstrate that same satisfaction and joy.

“I think this is really, really important for Christian women,” said Hawkins. “She exemplifies a Christian wife and mom who is not ashamed of her love for her husband and her desire to serve him and love him and their kids.”

Hawkins predicts Erika Kirk, now head of her husband’s Turning Point USA, will be influential: “I think her voice — it will be heard from this point on.”

Stuckey, who grew up Southern Baptist, recently addressed women’s roles in church and society on her “Relatable” podcast, following online blowback from men on the right for giving a speech at a Turning Point college event. Stuckey reiterated her belief that women should not be pastors nor preach from the pulpit on Sundays, and said she has turned down opportunities because of it.

“A gentle and quiet spirit is something that women are told that we should have in Scripture, and we should. But that does not mean silence,” she said. “Women are also called to raise a voice and to be a bastion and refuge of clarity and courage.”

Most Southern Baptist women embrace accepted callings in the church, including in women’s and children’s ministry, said Hawkins, noting a special commissioning service at First Baptist Church of Dallas celebrating these roles.

“I just don’t think you see a lot of malcontent women complaining about not being able to be a pastor,” she said.

The Texas megachurch, which upholds that only men can serve as senior pastor, honored 13 women, said senior pastor, the Rev. Robert Jeffress.

“Instead of focusing on the one ministry women are prohibited from doing (senior pastor) we wanted to recognize and celebrate all the things that women can do in the church,” Jeffress said via email.

Hawkins has encountered a few women who felt called to off-limits roles in Southern Baptist churches. She was straightforward with them.

“Go do what God’s called you to do, but we’re not the denomination for you. You’re just going to get frustrated here. These boundaries were established a long time ago, so go where you can be happy,” said Hawkins.

Advocates of women’s ordination vow to persist

Long-established boundaries remain in the Catholic Church as well.

As Pope Leo XIV — the first American Pope — settles into his papacy, he has made clear he has no immediate interest in advocating for women to be able to serve as deacons, let alone to be ordained as priests.

Yet women continue to serve in high-level administrative jobs at the Vatican and at Catholic institutions in the U.S., such as Catholic Charities and the Catholic Health Association.

“Within the Catholic Church when we look only at priesthood, we fail to look at the primary mission of the church — it’s education, health care, social service agencies,” said Susan Timoney, a professor of pastoral studies at The Catholic University of America.

“We need to tell that part of the story better,” Timoney said.

The largest U.S. organization working to open the priesthood to women is the Women’s Ordination Conference, which will mark its 50th anniversary in late November.

Its executive director, Kate McElwee, said she is alarmed by “anti-women rhetoric and policies being pushed out all over the globe” including in the U.S. She wants her group to function as a “Ministry of Irritation, making our cause as bold and loud and creative as possible.”

“As things get more polarized, we’re seeing more people find their courage in this moment,” she said, citing the Sisters of Charity as an example. “As feminism is under attack more broadly, our movement will become a more important symbol of resistance.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Opinion

In new memoirs, women rabbis wrestle with Judaism's male-centered tradition

(RNS) — Female rabbis have staked a claim to a Judaism that is fully inclusive and respectful of the values of all its adherents.

Recent memoirs by women rabbis. (Courtesy images)

Beth Kissileff
November 19, 2025
RNS

(RNS) — From the days of Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron, Jewish women have been leaders-without-portfolio. In the Book of Exodus, Miriam, a “prophetess,” leads the Israelite women in song, but unlike Moses, the main recipient of teaching from God, and Aaron, the chief priest, she has no named role.

Today, women in many denominations of Judaism are able to attend institutions of higher learning to become equipped with the necessary skills to gain credentials to be called rabbi or cantor. What will they do with their newfound titles? A crop of new books and TV shows out this fall gives some answers.
RELATED: Jewish identity doesn’t need a disclaimer

Rabbi Léa Schmoll, the fictional subject of HBO’s new series “Reformed” (which is based on a book by Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur), is filled with doubts as she takes her first pulpit in her hometown of Strasbourg, France. The local Orthodox rabbi, Lea’s teacher and inspiration when she attended his classes as a child, visits at the behest of his congregants, but instead of discouraging her as they wish, he ends up telling her that she will be more valuable as a rabbi who has doubts than one with certainties: What she thinks of as a vulnerability, he says, can be a form of strength.

“We didn’t want the show to sound like Judaism has all the answers,” the producers of “Reformed” said in a recent interview.

Women rarely feel as if they have sufficient answers, social scientists say, an attribute that may keep them from seeking leadership roles. In her new memoir, “Heart of a Stranger,” Rabbi Angela Buchdahl shows how this works. Born in Korea, where her parents met, she eventually becomes the fourth generation of her family to attend the Reform congregation that was founded by her father’s ancestors. After college at Yale University, then cantorial school and rabbinical school, Buchdahl finds her way to her first congregation, in New York’s northern suburbs, before being invited to the staff at Manhattan’s august Central Synagogue, where she began in 2006.

As in “Reformed,” the most affecting parts of Buchdahl’s book have to do with her doubts about her lack of qualifications, starting with her Jewishness. A summer spent in Israel with roommates who are more strictly observant “pegged me in my own mind as a counterfeit Jew,” she writes. Buchdahl calls her Buddhist mother from Jerusalem “using up five expensive long distance minutes in unintelligible heaves of crying” to say: “I’m not sure I want to be a Jew anymore. I don’t have a Jewish name; I don’t have a Jewish face. No one would even notice or care; I could just stop being Jewish right now.” Her mother responds, “Is that really possible, Angela?”

Today she leads a synagogue with 7,000 members, a $30 million endowment and 100 employees, and as the book makes evident, she is a skilled interpreter of sacred texts. Her early discouragement, and her ability to be honest about it, speaks volumes about what it means to be inside (or outside) a community. It also says a lot about how porous Judaism’s borders have become since Buchdahl was young, even as there are still some who don’t consider her a rabbi. Buchdahl writes, “Feeling like a stranger might be the most Jewish thing about me.”

Doubts aren’t the only obstacle for women looking to lead. The day Buchdahl had to decide whether to apply for Central Synagogue’s senior rabbi position, which she has held since 2014, she was also slated to appear on a panel with Anne-Marie Slaughter, on work-life balance, when her daughter ended up in the emergency room. With the help of a nanny, Buchdahl was able to be in the hospital and speak at the event, but she writes about the tension involved. The lessons the rabbi recounts, such as the value of a sparring partner who is willing to argue “in service of something bigger than themselves: getting closer to the truth,” are ones worth learning. That they are taught from a personal stance with a full measure of humility and honesty makes the book so much more accessible.

Not all female rabbis come from the same mold. In her new book, “The Jewish Way to a Good Life: Find Happiness, Build Community, and Embrace Lovingkindness,” Rabbi Shira Stutman, a co-host of the podcast “Chutzpod!,” has many answers, most of them rooted in Jewish sources and traditions. But this guide for the Jewish-curious often suffers from advice that’s obvious (“community doesn’t happen to you, community is something that you build and tend to, or it stagnates, withers, and sometimes dies”) or downright unhelpful: “The best way to think about queerness and Judaism in interaction is not as a problem at all, but as a thrilling opportunity.” Tell that to the queer Yeshiva University students who have fought for years to have their club approved and even won a lawsuit, yet are still blocked by the administration.

What’s most useful is Stutman’s point that Judaism’s answers don’t come just from rules and observances but embedded practices that result in community to share Shabbat dinner with or to help one another mourn. “The best we have to offer when sitting with a mourning friend or family member is not platitudes but presence,” she writes.

