As we near the end of 2022, the Revealer’s staff and contributors are both lamenting the religious, societal, and cultural steps backwards we’ve experienced and fondly remembering the year’s bright spots. In his editor’s letter, Brett Krutzsch reflects on the growth of the Revealer — we’ve had a wonderful increase in readership and have featured new writers and series.
In March, acclaimed religion writer Kaya Oakes joined the Revealer to write her “Not So Sorry” column, where she has addressed the Catholic church’s role in overturning Roe, sexual misconduct at Christianity Today, and more.
In April, we began a three-part series on “Catholic Horrors,” which compares horror films and literature with real-life atrocities committed by the Catholic church.
In October, we published a special issue on “Trans Lives and Religion,” which provides incisive articles on transgender and nonbinary Buddhists, Sikhs, and Muslims; gender diversity in the Talmud; how Christians can support transgender adolescents; and what we can learn from earlier anti-queer legislation to make sense of today’s anti-trans bills.
And in November, we hosted a special virtual event with Bradley Onishi, author of the popular Revealer article “God is Ultimate Masculinity: Evangelical Visions of Manhood in the Wake of the Atlanta Massacre,” so readers could hear from, and pose questions to, Onishi about rising Christian nationalism. If you missed it, you can find a recording of the event here.
Amidst these new initiatives, we continued to publish ten issues of the Revealer and eleven episodes of the Revealer podcast. Through both, we covered such diverse topics as sex workers and religion, Black Buddhists and racism, changing stereotypes of South Asians on TV, and Jewish comedy in America. Our current issue is no different and addresses a wide range of subjects about religion, media, and society.
The December issue opens with Jodi Eichler-Levine’s “Muppet Religion,” where she uses the 30th anniversary of The Muppet Christmas Carol to reflect on the Muppet’s spiritual messages and why they have remained popular for decades.
Next, in “Bodily Autonomy, Reproductive Rights, and the Christian Patriarchy Movement,” Cait West shares her experiences growing up as a “stay-at-home daughter,” where her father had total control over decisions about her body, and warns about the movement’s growing presence within the Republican party.
Connected to that, in “Single Mothers, Sex, and Christian Nationalism,” an excerpt from Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism—And What Comes Next, Bradley Onishi discusses the role purity culture plays in evangelical communities and how single mothers became a rallying point for the Christian right.
Next, we head to another part of the world to explore a different area of religion and sexuality. In “Sex, Scandals, and Buddhists Monks in Thailand,” Brooke Schedneck and Steve Epstein investigate how the numerous scandals involving Thai Buddhists monks are transforming Buddhist practice in Thailand.
Then, our articles conclude with a focus on books. In “The False Messiahs of Space Exploration,” Catherine L. Newell offers a review of Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s new book, Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race.
And, in “Winter Reading Recommendations,” we offer, with much excitement, our annual list of recommended books.
The December issue also features the newest episode of the Revealer podcast: “The Corporate Space Race and Religion.” Mary-Jane Rubenstein joins us to discuss why corporations and billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are invested in space exploration, how Christianity undergirds people’s support for colonizing the cosmos, and how some Indigenous religious traditions offer teachings that could help us reconsider our relationship to outer space and our planet. You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.