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Are American Christians “Persecuted”?

By Eric C. Miller

…hey don’t have it as bad as gays in ISIS-held territory. So let’s put that cheap argument to bed. At Patheos, Benjamin Corey shakes that cheap argument awake: Can we stop complaining about this bogus idea that American Christians are persecuted now? I mean, really. Can we stop? The world needs us to turn from ourselves and focus on this real persecution, because it’s evil and must be exposed and stopped. However, our own self-centeredness as Ameri…

Modernity’s Fraternity: What Dan Brown Gets Right

By Samuel Biagetti

…sle. Nevertheless, his ambition outstretches any run-of-the-mill author of cheap thrillers. For better or worse, after two runaway bestsellers that claim to upend the traditional story of Christianity, he has become America’s most important pop philosopher and historian. In the earlier books, he hatched a version of the faith that spoke to many people in ways that churches no longer seem able to. Now, by turning to Freemasonry in The Lost Symbol,…

Does War Make Sense? Science and Religion on the Battlefield

By Nathan Schneider

…ith formal, centralized leadership. With access to drug money, oil wealth, cheap weapons, and consumer-grade digital toys, they don’t have to worry that 93% of people in the Muslim world still refuse to condone the 9/11 attacks. No one can control them: not their communities, their politicians, their leading clerics, nor even their ostensible figurehead, bin Laden himself. When forced out of one area, the fighters re-create another in their own im…

Rodriguez on Nativism in the GOP and Socially Conservative Latinos

By Sarah Posner

…religious right leaders in protesting a new Planned Parenthood facility in Houston, Texas. At the protest Rodriguez said the “spirit of Herod” was present, a reference to the biblical king’s attempt to kill the baby Jesus. Rodriguez had deployed a similar charge against the health care reform bill pending in late 2009 in the Senate, which had, in the religious right’s view, failed to adequately restrict insurance carriers who provided abortion cov…

Josh Duggar Arrest For Child Sexual Abuse Material is Part of a Systemic Problem in Evangelicalism

By Chrissy Stroop

…women. Hillsong’s long record of misconduct starts with its founder, Brian Houston, who covered up the child sexual abuse committed by his father, Assemblies of God Pastor Frank Houston. And then there was Jerry Falwell, Jr. Again. This time, the disgraced former Liberty University president and son of the university’s infamous fundamentalist founder, showed up to a student comedy show hosted at an off-campus residence. There, Falwell was caught o…

GOP ‘Big Tent’ Implosion: Hindu Edition

By Murali Balaji

…. Advocacy groups like the Hindu American Foundation and Hindus of Greater Houston have large chapters with bipartisan membership, making the GOP’s ad-fail all the more curious. Couldn’t they have, at the very least, asked a Hindu first? While the Republicans’ attempts at cultural sensitivity deserve a facepalm, it should be noted that neither party has made a significant outreach effort to the Hindu community. Even though a record number of Hindu…

Why Natural Disasters Were Perfect Timing for Anti-LGBT Nashville Statement

By Kristel Clayville

…and “end times prepper” Jim Bakker directly connecting the devastation in Houston (and literally “everything else on earth”) to “sin and wickedness.” This reasoning comes so readily to right-wing figures that self-proclaimed “good Christian” Ann Coulter was blaming Houston’s former mayor, out lesbian Annise Parker, for Hurricane Harvey while the floodwaters were still rising. https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/902373016818126849 At the very le…

Why Don’t Republicans Want to Allow Pastors to Endorse from Pulpit?

By Daniel Silliman

…nt their pastors to be able to endorse political candidates. An increasing number of Americans say they want more religion in politics. Pew reports that nearly half of Americans say churches should express their views on political issues. There are still many who support the idea of separating church and politics, of course, but it’s not like this law is actually working. One doesn’t have to look further than Houston to find pastors engaged in pol…

The New Ground Zero on LGBT Rights and Religion

By Sarah Posner

Houston. Atlanta. Big southern cities with liberal mayors facing a backlash from conservatives, claiming actions by those mayors pertaining to LGBT rights violate religious freedom. In Houston last year, the controversy was over Mayor Annise Parker’s administration subpoenaing pastors in litigation over whether signatures for a voter referendum on an anti-discrimination ordinance were valid. The incident galvanized the religious right nationally,…

Fake, Evil, Spiritual, Commodified; What’s the Truth About Popular Yoga?

By Andrea R. Jain

…e scope of my study to include postural yoga generally, from Rajasthan and Houston, I set out to follow postural yoga through a series of associations and relationships to physical sites in London and throughout the United States and India, on websites and in publications, and to other contemporary areas of cultural production, such as yoga studios and public parks. The result was a comparative study of modern yoga, its popularization, and its int…