One promise of female rabbis is that they can add to the male-centric tradition by reflecting women’s unique perspectives. Rabbi Wendy Zierler, in her new memoir, “Going Out With Knots: My Two Kaddish Years with Hebrew Poetry,” isn’t shy about this point. “The feminist scholarly enterprise to which I had devoted my career,” she writes, “thus entailed three crucial parts: critical readings of male-authored canonical texts to expose this bias; the recovery of alternative feminine literary ‘herstories’ or traditions; and, if extant traditions didn’t suffice, the creation of something new.”

Zierler analyzes the contributions of poets Lea Goldberg, Rachel Morpurgo, Ruhama Weiss and Rachel Bluwstein, examining how these creative voices find their voices to remake a tradition given to them and also withheld. Only a trained literary scholar — Zierler has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton — and possessor of a rabbi’s knowledge of the Bible, Talmud and later Jewish texts and the prayerbook could explicate these writers’ allusions and wordplay and apply it to her own life, which has been difficult in recent years: She lost her father in a tragic accident, then her mother to illness, and cared for her mother-in-law, a Holocaust survivor, through her dementia.

Zierler uses poetry, in the words of Hebrew poet Yehuda Amichai, like a serum that courses through the veins to effect a cure for the dark times. She also relies on her love for the Jewish tradition, and Jewish community. Friends ask why she continues to attend an Orthodox synagogue, despite being excluded from the quorum of 10 Jews required for certain prayers. “Though I wasn’t counted in the minyan in a ritual or halakhic/legal sense,” she writes, “if I didn’t make it to shul on a given morning, I would get texts and emails from regulars, both men and women, asking me if everything was okay. If that isn’t ‘counting’ what is?”

Zierler is heartened by Ruhama Weiss’ “Chapters of the Mothers,” a poem playing against the Jewish text called the “Chapters of the Fathers” which opens with Moses handing down the Torah to Joshua and continues by relating the line of authority of patriarchs and male sages. Weiss summons a line of Biblical heroines: “from Hagar I learned to submit and/ afterward, to see/ And to find strength to save the boy,” referring to Ishmael, the son of Abraham.

The poem ends with a reference to the “Book of the Upright,” also known as the Book of Jasher, an alternative telling of the Bible that, Zierler writes, questions “the identity and comprehensiveness of this masculine tradition and pointing to its need for correction and amplification.” Zierler adds that “it was incumbent upon us to compose alternative texts and interpretations to supplement, affirm, and liberate.”

This confidence — to compose alternative texts and interpretations and incorporate them into the masculine tradition — is a culmination of the years of leadership-without-portfolio. It is nice to have TV shows about female rabbis, but books like Buchdahl’s and Zierler’s comfort us that there is substance and teaching from female rabbis as leaders beyond the flimsy image on a screen, and challenge us to transform the Jewish tradition into one that is fully inclusive and respectful of the lived vision and values of half its adherents.

(Beth Kissileff is author of the novel “Questioning Return” and co-editor of “Bound in the Bond of Life: Pittsburgh Writers Reflect on the Tree of Life Tragedy.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)

Global Anglican ties are under stress. It's unclear if they're at the breaking point

(AP) — After decades of fierce controversies over sexuality and theology in the Anglican Communion, some leaders of a conservative coalition say it's time to make a final break from what has long been one of the world's largest Protestant church families.

Rodney Muhumuza and Peter Smith
November 19, 2025

After decades of fierce controversies over sexuality and theology in the Anglican Communion, some leaders of a conservative coalition say it’s time to make a final break from what has long been one of the world’s largest Protestant church families.

That would make a slow-growing Anglican schism complete — if it happens.

But how many church provinces go along with the rupture remains to be seen. Some of the communion’s largest and fastest-growing churches in Africa belong to the conservative group that announced the break — known as the Global Anglican Future Conference, or Gafcon. But several member churches have been silent on the plan, weeks after it was announced.

Gafcon’s announcement came shortly after the October appointment of Bishop Sarah Mullally as the first woman to be archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Communion’s symbolic spiritual leader. Many in England and other Western countries hailed this as a historic breaking of a stained-glass ceiling.

But leaders of Gafcon criticized the appointment, as did some other bishops. Some said only men should be bishops, but their bigger criticism was her support for some LGBTQ+-inclusive policies — the key fault line in the communion.

Within days of Mullally’s appointment, Gafcon issued another declaration. It completely rejected the Anglican Communion as it has been structured historically. That structure has included a set of governing and advisory bodies and recognition of the archbishop of Canterbury as a symbolic “first among equals” among leaders of self-governing national churches, known as provinces. Since provinces are self-governing, the archbishop’s authority is highly limited.

The ”future has arrived,” said Gafcon’s chairman, Archbishop Laurent Mbanda of Rwanda, in its October statement. “We declare that the Anglican Communion will be reordered.” His statement decried churches it said had violated a 1998 statement by the communion’s bishops, opposing same-sex unions and describing “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture.”

Gafcon proclaimed what it calls a restructured “Global Anglican Communion.” It would be overseen by a new council of top national bishops, or primates. Whoever is elected chairman would be “first among equals.”

Uncertainty as to how large a breakaway could be

The question remains is: How many Gafcon members are actually going along with this plan, and how many want to remain in the existing Anglican Communion as a loyal opposition?

Primates of Africa’s two largest national provinces, Nigeria and Uganda, have joined their Rwandan counterpart in endorsing the measure, according to Bishop Paul Donison, Gafcon’s general secretary. So have smaller churches ranging from Myanmar to the Americas.

Nigeria Archbishop Henry Ndukuba confirmed his church’s endorsement of Gafcon’s plan. He called Mullally’s stances on same-sex issues “devastating.”

“This election is a further confirmation that the global Anglican world could no longer accept the leadership of the Church of England and that of the Archbishop of Canterbury,” he said in a statement.

Donison said Gafcon’s statement was drafted at a meeting in Australia, which included several church leaders on Zoom, though several others did not participate. Gafcon’s statement said its bishops would “confer and celebrate” restructuring at their next major meeting, scheduled this March in Nigeria.

Among those signing on to the Gafcon statement is the conservative Anglican Church in North America, formed in a break from the more liberal U.S. and Canadian churches.

The Gafcon move will “mark a decisive moment in the life of the Anglican family,” said ACNA Archbishop Stephen Wood, in a statement issued shortly before he took a leave of absence amid allegations of sexual and other misconduct, which he denies.

The Anglican primate of Congo is committed to maintaining Anglican ties.

In a statement, Archbishop Georges Titre Ande decried liberal trends in some churches but added: “The Anglican Church of Congo has no intention to leave the Anglican Communion, rather to keep working … to reform, heal and revitalise the Anglican Communion without leaving it.”


Tensions have been worsening for many years

The communion consists of churches descended from the Church of England. Anglicanism, with its unique mix of Protestant theology and Catholic-like ritual and sacraments, spread worldwide via colonial and missionary activity. It is especially vibrant in Africa. The London-based communion estimates it has about 85 million members across 165 countries.

Simmering tensions in Anglicanism exploded after 2003, when the U.S. Episcopal Church ordained its first of several openly gay bishops. Conservatives formed Gafcon and other structures. Large provinces such as Uganda’s and Nigeria’s have largely stopped participating in traditional Anglican structures.

