The growing gender divide on social issues is becoming a chasm The post Boys Line Up on the Right, Girls on the Left first appeared on ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera.| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
Solace comes from strange places. In the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, I found mine in a once-famous novelist who sold millions of books in the 1960s but is largely forgotten today, a hyper-Zionist whose romantic views of Israel bear little resemblance to the grim realities of today: Leon Uris.| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
In a new book, Cameron Awkward-Rich takes inspiration from pioneering, gender-complicated, Black Episcopal priest Pauli Murray The post Ahead of Their Time first appeared on ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera.| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
Five parents discuss Ilana Kurshan’s memoir about reading to her children The post Between the Covers first appeared on ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera.| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
Adam Valen Levinson yearned to learn Arabic. He did and wrote about it in The Abu Dhabi Bar Mitzvah: Fear and Love in the Modern Middle East. His publisher, W.W. Norton, successfully placed an excerpt in Literary Hub, the website widely known as LitHub. The excerpt ran on Dec. 7, 2017. It begins with Levinson—who| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
Only a small sliver of the students who attend the University of Austin (henceforth UATX) already care about writing. True in any school, perhaps, but in other schools, there are many students interested in writing-adjacent things: other arts, like dance, or critical disciplines engaged with art, such as art history. UATX disproportionately draws young people| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
Yoram Hazony, the founder of National Conservatism, sees the world as a battlefield of ideas. Is it a battle he's already won? The post The Mind of MAGA first appeared on ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera.| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
After losing my parents, I felt I had lost myself. Could an ancient trail following in the footsteps of pilgrims, martyrs, and saints, help me find my way? The post Seeing through Fog first appeared on ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera.| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
In most job interviews, asking candidates’ wives if they will prioritize their husband’s career, contribute unpaid labor to the organization, and have children would be downright absurd, but for some evangelical churches, it’s the norm. Baylor University historian Beth Allison Barr is a pastor’s wife whose latest book, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife (Brazos, 2025), unpacks| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
A conversation with Julius Krein The post On the Use and Abuse of Christianity for Life first appeared on ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera.| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
The most successful social movements sustain themselves in part because they’re fun. The activist push in the LGBTQIA+ community that began with the Stonewall riots in 1969 and proceeded through the AIDS epidemic and the legalization of same-sex marriage went hand in hand with an outpouring of culture. William S. Burroughs novels and Stone Butch| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
In the wake of George Washington’s death, Congress struggled not over whether to honor him but how. An excerpt from a new book shows how the answer shaped the future of the country. The post Where to Bury the Father first appeared on ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera.| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
On July 8, 2025, Alberto Rojas, the Bishop of San Bernardino, offered a dispensation to faithful in his diocese from the holy Catholic obligation of attending Mass. This dispensation extends to those who have genuine fear of immigration enforcement actions. This document is the first dispensation for reasons of immigration enforcement in U.S. history. The| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
I grew up in suburban Philadelphia, within walking distance of two synagogues, one Reform and the other (my family’s) Conservative, housed in a concrete and glass temple that was one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s final projects. Normative Judaism had, at best, an anodyne effect on this bookish boy in the late 1950s. A four-hour service| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
Myths are born, they serve a purpose, and they die. When we reside inside them, we swear by them, we invest in them, we think they precede us, and we think they will survive us. They define us, and they alienate us. Myths provide vehicles of meaning, sources of hope, and ways to make sense| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
What I call the cowboy apocalypse is a fictional trope, seen in movies, video games, and other media. It is drawn from a dark fantasy of the American frontier blended with a desire for return to that frontier environment after an apocalyptic transformation. In the cowboy apocalypse, America’s frontier past is idealized, depicting white gun-toting| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
The dizzying Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) news cycle may seem to many like the distant past, but the slimming down of the federal government continues. Two separate initiatives—an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education, and the Defense Department cancelling millions of dollars in contracts—are still causing aftershocks across the country, even—or perhaps| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
Neil Rudenstine was born in 1935 and grew up in Danbury, Connecticut. His father was a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant who became a prison guard; his mother was the daughter of Italian immigrants. He attended Princeton, became a scholar of Renaissance literature, and served as president of Harvard University from 1991 to 2001. His new book,| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
Jeffrey Kripal is one of our most fascinating scholars of religious studies. For thirty years, he has combined rigorous, even obsessive, readings of religious texts with expansive philosophical and theoretical capacity; he works both small and big. But he has also courted controversy. In the first phase of his career, Kripal’s work on eroticism and| ARC: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera
