JUST PUBLISHED
What we are watching is the institutional absorption of the church into unquestioned partisan priorities.
The vehicle for doing so is through the sanctifying praise of a singular person.
COMING THIS WEDNESDAY
A new essay on "religious innovation" publishing online.
It's part of a new series of essays on The Immanent Frame👇
tif.ssrc.org
THE AENEID OF VIRGIL A VERSE TRANSLATION BY ROLFE HUMPHRIES CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK
Part of my reading today
NEW POST
Prompted from this morning’s news from Washington 👇
When church leaders are drawn into this “biblical” vortex, their congregations are often pulled along with them.
NEW POST
Prompted from this morning’s news from Washington 👇
When church leaders are drawn into this “biblical” vortex, their congregations are often pulled along with them.
Two books, side by side The Glass Church Robert H. Schuller, the Crystal Cathedral, and the Strain of Megacharch Ministry Mark T. Mulder and Gerardo Marti The Church Must Grow or Perish Robert H. Schuller and the Business of American Christianity FOREWORD BY RICHARD J. MOUW MARK T. MULDER AND GERARDO MARTÍ
NEW POST
Every generation of pastors is handed a formula. Someone builds something remarkable — the instinct is to bottle it, export it, follow the steps.
Here’s a conversation that went places I didn’t entirely anticipate, sharing some of what surfaced here 👉 open.substack.com/pub/gerardom...
Conference booklet on a cream-colored surface titled “Consultation on Collaborative Research for Congregational Life,” dated April 15–17, 2026 in Indianapolis, IN, with logos for Leadership Education at Duke Divinity, Center for Congregations, and Hartford Institute for Religion Research, alongside a blue “faithandleadership.com” lanyard, a blue pen, and a name badge reading “Gerardo Marti, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology, Davidson College.”
Wonderful to be with dozens of church leaders and researchers, gathered by Leadership at Duke Divinity, funded by Lilly Endowment, Inc. — So many friends and colleagues! And good to meet new people.
The cartoon shows two male figures standing side by side against a plain, pale background, drawn in a realistic but exaggerated caricature style within a simple rectangular frame. On the left, a man with swept-back blond hair and an orange-tinted face is dressed in a stylized Jesus costume: a loose, off‑white tunic with long sleeves, a red mantle draped over his left shoulder and hanging down the front, and brown sandals on his bare feet. His hands are extended outward at about waist height, palms up, in a self‑displaying, boastful pose, and his mouth is open as if speaking. Above his head, in bold hand‑lettered text with a jagged speech‑tail pointing toward him, the caption reads: “I HAD BIGGER CROWDS THAN JESUS AT MY RESURRECTION.” On the right stands a shorter, older man in papal attire, evoking a Pope: he wears a white cassock that reaches to his ankles, a white zucchetto skullcap, a short shoulder‑cape, and a stole or sash of gold hanging over one side, along with a large gold cross suspended from a chain at his chest. His shoes are black, and his right hand is lifted thoughtfully to his chin, with his head slightly tilted toward the other figure, as if correcting him. Above him, in matching hand‑lettered text with a curved speech‑tail pointing to his head, the caption reads: “IT’S PRONOUNCED INSURRECTION.” At the bottom right corner, the artist’s signature appears in cursive with the surname “de Adder” and the phrase “the contrarian” below it, indicating the cartoonist and the satirical nature of the piece.
They just keep coming
<post on X> Joel Webbon @JoelWebbon X.com I genuinely believe Trump is currently demon possessed. 11:52 PM • 4/12/26 • 2.1M Views
Conservative, Tr*mp supporting pastor in Texas
There’s “Just War doctrine” …
then there’s “just war” doctrine.
This is a digitally altered version of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” showing Jesus and the disciples seated at a long table, but with all of their faces blurred or obscured. The central figure in Jesus’s place wears modern clothing, including a red shirt, a blue cloak, and a stethoscope around his neck, visually presenting him as a Dr. Rabinovich from HBO’s hit series The Pitt.
Fans of The Pitt are loving this
The Gap of Good Intentions: What Two Decades of Fieldwork Taught Me About Race, Power, and the American Church Over twenty years of fieldwork across American congregations keeps me returning to a familiar pattern: the gap between what churches say and what they organizationally do. American Blindspot: Race, Religion, Power GERARDOMARTI.SUBSTACK.COM
Another effort to trace a pattern of thinking visible across a body of scholarship so far:
How institutional life translates moral aspiration into patterned practice & why that translation so often preserves the very inequalities it seeks to overcome.