The Anglican Communion itself is weighing a proposed new structuring that would de-emphasize Canterbury and share leadership roles more widely.

The proposals “won’t solve all the differences in the Anglican Communion, but they do seek to provide a structure within which people of deeply different convictions can remain in good conscience within that Communion,” said Bishop Graham Tomlin, chair of the committee that drafted the proposals. The plan will be aired before an advisory council next year.

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe of the Episcopal Church said the latest Gafcon statement was “more of the same” from a subgroup that has largely disengaged from the Anglican Communion.

“There’s a pretty clear agenda here, which I don’t think has very much to do with the church,” he said. “I’m really interested in being in relationship with people who want to continue our relationships across the communion.”

Vocal unhappiness over a female leader

Even if the communion remains intact, its profound divisions surfaced with Mullally’s appointment.

Mullally has affirmed the Church of England’s current definition of church marriage as between a man and a woman, but she supported a plan for blessings of same-sex couples and has acknowledged “the harm that we have done” as a church to LGBTQ+ people.

Homosexuality remains taboo in many African countries, in some cases criminalized under colonial-era laws or newer legislation. Uganda enacted legislation in 2023 prescribing the death penalty for some homosexual offenses.

Stephen Kaziimba, Uganda’s archbishop, lamented Mullally’s “support and advocacy for unbiblical positions on sexuality.”

Her appointment widened “the tear in the fabric of the Anglican Communion,” Kaziimba added in a letter to Anglicans.

Bishop Lukas Katenda, leader of the conservative Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of Namibia, a Gafcon-aligned faction independent of the Church of England, dismissed Mullally’s appointment as “a joke.”

“She is not a person to look up to for evangelism, for mission, for proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for winning souls or to call people for repentance,” Katenda told The Namibian newspaper.

When the Anglican Diocese of Upper Shire in Malawi shared the Gafcon statement criticizing the appointment of Mullally on its Facebook page, it attracted approving comments from followers who said “Amen.” However, the diocese also reposted a statement from the general secretary of the Anglican Communion, urging it to stay together.

In Accra, Ghana, Patrick Okaijah-Bortier, parish priest of St. Andrew Anglican Church, said many clergy in his country were unhappy about Mullally, notably because of her support for same-sex blessings.

“It is worrying,” he said. “If she pushes this agenda, she may end up losing almost all of us.”

Another cleric in Accra, Georgina Naa Anyema Collison of the St. Joseph the Worker Anglican Church, said she supported Mullally’s appointment because “I’m a female” yet opposed her position on same-sex unions.

But in South Africa, where same-sex marriages are legal, Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of Cape Town, primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, offered “warm congratulations” to Mullally. In another statement, Makgoba’s office said he is focused on interfaith peacemaking efforts and “has neither the time nor any interest in engaging with these internal Anglican differences.”

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Contributors include Farai Mutsaka in Harare, Zimbabwe; Dyepkazah Shibayan in Abuja, Nigeria; and Edward Acquah in Accra, Ghana.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Pope tweaks a law allowing a woman to head the Vatican City State, months after a nun was appointed

ROME (AP) — Leo amended the 2023 law to remove a reference that had said the president of the Vatican City State administration must be a cardinal.

Nicole Winfield
November 24, 2025

ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV fixed a technical glitch on Friday in a Vatican law that became problematic after Pope Francis named the first-ever woman to head the Vatican City State administration.

Leo amended the 2023 law to remove a reference that had said the president of the Vatican City State administration must be a cardinal.

Francis in February appointed Sister Raffaella Petrini, a 56-year-old Italian nun, as president of the city state. The appointment was one of many Francis made during his 12-year papacy to elevate women to top decision-making jobs in the Vatican, and it marked the first time a woman had been named governor of the 44-hectare (110-acre) territory in the heart of Rome.

But the appointment immediately created technical and legal problems that hadn’t existed before because Petrini’s predecessors had all been priestly cardinals.

For example, Petrini wasn’t invited to deliver the economic status report of the Vatican City State to the closed-door meetings of cardinals in spring that preceded the May conclave that elected Leo.

Normally, the cardinal-president of the Vatican City State would have delivered the briefing. But those pre-conclave meetings, known as general congregations, are for cardinals only.

In changing the law Friday to allow a non-cardinal to be president of the Vatican administration, Leo suggested that Petrini’s appointment was not a one-off. He wrote that the governance of the territory was a form of service and responsibility that must characterize communion within the church hierarchy.

“This form of shared responsibility makes it appropriate to consolidate certain solutions that have been developed so far in response to governance needs that are proving increasingly complex and pressing,” Leo wrote.

Petrini’s office is responsible for the main revenue sources funding the Holy See coffers, including the Vatican Museums, but it also handles the infrastructure, telecommunications and healthcare for the city state. The Vatican City State commission she heads is responsible for approving laws governing the territory, and approving the annual budgets and accounts.


The Catholic Church reserves the priesthood for men. While women made strides in reaching top management jobs in the Vatican during Francis’ pontificate, there was no movement or indication that the all-male hierarchy would change rules barring women from ministerial ordination.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Flunking Sainthood

‘Secret Lives’ shows Mormon women working out the damage of purity culture in real time

(RNS) — 'Secret Lives' offers an absurdly one-sided picture of Mormonism. But it's also not fully wrong.

Promotional poster for "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives." 

(Image courtesy of Hulu)

Jana Riess
November 14, 2025

RNS

(RNS) — Season Three of Hulu’s hit series “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” dropped on Thursday (Nov. 13). Ten new episodes promise to update us on the latest scandals, catfights and shifting alliances among Utah’s notorious MomTok frenemies.

Let me say up front that I’m not a fan of “reality” TV, or what one of my friends aptly calls “fake-ality” TV. There’s a tedious and engineered sameness to these shows. “Secret Lives,” like similar shows, revolves around some type of manufactured conflict, usually low-stakes played as high stakes — for example, adults saying “OMG, she said that?! I am so not inviting her to my birthday party.” Then everyone rehashes the low-stakes conflict endlessly, in cloistered small-group gossip and in solo interviews in front of the camera, telling us again and again how they feel about it.

And yet, I can’t dismiss the show as entirely vacuous, and I can’t dismiss these women as not being real Mormons.

Yes, there’s a lot that is fake about the show and about them. For women who seem bent on asserting their individual uniqueness, they sure went all in on identical “Utah hair” styles. There’s surgical augmentation of certain body parts and the synthetic “sisterhood” they keep claiming to enjoy. They constantly speak about friendship even as they only appear to hug so they can stab one another in the back from closer proximity. Their relationships through MomTok, the nickname for their TikTok community, seem almost wholly transactional. The women use one another for clout, although they also worry aloud that other people are only interested in befriending or dating them to get more clout.

RELATED: Why are Mormon lifestyle influencers so popular?

But that doesn’t mean these characters aren’t raising vital questions about what constitutes a Mormon identity.

The first two seasons of “Secret Lives” showed some of the women working out their relationship to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in real time. The main characters fall on a spectrum where some are “all out” of the church and are very critical of it, a few are at the other extreme and still regularly attending church, and most are somewhere in the middle.

An important aspect of this identity negotiation has to do with sex. Beyond all the revealing clothing and made-for-media drama about who cheated on whom, there’s a good deal of hurt around sexuality.

I admit that the first time Mayci used the word “trauma” to refer to her picture-perfect life, I rolled my eyes. But I gave her the benefit of the doubt by reading some of her new memoir “Told You So,” which came out last month. It details a painful history of adolescent grooming and sexual assault, and the humiliation of having to confess what was mostly nonconsensual sexual activity to her bishop. It’s an important story.

