The rest of May

The sexual abuse scandal in the evangelical church:
Michelle Boorstein, WaPo, Amid a Southern Baptist scandal, some evangelical women say the Bible’s gender roles are being distorted to promote sexism
Al Mohler, CT, The Humiliation of the Southern Baptist Convention
Jake Meador, MereO, The Fall of the Village
Tyler Huckabee, Relevant, Paige Patterson’s Non-Punishment Shows the Church Is Not Prepared for True Repentance
Ross Douthat, NYT, The Baptist Apocalypse
Joshua Pease, WaPo, The sin of silence

Abortion and birth:
Emily Sullivan, MereO, How the Irish Lost Themselves and Their Ancestral Inheritance and How They May Find Themselves Again
Ruth Graham, Slate, Choosing Life With Down Syndrome
Aida Chávez, The Intercept, Planned Parenthood Is Asking Donald Trump's Labor Board for Help Busting Its Colorado Union

Christine Emba, WaPo, The recession is long gone. Where are the babies?
Olga Khazan, The Atlantic, A Surprising Reason to Worry About Low Birth Rates

A snapshot of the current political scene:

Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker, In Rural Tennessee, a Big ICE Raid Makes Some Conservative Voters Rethink Trump's Immigration Agenda
Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker, An ICE Raid Has Turned the Lives of Hundreds of Tennessee Kids Upside Down

Katherine Stewart, NYT, A Christian Nationalist Blitz
Lauren Markoe, WaPo, Did Trump fulfill a divine prophecy? What to expect from a new Liberty University film.
David Frum, The Atlantic, The Measure of Trump's Devotion

How the absence of legitimate news sources helped lead to our current political reality:
Shawn Musgrave & Matthew Nussbaum, Politico, Trump thrives in areas that lack traditional news outlets
Gracy Olmstead, The American Conservative, Sinclair and the Fake News Battle That Never Ends
Todd VanDerWerff, Vox, The rise of the American news desert
Caitlin Dickerson, NYT Mag, How Fake News Turned a Small Town Upside Down
Laura Hazard Owen, Nieman Labs, From Bible study to Google: How some Christian conservatives fact-check the news and end up confirming their existing beliefs

Jordan Peterson is bad; how else can we offer a life of meaning for his fans?

Kate Manne, Time Literary Supplement, Reconsider the Lobster
Pankaj Mishra, New York Review of Books, Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism
Bernard Schiff, The Star, I was Jordan Peterson's biggest supporter. Now I think he's dangerous.
Matthew Loftus, Comment, Why Do the Young Men Rage?

Two of my favorite Catholic writers on the NFL's enforced patriotism:
Elizabeth Bruenig, Medium, The Soulless Logic of Capitalism's 'Dark, Satanic Mill'
Ross Douthat, NYT, Free Speech Will Not Save Us

On Christian living:

Miles Smith, MereO, Evangelical Indifference to the Immigrant in Historical Perspective

Nancy & Shelvis Smith-Mather, Presbyterian Mission Agency, "We Speak Normal!"
Emily Jane Hubbard, Faithfully Magazine, Seeing Pastor Harry Reeder Surrounded By Confederate Flags Breaks My Heart

Eve Tushnet, America, You have heard it said: Visit the imprisoned. But what about their guards?

Leah Libresco Sargent, Commonweal, A Final Hospitality

Theology:
Reagan Rose, The Master's Seminary Blog, The Wretched Art of Loveless Discernment
David Mathis, Desiring God, Where Does God Want Me to Work?
Jonathan Leeman, CT, The Two Kinds of Government That Show Up in the Bible
Caleb Lindgren, CT, Reading Together, Early Church Style
Mike Higton, St Brandon's Brancepeth, Trinity Sunday Homily
Ben Myers, Faith and Theology, Why I (still) confess the filioque

Two pieces on California churches:

Jonathan Parks-Ramage, Medium, Jesus, Mary, and Joe Jonas
Alana Semuels, The Atlantic, The Radical Preacher of Palo Alto

These aren't really connected except through a line of thought – the first piece examines a sociology of religion study, which touches on the latent (sometimes expressed) spirituality of the Nones; the second offers the theological rebuttal; the third is the opposite problem, materialism - a very modernist reading of Aristotle that still shows some of his truths, while being frustratingly Pelagian in its approach to virtue ethics; the fourth is not really even related at all (it's about the decline in humanities programs), but Aristotle:

Sigal Samuel, The Atlantic, Atheists Are Sometimes More Religious Than Christians
Fleming Rutledge, CT, Why Being 'Spiritual' Is Never Enough
Edith Hall, Aeon, Why Read Aristotle Today?
Frank Bruni, NYT, Aristotle's Wrongful Death

On same-sex attracted Christians and identity:

Eve Tushnet, Patheos, Beyond Sexual Identity: Not Whether But How
Eve Tushnet, Spiritual Friendship, The Self-Defeating Sexualization of Gay and Same-Sex Attracted Christians

Environment:
Danielle Butcher, Vox, Young conservatives like me care about climate change. The GOP needs to take notice.
Kendra Atleework, The Atlantic, Power Lines Are Burning the West

Miscellaneous:
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, First Reformed, starring Ethan Hawke, is bruising, vital, and one of the year’s best films
Damon Linker, The Week, Pope Francis' cunning long game
LM Sacasas, The Frailest Thing, Cyborg Discourse is Useless

Leah Libresco Sargent, Commonweal, 'You Are What You Love'

Lyz Lenz, Columbia Journalism Review, From Taylor Swift to the world's largest T-shirt cannon: An internet reader
Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, Was Classic Rock a Sound, or a Tribe?
Michael LaPointe, The Atlantic, Chasing the Pearl of Lao Tzu
Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic, Actually, Kissing Is Good

Elisabeth Donnelly, Topic, Valley of the Ragdolls