Politics and History

John Onwuchekwa

Five years after opening its doors, the pastor of Atlanta’s Cornerstone Church, Reverend John Onwuchekwa, led the entire congregation of more than 400 people to officially leave the Southern Baptist Convention. His reason for leaving was tied to their long history of oppression and racism toward Black people.

hands raised in worship

Beth Allison Barr is a Southern Baptist from Texas who was raised evangelical, married a pastor and had two children. She’s also a feminist professor of medieval history at Baylor University, and the author of a book that isn’t winning her many friends in the evangelical world: “The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth.”

God and country

Donald Trump won 84% of the white evangelical vote in 2020. To shore up that base, he’s now moving beyond conservative Christian values, to Christian nationalism. That nationalism, journalist Jeff Sharlet argues, represents a real and present threat of "simmering violence."

God and country

In 2020, Donald Trump won 84 percent of the white evangelical vote. We talk with some Southern Baptists today, whose views may surprise you.

a woman looking in a mirror

When you look online, you might think the most important pursuit in life is self-creation — optimizing, curating, branding yourself. Social critic Tara Isabella Burton says our current obsession with personal identity has deeply religious roots, which then got co-opted by advertisers and the self-help movement.

Just over 200 years ago, a group of renegade German writers and philosophers came together in a small town and forever changed who we think we are. Andrea Wulf tells this story in her book “Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self.” 

Google maps versus paper maps

The debate among cartographers today is about which is better — a paper map, or a digital one? Cartographer Mamata Akella argues that there are merits and downsides to both.

Samoan journalist Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson was born and raised on the island of Savai'i. Rising sea levels washed away the small barrier islands that protected her home, eventually, forcing people to move — just one example of climate change disappearing islands in the South Pacific.

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