Then, there’s Mikayla, who says in Season Two that she survived childhood sexual abuse that was dismissed or downplayed by her LDS mother. Mikayla left home at 15, became a teenage mom at 17 and now has four kids, despite only being in her mid-20s.

And let’s not forget Layla, who says she has never had an orgasm. Or at least, not until MomTok hired a sex educator to teach them all more about the female body and how it’s not only designed to give men pleasure.

Layla didn’t grow up LDS; she converted as a teenager, attracted to the religion’s seeming ability to deliver a happy nuclear family. She got married super young since early marriage seemed to be emphasized in her new Mormon world. But the church’s ideal of the happy family didn’t work out, and by her early 20s, she was a divorced and destitute single mom.

Some orthodox LDS church members will doubtless respond that these women made their own choices, citing agency and accountability and all that. But the common theme running through these stories is a feeling of powerlessness around their sexuality, and I do think some of that can be blamed on the church.

Promotional image for “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.” (Image courtesy of Hulu)

The church taught women their sexual “purity” was the most important thing about them, the single-most prized virtue they possessed. The church also taught them that sex outside of marriage was a sin second only to murder (cue Spencer W. Kimball here). And the church wasn’t always careful to distinguish between consensual, chosen sex and being the victim of rape or abuse. If virginity was the commodity that gave a young woman value, then she was damaged goods when it was gone, even if it was forcibly taken from her.

For the last five years, I’ve been part of a research project about who leaves Mormonism and why. In my interviews with women who have left — particularly younger women in their 20s, 30s and 40s — it’s become very clear to me that the damage inflicted by purity culture is real.

In a broader way, the church taught women that their primary role in life was to be a wife and mother. This creates conflict for some of the women in the show. Their generation of LDS women was told to get an education, but also that any career they might prepare for was strictly a “plan B” in case they couldn’t fulfill the ideal of being a stay-at-home mother.

RELATED: Mormon women are finally allowed to wear sleeveless tops. Here’s why some are grieving.

In the series, we see this tension play out in the story of Jen, who begins as the token, quiet young Mormon wife. Jen married very young, and her husband is portrayed as controlling. The show depicts him as attempting to isolate her from her female friends when they exert damaging peer pressure on Jen by frog-marching her against her will to the den of iniquity that is Chippendales. (Did I mention these women are not real friends to each other?)

Jen’s fellow MomTokers don’t think much of her husband. Jen, meanwhile, begins to assert her own opinions and make demands of him, something she feels empowered to do, in part because she has become the unexpected breadwinner in their marriage.

Jen could well be LDS church leaders’ worst nightmare. She’s the cautionary tale of what can happen when women don’t completely buy into the church’s preferred SAHM identity and the chronic financial dependence that goes with it. Lured by the validation and the paycheck they can receive in the working world, they stop playing the role of the deferential wife who just feels lucky to have a husband — any husband, even a crappy one. (And I’m not saying Jen’s man-child of a husband is crappy. Who really knows with fake-ality TV?)

But Jen is living a deeply familiar Mormon story. I know many women like her who postponed or derailed their careers in order to follow the church’s one true approved path for them. Some are happy they did, and others are not. All of them are wrestling with the messages about work and motherhood they absorbed growing up in the church.

Yet, the church claims it can’t see itself in any way in this series. A couple weeks before the first episode of “Secret Lives” debuted in September 2024, the church released an official statement that didn’t name the show but decried “stereotypes or gross misrepresentations that are in poor taste.” The statement further noted the church’s “regret that portrayals often rely on sensationalism and inaccuracies that do not fairly and fully reflect the lives of Church members or the sacred beliefs that they hold dear.”

I agree with some of that: “Secret Lives” offers an absurdly one-sided picture of Mormonism. These women are so materialistic and obsessed with parties and clothes that they don’t resemble any of the Mormon women I know. If the MomTok divas care about the wider world beyond their influencer bubble, we don’t see it onscreen. They mine human relationships for dramatic effect and size up other people based on what those people can do for them.

That self-centered worldview is very much not Mormon. The church has consistently preached a gospel of helping others and serving God.

But in terms of sexuality and gender roles, there’s a clear connective thread to what the church taught these women about their life purpose and their bodies. And it impacts what they are grappling with today.

Their struggles are often painful to watch. But I hold a grudging respect for several of these Mormon-ish women, and I wish them the best. Mostly, I think they would be better off if they stayed away from each other and found at least one actual, tried-and-true friend. Failing that, each could use a loyal Golden Retriever.

A Hidden, Deep Syrian Wound

Palestine, the Motherland, and the Legacy of Colonial Cartography

by Amel-Ba’al / November 20th, 2025

“Zionism as a reactionary ideology fitted exactly the ambitions of the British colonialism at that period and later on the American imperialism plans to the areas.”

“The Palestinian resistance movement is not a movement to liberate a geographical 26,000 square km; it is a historical movement which aims to liberate the Jews from zionism and the Arabs from reactionaries, and to establish the Socialist Democratic Palestine. The question of Palestine is the question of a clashing contradiction between the National Liberation movement of the Arabs, headed by the Palestinian national Liberation movement, and imperialism in this part of the world, headed by the zionist movement. And this is how it is a mistake to understand that Israel is just a home of Jews, because Israel is a base of imperialism.”

— Ghassan Kanafani

The common narrative of the “Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” while rich in detail and moral urgency, is built upon a fundamental geographical and historical misapprehension. The events of 1948, known to the Arabs as Al-Nakba (the Catastrophe), are almost universally presented as the tragedy of a distinct Palestinian people. This framing, however, obscures a deeper, more profound truth. A critical examination of history, geography, and imperial design reveals that Al-Nakba is not merely a Palestinian wound, but a Syrian one—the violent culmination of a century-long project to prevent the emergence of a unified Arab country in Bilad al-Sham. The struggle of the Arab natives of Palestine against settler-colonial zionism and its imperialist backers is not, in its essence, the “Question of Palestine,” but rather the enduring “Question of Syria.”

I. The Organic Motherland: Syria Before Colonial Dissection

To understand this is to recognize that the political consciousness of the region’s people preceded its colonial dissection by millennia. The modern assertion that there was no Palestinian state is a deliberate anachronism that erases a prior, more organic reality. For millennia, the territory known as Palestine was not a separate political entity but an integral part of Bilad al-Sham, or Greater Syria. This region, encompassing modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and historical Palestine, shared a common culture, economy, and social fabric.

This unity is not a modern nationalist fantasy but a historical fact attested to by the ancient world’s first historian. Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BCE, consistently refers to the entire coastline of the Levant as “Syria.” He makes a clear geographical distinction, noting that the people of the coast “are Syrians who dwell in the parts of Arabia lying along the sea.” This establishes that the inhabitants of this coast were identified as Syrians regardless of sub-regional names, anchoring them within the broader cultural and ethnic fabric of the region. Furthermore, he explicitly names the specific part of this Syrian coast that we call Palestine, not as a separate country, but as a region within it: “Thence they [the Persians] went on to invade Egypt; and when they were in Syria which is called Palestine.”

The cultural unity of the Syrian coast is clearly attested by Herodotus, who records shared practices that bound its peoples together. He observes that the Persians learned to sacrifice to the heavenly goddess from “the Assyrians and the Arabians,”and describes many shared practices, like circumcision, which “the Phenicians and the Syrians who dwell in Palestine confess themselves that they have learnt it from the Egyptians.” Here, he explicitly groups the Phoenicians with the “Syrians of Palestine,” presenting them as a collective entity. This confirms that the entire littoral was understood as a Syrian space, in Arabia, whose peoples shared a common cultural identity.

