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An online magazine of religion, culture, and politics

An online magazine of religion, culture, and politics

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confessions

exegesis

crucifiction

hunger

kamasutra

KtB blog

damNation

see more

confessions

crucifiction

kamasutra

damNation

exegesis

hunger

KtBlog

see more

God Bless and Be Well

by Brook Wilensky-Lanford | June 12, 2020 |

What does church look like when the Baptists go online in a science town?


The interior of Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church, getting ready for an online service

On the pulpit, directly in front of the camera, sat three new sacramental objects: a large bottle of Purell, a bar of Irish Spring soap, and an opened canister of Lysol disinfectant wipes. In the background sprawled the wood-paneled sanctuary of the Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church. For this, their first livestreamed service, on Sunday, March 22nd, wooden chairs were set up in three concentric rows. Five church leaders sat in these chairs, leaving plenty of empty seats between one another. Binkley is located less than five minutes’ drive from my home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on a shady lot just beyond the grocery store, but this was the first time I had seen the

William Blake's image of Ezekiel mourning his wife

Prophetic Confinement

“Go, be confined inside your house!” Pandemic parallels stretch back as far as the sixth century BCE, when even the prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah were restricted to their homes during their ministry.

A New Ramadan

This year’s Ramadan promised to be different before it started.

In the Garden

One of the last things I did in the time I now think of only as before was to take a hike at Occonneechee Mountain State Natural Area in North Carolina with my boyfriend. It was early March, and everything was still brown, save for patches of moss alongside the path. We thought it would be nice…

Thomas Cole-Pilgrim of the World

Apocalyptabuse, or How to Survive “The End”

Call this fantasized thinking apocalyptabuse: the demoralizing mythic-psychic warfare that deprives people of hope, makes us fear that The End is near, and thereby cuts off our aspirations of any earthly life to come.

blue ridge mountains in springtime

Dispatches from Isolation, Vol. 1

Abandon most of your plans, except for the quiet house in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a promise of isolation that you desired before it was mandated.

an empty cracked egg with a downy feather attached

The Empty Tomb

How could we anticipate something so seemingly simple as peace, when something as violent as a virus is tearing through our lives, our traditions, our loves?

Cover of Albert Camus, The Plague, showing a photo of a man with a red plague mask drawn over his face.

Camus’ The Plague: Coronavirus Quotes

Do all you can to fight plague where you find it, and don’t forget to love: a selection of some of the most relevant quotes from Camus’ The Plague for a time of coronavirus.

It’s the End and Nothing Feels Fine

I don’t use the word “apocalypse” or “apocalyptic” lightly. I’m a scholar of bad endings. And the pandemic that we face right now feels like it could be a very bad ending.

A giant inflatable colon, for Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month

Holy Shit

I thought: What would the rabbis say about the giant inflatable colon? As a colon cancer survivor, will I ever see shit as just shit again?

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