👉 gerardomarti.substack.com/p/the-gap-of...
Innovative Church Leaders Podcasts.Apple.Com The Innovation Church Leaders Podcast
NEW A broad conversation tailored for church leaders with pastor Eric Bryant on our biography of Robert H. Schuller
"Mulder and Martí offer a look at what happens when congregational life is mapped onto capitalism."
Apple Podcast Link 👉 nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...
Trump posts AI generated image of himself as pope in May 2025. Text on image reads: The WHITE HOUSE The White House @WhiteHouse Follow ... Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 8:07 PM • May 2, 2025 • 110.9M Views
“Leo, schmio — of course I’d do that job better, everybody knows it.”
Late night reading
“A new estimate projects that 442 of the nation’s 1,700 private, nonprofit 4-year colleges & universities, with a combined 670,000 students, are at risk of closing or having to merge within the next 10 years.”
“Fewer than half of students at colleges that close continue their educations.”
MORE 👇👇👇
The Changing Church and the Challenge of Racial Justice
Gerardo Martí
Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology
doi.org/10.1177/0020...
Accessible copy 👇👇👇
“Other people at these Trump rallies do it for him, but when you do it yourself, … it’s sacrilegious at best,” the official said.
The need to manage expanding immigration policies over the past century unintentionally prompted one of the most consequential expansions of the Executive Branch, directly augmenting the power of the Presidency.
The Changing Church and the Challenge of Racial Justice
Gerardo Martí
Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology
doi.org/10.1177/0020...
Accessible copy 👇👇👇
The photograph shows a bright yellow fire hydrant standing on a bed of wood chip mulch, with a parked car and dappled sunlight visible in the background. Several stickers have been affixed to the hydrant — including an Asheville Supplies sticker and a colorful circular sticker on the lower shaft — but the centerpiece is a rectangular sticker on the top dome of the hydrant. The Jesus Sticker The main sticker depicts Jesus in a distinctly contemporary, Americanized setting. He is rendered in a painterly, almost devotional style, but the iconography is deliberately modern and vernacular: • He has long, dark brown hair and a beard, with the conventional Euro-Western facial features common in popular Jesus imagery. • He wears his traditional flowing white robe and a vivid red draped mantle, along with open sandals on his feet. • He is standing outdoors at what appears to be a dusty RV park or trailer lot, with a silver Airstream trailer prominently visible behind him. • Most strikingly, he is holding the leash of a black dog — likely a black German Shepherd or similar breed — at his side. • The background sky is a rich blue, and the overall color palette is warm and earthy. • A QR code is printed over the upper portion of the image, suggesting it links to a website or social media account associated with the artwork. To the right of the main Jesus sticker is a partial second sticker showing what appears to be an older man outdoors, though it is largely cut off at the edge. The overall effect is a piece of folk-art-meets-pop-culture religious imagery — Jesus domesticated into everyday American life, complete with a trailer and a dog.
Jesus in Jacksonville
Catching up with the rest of the country
The image is a screenshot of a Facebook “On this day” memory labeled “1 year ago,” showing a post from April 8, 2025 with a caption that reads “warning: more surprises ahead.” In the photo attached to that post, there is a close-up of a Chinese fortune cookie in its wrapper on a table next to a takeout box with a red decorative pattern, and the main focus is a fortune slip that clearly states, “This year will be full of surprises.” This prediction was made exactly one year ago from today.
That fortune was right on
"...the public opinion poll was a computer simulation run by the artificial intelligence start-up Aaru. No people were involved in the creation of these opinions.
The practice Aaru used is called silicon sampling..."
“The proposal also cuts all funding for the NSF division that funds research on the social sciences and economics. At an internal all-hands meeting on Friday, NSF leaders announced that they would dissolve the agency’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate…”
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New exhibit for the future presidential library
NEW On Racial Resentment & Religion👇
White religious conservatives are politically conservative regardless of level of racial resentment.
White religious moderates, liberals, & nonreligious, on the other hand, are politically conservative when they have relatively high levels of racial resentment.
Fell My Voice
Recommended Movie - on Netflix