My own family history is a testament to the endurance of this organic reality into the modern era. My grandfather represented the city of Safad not at a “Palestinian” congress, but in the First Syrian National Congress in 1920. This body, which declared the independence of a united Syria with its capital in Damascus and explicitly included Palestine within its borders, represented the true will of the land. For men like my grandfather, to speak for Safad was to speak for Syria, continuing an unbroken historical consciousness that viewed Palestine and Syria as one and the same—a reality so ancient that it was already a long-established truth when Herodotus recorded it as history two and a half thousand years ago.

Tripoli’s Blood Unites Us.

II. Deconstructing the Fallacy: The Sicily Analogy

A common zionist talking point asserts that there was no sovereign Palestinian state prior to 1948, a statement deliberately used to bolster the lie of “a land without a people.” This argument commits a fundamental logical category error: it conflates the modern political concept of a nation-state with the ancient social reality of a people and their homeland. The absence of a centralized government in a Westphalian model does not mean the land was empty, any more than the absence of a “Sicilian state” meant Sicily was uninhabited. This argument is not just ahistorical; it is a logical absurdity that collapses under the slightest scrutiny. To expose its sophistry, one need only apply the same logic to a different context.

Imagine if the United States, in its 19th-century expansion, had not just conquered the West but specifically targeted the island of Sicily. To secure this strategic foothold in the Mediterranean, it encourages and facilitates the migration of a distinct religious group, say the Mormons, who were once persecuted within the U.S. but now act as a settler vanguard. They establish thriving settlements, citing a two-thousand-year-old religious text that they believe grants them a divine right to the island. The world would rightly view the resistance of the Sicilian people not as an isolated “Sicilian Question,” but as a struggle for Italian territorial integrity—an attack on Italy itself.

Now, imagine these American-backed settlers arguing, “There is no sovereign Sicilian state; therefore, Sicily is a land without a people, ripe for our taking.” This would be immediately recognized as nonsense. Sicily, while not an independent nation-state, is undeniably a foundational part of the Italian nation, with its people being an inseparable part of its social and cultural fabric. To frame the conflict as solely between the “Mormons and the Sicilians” would be to accept the colonial premise and erase both Italy and the role of American power from the map. The absurdity would be compounded if the conflict was then mislabeled a “clash between Mormons and Catholics,” thereby masking the core issues of land, sovereignty, and a state-sponsored colonial conquest.

This refined analogy precisely mirrors the deception at the heart of the colonial narrative on Palestine. It captures the dynamic of a great power using a settler project to achieve its strategic aims. To claim there was no Palestinian state is as irrelevant as claiming there was no Sicilian state. Palestine was not an island in the Mediterranean—it was an integral part of Syria. Its people were Syrians. The attempt to retroactively justify conquest by applying a modern political standard to an ancient land is not a historical argument; it is the propaganda of dispossession.

III. The Imperial Genesis: From Napoleon to Sykes-Picot

The “Syria Question” for the British Empire truly began not with the Balfour Declaration, but with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt and Palestine in 1798. This was a direct strategic thrust aimed at severing Britain’s route to its most prized possession: India. Although Napoleon was defeated, the shockwave he sent through the British Admiralty never faded. From that moment, controlling the land bridge of Bilad al-Sham—particularly the corridor of Palestine—became a paramount imperial imperative for London. Any potential threat to that route, whether from a resurgent France, a weakening Ottoman Empire, or later, a unified Arab state, had to be preemptively neutralized.

This long-standing strategic anxiety culminated in the ultimate act of colonial cartography: the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. This secret pact between Britain and France did not simply redraw borders; it surgically dismembered the body of Bilad al-Sham, deliberately fracturing a unified cultural and economic sphere into the artificial, competing mandates of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. The creation of “Palestine” as a separate British Mandate was not an accident of history; it was a deliberate strategy to isolate and control the most geostrategically sensitive portion of the Syrian homeland.

IV. The First Arab Threat and the Zionist “Solution”

The first major test of this new colonial order came from Muhammad Ali Pasha of Egypt and his son Ibrahim Pasha, who in the 1830s swept through Bilad al-Sham, threatening to create a powerful, modernizing Arab state that could challenge both the Ottomans and European influence. British policy reacted with alarm. As the historian George Antonius noted, Britain’s resistance to this nascent Arab state was fundamental. This is chillingly confirmed by British Foreign Minister Lord Palmerston, who wrote in 1833:

“The real goal of Muhammad Ali is to establish an Arab kingdom that includes all the countries that speak Arabic… Moreover, we see no reason that justifies replacing Turkey with an Arab king in control of the route to India.”

It was in this context—the need to secure the route to India by ensuring a fragmented and controlled Syria—that British colonial strategists began to see a “zionist” solution decades before the Austrian Theodor Herzl. In September 1840, the Earl of Shaftesbury, a key influencer of British policy, explicitly proposed the establishment of a British colony in Syria and argued for the settlement of Jews in Palestine. He wrote that the region needed capital and labor, and that the “Hebrews were anticipating a return to Syria.” He concluded that employing the Jews was the “cheapest and most guaranteed method” to develop and control this sparsely populated, strategic land bridge.

A quarter-century later, in 1856, Shaftesbury was even more explicit, asking: Does Britain not have an interest in this? He answered:

“It would be a blow to England if any of its rivals were to seize Syria. Its empire… would be cut in two. England must preserve Syria for itself… [and] should foster the nationalism of the Jews.”

As Nahum Sokolow, one of the founders of zionism, later noted, the British strategic mind had already, by the mid-19th century, linked the “future of Palestine” directly to the security of the Empire. British colonialism had become functionally zionist before the European political zionist movement itself was formally born.

V. The Strategy of Perpetual Fragmentation: From Pipelines to Proxy Wars

The colonial dismemberment of Bilad al-Sham did not conclude with the Sykes-Picot Agreement or even the Nakba of 1948; it evolved into a perpetual strategy to ensure the region’s permanent weakness and subservience. This policy of intentional fragmentation, which relies on and inflames sectarian, ethnic, and regional divisions, has been a consistent weapon in the imperial arsenal to preempt the re-emergence of a unified, independent Arab power. The motivation for this is twofold: a long-standing geopolitical imperative and a more recent, critical struggle over energy dominance.

The visionary Palestinian writer and revolutionary Ghassan Kanafani, in his study The Arab Cause During the Era of the United Arab Republic, identified the internal dimension of this strategy with chilling precision. He argued that colonialism and its zionist spearhead found natural allies in the region’s internal divisions:

“There is no doubt that the reactionary, the opportunist, the regionalist, and the sectarian… meet in their goals with the goals of Israel and colonialism, whether they intended that or not… In fact, the reliance of colonialism and Israel on this trio is almost complete.”

As definitive proof, Kanafani cited a declassified Israeli plan from 1957, which laid out a blueprint for the systematic destruction of Arab unity. The plan called for rapid measures to establish a Druze state, a Shiite state in Lebanon, a Maronite state, an Alawite state in Syria, a Kurdish state in Iraq, and a region for the Copts. This document was not merely speculative; it was a reflection of a core strategic understanding that the survival of the colonial implant depended on ensuring the motherland remained divided. As Kanafani noted, this plan “resulted from a feeling that there are tendencies in the indicated regions for secession,” and its purpose was to exploit those tendencies to “establish any defeatist ability in the Arab homeland.”

