This article sets forth a critical integrative review of the study of gender, sexuality, and religion. Treating religion as a cause, an effect, and an intermediary factor in relation to gender and sexuality, it draws on and synthesizes multiple theoretical approaches including gender and queer lenses on religion, cultural analysis, and intersectionality. The article is structured around ten big-picture questions about gender, sexuality, and religion and argues that gender and sexuality are a key symbolic boundary and cultural divide in religious and political life in the United States and around the world. It concludes with an agenda for future research.

This article sets forth a critical integrative review of the study of gender, sexuality, and religion. Treating religion as a cause, an effect, and an intermediary factor in relation to gender and sexuality, it draws on and synthesizes multiple theoretical approaches including gender and queer lenses on religion, cultural analysis, and intersectionality. The article is structured around ten big-picture questions about gender, sexuality, and religion and argues that gender and sexuality are a key symbolic boundary and cultural divide in religious and political life in the United States and around the world. It concludes with an agenda for future research.

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Exile—the banishment of individuals from their home country—is a commonly used form of repression against activists, dissidents, and other political opponents. The aftermath of exile usually limits opposition influence and weakens home-country networks. However, while banishment may keep exiles physically away from home, it does not keep political opponents from promoting their agendas from abroad. In a new article published in the American Political Science Review, authors Jane Esberg and Alexandra A. Siegel demonstrate how exile affects political opponents’ online activism. Their research highlights the importance of digital technologies and social media as an accessible and powerful political tool.

Long regarded as the “great equalizer” across all social identity categories, including race/ethnicity, class, and gender, the education system plays a pronounced role in the curation and dissemination of knowledge on social stratification. In contemporary times, this role is perhaps no more evident than in academia’s gatekeeping role in discussions of race and racism. Contemporary racial injustice in the U.S. provides raw material for consideration of how the American education system in particular has articulated the forces that give rise to racial injustice and, in turn, how academia shapes--and also places itself inside and outside of--these conversations. Examining the pedagogy of “education on race,” this piece explores whether academia can be expected to meaningfully set a course for addressing systemic and structural racism, or indeed directly address it. Considering Foucault, Freire, and Bonilla-Silva’s interlocking arguments about the persuasive nature of power, we contextualize the emergence of corrosive academic "love languages" on race to explore how educational institutes produce and reproduce systems of oppression through gestures of racial solidarity that stop purposefully short of substantive action. We close with a proposal for using indigenous, empathy-focused interventions to generate impactful dialogue and action towards anti-racism in educational spaces and beyond.