A new memoir asks tough questions about religion and mental illness — I’m reading an amazing new book. A man who grew up an Evangelical pastor’s kid writes about his history of crippling panic attacks. But this is Charles Marsh, the well-known Christian scholar. In Evangelical Anxiety: A Memoir, he thinks back to a day in 1981 when he was a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School. …

A look back at—me! — Back in 2019, I started writing on Medium about religion and sex. How does one do that? I’d never known of Christians to have anything useful to say about sex. In my experience, they seemed to be unable to think through sexual situations—which is to say, life on earth. I went into it, though, doing one post after another. Kind reader Richard Barham has a list of “Poletti favorites.”

They like to celebrate the ‘normal’, i.e. the heterosexual and married. But to look at right-wing leaders, they’re often not very ‘normal’ at all. They’d say they are. But look close up, into the shadows and secrets…and it’s another story. Was Winston Churchill gay? The British Prime Minister is hard to pin downmedium.com ‘Cuckolding’ and the Republicans who love it Jack Murphy made their sex secrets publicmedium.com

The most famous Christian singer in history has been in the news lately, chosen as a Kennedy Center honoree, as a fall off her bike caused her to cancel some upcoming concerts. …

The religion didn’t like Epiphanes — When I set out to learn more about Christianity, I wondered if it was possible that all the leaders were sex-maddened puritans. But I noticed a lurking legend of the religion: a teenager around 150 A.D. who said the teachings of Jesus were communism and ‘free love’. I went to learn more about that. In ‘official’ Christian sources, Epiphanes is dismissed, or attacked.

Scholars lay out a shocking case — Is this the most amazing story I have ever heard? In 2010, a singer-songwriter named Libbie Schrader went to a Catholic church garden in Brooklyn to pray. She was Christian, and it wasn’t uncommon for her to feel that answers were given to prayer. But that day, praying to the Virgin Mary, the answer was unexpected. The message was: “Follow Mary Magdalene.” Being a singer-songwriter, Schrader’s course seemed clear.

The billionaire turns prophet? — Among launches of electric vehicles, rockets and satellites, and with an overhaul of Twitter in the works, Elon Musk is suggesting a new religion. I’m catching up on his latest Twitter musings, received by followers like Delphic oracles. He updated on July 8th: “We know so little today. I want to know the meaning of life or whatever the right question is to ask, as Douglas Adams would put it.”

Christianity didn’t know what to do with…Junia? — When you grew up Christian in the 20th century you were told that religion was mostly all about men. God, the disciples, Paul, all leaders—were male. In 1977, a strange figure appeared on the scene. Scholars were saying that a name in Romans 16:7 had been misgendered. An apostle whose Latin name was Iounian—was female? In English, she was ‘Junia’, and this is her story.

John MacArthur preaches his religion’s white supremacy — Slavery is bad…right? It might seem any Christian would agree. But in a sermon given by John MacArthur back in 2001, little-noticed for two decades, he takes a different view. I’m catching up on an online furor. It started when Sharon Autenrieth, an assistant Methodist pastor and “social justice warrior” in Illinois found herself reading a MacArthur sermon, and thought more people should as well.