This century-old strategy of balkanization was violently re-energized in the 21st century, driven by a new and critical geopolitical prize: control over energy corridors. As analyses have revealed, the struggle in Syria is the latest episode in a “pipeline war” whose roots stretch back to the mid-20th century. This conflict reached a critical juncture in 2009, when Qatar proposed a massive pipeline project that would run from its North Field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria, to Turkey, with the aim of supplying European markets. This Qatari pipeline, backed by the United States, was in direct competition with a rival Iranian proposal that would run from Iran through Iraq and Syria. Syria’s refusal in 2011 to agree to the Qatari pipeline, in part to protect the strategic interests of its ally Russia, the dominant gas supplier to Europe, was the decisive geopolitical event that ignited the modern phase of this conflict.

This economic rejection coincided with the U.S. policy, revealed by WikiLeaks, of aggressively pursuing “regime change” in Syria. The subsequent war, fueled by foreign powers, cannot be disconnected from this struggle over which global powers would control the energy future of Europe and isolate Iran. The pipeline competition provided a powerful economic and strategic motive for certain external actors to actively pursue the fragmentation of Syria, using the very sectarian and regionalist playbook outlined in the 1957 Israeli document. The goal was to either install a compliant government in Damascus or, failing that, to balkanize the country into weaker, controllable statelets, thereby securing the transit route and dealing a blow to their rivals.

Thus, the ongoing tragedy in Syria is not a separate “conflict,” nor did it spring from internal strife. It is the continuation of the same war declared on Bilad al-Sham over a century and a half ago. The support for separatist militias, the manipulation of opposition groups by imperialist and foreign intelligence agencies, the fueling of sectarian strife, and the economic siege are all modern tools to achieve an ancient European colonial goal, now supercharged by the geopolitics of energy: to ensure that the Syrian wound never heals, that the motherland never reunifies, and that the Question of Syria remains unanswered, leaving its land and resources open to external domination.

The Unanswered Question of Syria

To understand Al-Nakba as a Syrian wound is to restore the struggle to its proper scale and historical genesis. It moves the discussion beyond the cramped confines of the failed paradigm of the “two-state solution,” revealing the struggle as what it has always been: the central battle in the long war against the imperial division of the Eastern Mediterranean—a division initiated to secure the route to India; cemented by Sykes-Picot; and consummated by the shameful Balfour Declaration. The “Question of Syria” is the question of a land struggling for reunification and liberation from this imperial legacy. The struggle in Palestine is not a local border dispute; it is the fight for the integrity of the motherland. Until this foundational reality is acknowledged, any analysis of the struggle will remain incomplete, treating the symptoms while ignoring the amputation that afflicts the entire body of Bilad al-Sham.

• This essay relies significantly on historical documents, quotes and analysis compiled by Emile Touma in his seminal Arabic-language work, The Roots of the Palestinian Cause.

Amel-Ba’al, a symbolic name in keeping with a Palestinian tradition, is a Palestinian refugee located on the unceded land known as British Columbia. Read other articles by Amel-Ba’al, or visit Amel-Ba’al's website.

The Erie Canal: How a ‘big ditch’ transformed America’s economy, culture and even religion

HAND DUG BY IRISH NAVVIES

(The Conversation) — Two hundred years ago, the Erie Canal was often derided as a ‘folly.’ Yet the waterway went on to transform the American frontier.

The Erie Canal, seen here in Pittsford, N.Y., opened up western regions to trade, immigration and social change. (Andre Carrotflower via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA)

Matthew Smith
October 22, 2025

(The Conversation) — Two hundred years ago, on Oct. 26, 1825, New York Gov. DeWitt Clinton boarded a canal boat by the shores of Lake Erie. Amid boisterous festivities, his vessel, the Seneca Chief, embarked from Buffalo, the westernmost port of his brand-new Erie Canal.

Clinton and his flotilla made their way east to the canal’s terminus in Albany, then down the Hudson River to New York City. This maiden voyage culminated on Nov. 4 with a ceremonial disgorging of barrels full of Lake Erie water into the brine of the Atlantic: pure political theater he called “the Wedding of the Waters.”

DeWitt Clinton pouring water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic, engraved by Philip Meeder.
The New York Public Library via Wikimedia Commons



The Erie Canal, whose bicentennial is being celebrated all month, is an engineering marvel – a National Historic Monument enshrined in folk song. Such was its legacy that as a young politician, Abraham Lincoln dreamed of becoming “the DeWitt Clinton of Illinois.”

As a historian of the 19th-century frontier, I’m fascinated by how civil engineering shaped America – especially given the country’s struggles to fix its aging infrastructure today. The opening of the Erie Canal reached beyond Clinton’s Empire State, cementing the Midwest into the prosperity of the growing nation. This human-made waterway transformed America’s economy and immigration while helping fuel a passionate religious revival.

But like most big achievements, getting there wasn’t easy. The nation’s first “superhighway” was almost dead on arrival.
Clinton’s folly

The idea of connecting New York City to the Great Lakes originated in the late 18th century. Yet when Clinton pushed to build a canal, the plan was controversial.

The governor and his supporters secured funding through Congress in 1817, but President James Madison vetoed the bill, considering federal support for a state project unconstitutional. New York turned to state bonds to finance the project, which Madison’s ally Thomas Jefferson had derided as “madness.”

Some considered “Clinton’s big ditch” blasphemy. “If the Lord had intended there should be internal waterways,” argued Quaker minister Elias Hicks, “he would have placed them there.”


Construction began on July 4, 1817. Completed eight years later, the canal stretched some 363 miles (584 kilometers), with 18 aqueducts and 83 locks to compensate for elevation changes en route. All this was built with only basic tools, pack animals and human muscle – the latter supplied by some 9,000 laborers, roughly one-quarter of whom were recent immigrants from Ireland.

An 1832 lithograph by David H. Burr shows elevation changes along the Erie Canal.
David Rumsey Map Collection via Wikimedia Commons
Boomtowns

Despite its naysayers, the Erie Canal paid off – literally. Within a few years, shipping rates from Lake Erie to New York City fell from US$100 per ton to under $9. Annual freight on the canal eclipsed trade along the Mississippi River within a few decades, amounting to $200 million – which would be more than $8 billion today.

Commerce drove industry and immigration, enriching the canal towns of New York – transforming villages like Syracuse and Utica into cities. From 1825-1835, Rochester was the fastest-growing urban center in America.

By the 1830s, politicians had stopped ridiculing America’s growing canal system. It was making too much money. The hefty $7 million investment in building the Erie Canal had been fully recouped in toll fees alone.

Religious revival

Nor was its legacy simply economic. Like many Americans during the Industrial Revolution, New Yorkers struggled to find stability, purpose and community. The Erie Canal channeled new ideas and religious movements, including the Second Great Awakening: a nationwide movement of Christian evangelism and social reform, partly in reaction to the upheavals of a changing economy.

Though the movement began at the turn of the century, it flourished in the hinterlands along the Erie Canal, which became known as the “Burned-Over District.” Revivalists like Charles Grandison Finney – America’s most famous preacher at the time – found a lively reception along this “psychic highway,” as one author later dubbed upstate New York.

Some denominations, like the Methodists, grew dramatically. But the “Burned-Over District” also gave birth to new churches after the canal’s creation. Joseph Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often known as Mormons, in Fayette, New York, in 1830. The teachings of William Miller, who lived near the Vermont border, spread west along the canal route – the roots of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

A camp revival meeting of the Methodists , circa 1829.
Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

Door to the West

As Clinton predicted, the Erie Canal was “a bond of union between the Atlantic and Western States,” uniting upstate New York and the agrarian frontier of the Midwest to the urban markets of the Eastern seaboard.

In the mid-1820s, Ohio Gov. Ethan Allen Brown praised America’s canals “as veins and arteries to the body politic” and commissioned two canals of his own: one to link the Ohio River to the Erie Canal, completed in 1832; and another to link the Miami River, completed in 1845. These canals in turn connected to numerous smaller waterways, creating an extensive network of trade and transportation.

Like New York, Ohio had its canal towns, including Middletown: the birthplace of Vice President JD Vance and a city emblematic of America’s shifting industrial fortunes.

While America’s canal boom brought prosperity, this wealth came at a cost to many Indigenous communities – a cost that is only slowly being acknowledged. The Haudenosaunee, often known by the name “Iroquois,” especially paid the price for the Erie Canal. The confederacy of tribes was pressured into ceding lands to the state of New York, and further displaced by ensuing frontier settlement.

Past and future

As the U.S. nears its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, the official website of this commemoration urges Americans “to pause and reflect on our nation’s past … and look ahead toward the future we want to create for the next generation and beyond.”

As the recent federal government shutdown suggests, however, the nation’s political system is struggling.

Overcoming gridlock demands bipartisan consensus on basic concerns. Technology changes, but the demands of infrastructure – from rebuilding roads and bridges to expanding broadband and sustainable energy networks – and the will needed to address them, persist. As the Erie Canal reminds us, American democracy has always been built upon concrete foundations.

(Matthew Smith, Visiting Assistant Professor of History, Miami University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)


The Conversation religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The Conversation is solely responsible for this content.

Donald Trump just suggested that hate is more powerful than love

A supporter of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump rallies outside an early polling precinct as voters cast their ballots in local, state, and national elections, in Clearwater, Florida, U.S., November 3, 2024. REUTERS/Octavio Jones

John Stoehr

October 19, 2025  

ALTERNET

As we look forward to seeing the effect of the “No Kings” protests, I think it’s important to bring forward the theological nature of what millions of Americans demonstrated against.

Donald Trump not only believes that his rule is absolute and that his word is law. He believes that he’s infallible – that he can do no wrong. To many in magaworld, he’s less president than the right hand of God.

George Orwell once said that since no one is infallible, in practice, it’s frequently necessary for totalitarian rulers “to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.” In “The Prevention of Literature,” published in 1946, Orwell said, “this kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment.”

One such opinion is whether your faith is real and genuine. If it lines up with Trump’s views, it is. If it doesn’t, it isn’t. Religious Americans are protesting the treatment of immigrants by ICE. (A well-known example is Pastor David Black of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago being shot in the head with pepper balls and sprayed in the face with tear gas for leading a prayer outside an ICE facility.) But for maga, you can’t be religious if you disagree with God’s right hand. (The Department of Homeland Security said Pastor Black was a “pastor.”)

The potential is for some religions to get protection while others get punishment. As Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons put it in a recent column for MSNBC: “That dynamic is antithetical to religious freedom.”

Then there’s Donald Trump’s opinion of what counts in religion.

At last month’s memorial to demagogue Charlie Kirk, Trump said Kirk “was a missionary with a noble spirit and a great, great purpose. He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them.” In this, the president was giving voice to Christian tradition of loving thy enemy.

But then:

“That's where I disagreed with Charlie,” Trump said. “I hate my opponent, and I don't want the best for them. … I can't stand my opponent.”

In his opinion of the infallible ruler, love doesn’t count in religion.

Hate, however, is the One True Faith.

According to historian Claire Bond Potter, Trump’s “unprecedented statement” is a command that fits “the definition of truthful hyperbole: it asks an audience inspired by Charlie Kirk’s slick combination of bigotry, reason, and xenophobic patriotism to think big.”

Claire concluded:

“And the big thought from Donald Trump is this: You may be Christian — but don’t be a sucker. Hate is more powerful than love. Look at me — why, hatred made me president. Think what it could do for you.”

Claire is the author of Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy. In this wide-ranging interview below, we discuss the role of an “angry God” in Christian nationalism, dangers to religious minorities, and what liberal and moderate Christians are doing to fight back against the infallible ruler’s belief that hate is more powerful than love.

Hate is more powerful than love. That's what Donald Trump suggested at the Charlie Kirk memorial, where the audience was said to be filled with the followers of Jesus Christ. You noted the connection in one of your latest. Walk me through that please.

One of the things we know about social media is that negative emotions – anger, hatred, resentment – are animating for a mass audience. The maga movement has energized a populist audience with negativity. It's what is behind not just the policies they choose, but the reasoning behind those choices.

Let's take immigration as an example. Historically – and you can go back to the 19th century anti-Chinese movements – immigration has been a vehicle for white people, who believe they already "own" the United States and are entitled to its benefits, to express their resentment of institutions: corporations and the government are prominent.

Where religion enters the picture is the claim on the sacred as a litmus test as to who is entitled to the benefits of the nation and who isn't. Chinese, for example, were characterized as "godless," and allowed anti-immigrant organizers to ascribe a range of other characteristics to them following from that godlessness: sexual perversion, disease, dishonesty. Those are also core animating features of antisemitism.

Similarly, maga’s anti-trans logic ascribes disease (mental illness), perversion (wanting to harm women) and dishonesty (pretending to be something you are not) to rejecting God's plan for your body and gender.

So religion, in this case, could point a political leader in two directions – the Christ/God of love, in which we embrace those who are different and even frightening; and the God of righteous retribution, who punishes those that reject His will and rewards the faithful.

It is that second God that animated the Conquest, the earliest stages of European colonialism, slavery and American Manifest Destiny – and it is no accident that it is these histories, with the exception of slavery, that MAGA embraces. And this God requires darkness and violence to animate followers to seek a world that is purged of their enemies.

It seems to me that religious minorities who are aligned with the maga movement are putting themselves in danger, as the view of God's plan that you describe here will eventually come for them. I'm thinking specifically of the recent Mormon church massacre. I believe the shooter was a Christian nationalist in all but name. We know he saw Mormons as "the antichrist." Thoughts on that?

I would be careful with the thought that the Church of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) is maga-aligned. Some Mormons are and some aren't. Fundamentalist Mormons (who have been excommunicated from the mainstream church) don't participate in politics at all. According to the Deseret News, about 64 percent of Mormons voted for Trump and 32 percent for Harris. But character has always been an issue for Mormons. Younger Mormons are less likely to even be Republican.

But back to violence: The LDS Church has always been a target for violence and conspiracy-mongers since it was founded in 1830 during the Second Great Awakening as a charismatic religion. One piece of this is that it essentially reinterpreted the scripture on the basis of revelation – but unlike Baptists, for example, those revelations keep arriving. One of them, quite recently, overturned the church's founding belief that people of color were less favored by God.

But the second reason that Mormons were targeted for violence was the principle of plural marriage, or polygamy, the practice of which coincided with the increasing moral authority of mainstream Protestant women over questions that were specifically sexually: Black women abused by southern white men who "owned" them, and anti-prostitution campaigns in urban areas, and polygamy was framed as a way of enslaving with women, specifically.

Which leads us to the third reason: secrecy. The LDS Church is governed by a concentric series of male leaders, and as you move to the center of that – the Temple in Salt Lake City – there is almost absolute secrecy about the rituals, practices and decisions that occur within. I mean, this is part of what powers anti-Catholic animus too, except that you can walk into any Catholic Church in the United States and see what is going on. That is less true of the LDS Church.

So anti-Mormon violence is as American as apple pie – and Christian nationalists who are animated by conspiracy theories, paranoia and a belief in opaque power systems are going to be drawn to it.

It's probably also worth saying the LDS Church has its own history of violence, as it established itself in the Utah territory. Church fathers punished dissent in their ranks, and were also murderous towards Native American inhabitants. Some of that survives in the illegal fundamentalist communities. But I actually think that the increasing maga turn towards the use of state violence in particular is likely to be making Mormons more and more uncomfortable with Trump.

The Mormons may be unique in that they provide critics and enemies many ways to demonize them, but all religious minorities and sects can be demonized if the means and motive are there.

Which brings me to suggest that moderate and liberal Christians are allowing Christian nationalists to speak for them. They need to speak out before the president prevents them from speaking out. Are there moments in history in which such Christians did that?

Moderate and liberal Christians are speaking out. A group of pastors who were shot with pepper balls outside an ICE facility near Chicago filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the Trump administration.

You could go back to the 15th century and Bartolomé de las Casas's critique of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, a project driven in large part by religion – the conversion of indigenous people and the acquisition of gold to defend the faith against Protestantism in Europe.

But in the United States, religious people of all faiths animated the fight against Black slavery, resistance to war in the 20th century, and the fight for Black civil rights - -and in each case, there were religious voices that supported the projects.

One good example are Quakers, a religious minority that was persecuted in the early colonial period in New England; then, tied itself to slavery; then became the leading voice opposing slavery; and in each war, Quakers have courageously stood up against violence.

But I would disagree that Christian nationalists are, in any sense, speaking for Christians. We have seen a number of prominent Southern Baptist women, most recently Jen Hatmaker, breaking with the Southern Baptist Convention over its alliance with maga. What Christian nationalists have is the political megaphone.

The Politics Of Hate – OpEd



October 19, 2025 
By Graham Peebles


The themes and tropes of fascism — crude but familiar — are exploding across the US, UK, and Europe, as far-right parties gather support from disenchanted and marginalised communities.

Violent and divisive, socially poisonous and environmentally destructive, they echo movements that emerged in Europe between the First and Second World Wars — destructive forces that fundamentally reshaped the continent’s political landscape.

They pose a grave threat to liberty, freedom, and justice, and are symptomatic of our fractured times — of a world divided between the many who long for change and the reactionary forces that violently resist it.

At the core of such movements lie authoritarianism, centralised control, and intolerance — it is the politics of hate and division. The nation and its past are glorified; racism is encouraged — overtly and covertly — while disgust and fear of immigrants are fostered; minorities and LGBTQ+ people are persecuted.

The methodology is plain: emotionally charged disinformation, the erosion of fact, and the systematic dismantling of independent institutions — courts, media, universities, and civil society. Human rights are eroded, ignored, and trampled upon; the use of state violence is normalised — from Mussolini’s Blackshirts and Hitler’s Brownshirts to Trump’s deployment of ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and the National Guard.

At the apex of such extreme movements lies the cult of personality: the leader is exalted — by himself principally, and by his followers — portrayed as the one and only saviour of the nation, a figure concerned for ‘the people’, to be loved and obeyed, yet ultimately serving the interests of the ruling elite and corporate power.

Fascism and the far right represent a moral and political darkness; they flourish amid economic suffering, social deprivation, and the erosion of public services. Collective anger and fear follow, creating fertile ground for exploitation; ‘the Other’ becomes the convenient scapegoat, the imagined source of all problems.

As Hannah Arendt observed in The Origins of Totalitarianism, totalitarian movements “make use of the misery and instability of the mass of people and of their atomization into isolated individuals; they appeal to feelings of fear, hatred, and revenge, and they promise a world that is simple, unified, and comprehensible.”
Tactics of Control

This global movement of division is powerfully embodied in the United States under President Trump: authoritarianism is becoming normalized, freedoms of expression, the press, and assembly are under attack, as is freedom within educational institutions, including libraries. Control of information — including ‘book burning’ — is a classic fascist tactic (employed, for example, by the Nazis, Franco in Spain, and Mussolini in Italy). And since 2021, around 4,000 titles addressing race, gender, and sexuality have been removed from US schools and public libraries.

At the same time, the judiciary is coerced, dissenting voices are hunted in the courts, and immigrants are illegally arrested, detained, and in many cases deported by ICE. With an annual budget larger than the total military expenditure of virtually every other country, this violent paramilitary force operates with total impunity.

Across Europe and the UK, similar patterns are emerging. Far-right parties and politicians are exploiting nationalism and feeding nostalgia for an imagined past. Xenophobia and division are deliberately stoked, instilling fear among minority communities, particularly asylum seekers and refugees.

Right-wing politicians in the UK have consistently portrayed migration as a national crisis and the cause of social ills. The Labour government, seemingly devoid of socialist principles, has echoed some of this rhetoric, albeit in a watered-down form. Anti-immigrant discourse has permeated the mainstream; racism, masquerading as patriotism, has been legitimised, and the national flag weaponised.

In France, Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Germany, far-right parties—once considered fringe groups with toxic ideas—have become mainstream political forces. Their approach is consistent and predictable: demonise migrants, trample on human rights, disregard minorities, and deny the environmental crisis.

These strategies of control, fear, and misinformation form a transnational pattern, with far-right voices increasingly coordinating across borders and mimicking one another. A notable example is Elon Musk, whose public support for far-right figures and parties in Germany, Hungary, and the UK has amplified extremist narratives and fueled political unrest.

Racism lies at the core of all far-right and fascist groups, deliberately used to fuel xenophobia and social division. Amplified by media and absorbed by fearful or frustrated populations, it becomes both acceptable and legitimised, creating conditions in which discrimination, harassment, and violence against minority communities can occur.
Progress vs Reaction

Extremism is the sign of a civilisation in decay — the death spasm of a frightened, broken order. It emerges when people are consumed by anger and fear, much of it legitimate, born of social deprivation and injustice.

Decades of colonial neoliberalism have brought us here: to a world where everything and everyone is commodified, every space seen as a marketplace, and the interests of capital — not people or the planet — are paramount. In such a hollow, reductive order, the good — social justice, compassion, freedom — is trampled on, division encouraged, and conflict stoked.

The struggle of our time is not a simplistic fight between left and right, but between evolution and regression; between the forces of progress and reaction — or, of light and darkness.

Fascism and all forms of far-right extremism must be called out for what they are — manifestations of evil — look no further than the Israel killing machine — and resisted. Resisted not just politically, but morally and spiritually, for this global crisis is above all a spiritual crisis, rooted in who we are, the values we hold, and the kind of world we want to live in.

The antidote and the seed of hope in this time of tremendous uncertainty lies in unity, social justice, and freedom. In demonstrations of tolerance in the face of bigotry, the cultivation of cooperation, and the building of solidarity where there is division. Against these Principles of Goodness, hate and division cannot stand.


Graham Peebles
Graham Peebles is an independent writer and charity worker. He set up The Create Trust in 2005 and has run education projects in India, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia where he lived for two years working with acutely disadvantaged children and conducting teacher training programmes. Website: https://grahampeebles.org/