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New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…secularist, atheist, and humanist organizations including the Washington DC-based Center for Inquiry and the London-based International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). Full disclosure: I have worked with both organizations and consulted on the report, titled “Freedom of Thought 2012: A Global Report on Discrimination Against Humanists, Atheists, and the Nonreligious,” which was released on December 10, Human Rights Day. The IHEU report observe…

Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

By Diane Winston

…in a messy both/and reality. (I am assuming not all these people are right-wingers.) I don’t want more top-down coverage about the end of religion. I’d like more bottom-up stories about what kinds of religion, or irreligion, get people through their day—along with analyses of religion’s ever-evolving role in politics, culture and society. As for branding, “Post-Religion Dispatches from a More or Less Still Religious World” seems like a lot to say…

Sacred&Profane: The Living Dead

By Gary Laderman

…still a dreadfully pleasurable sense of anticipation for the start of trick-or-treating. My kids want me to go trick-or-treating Friday night, hoping that I will finally come through on a promise I made a few years ago to dress up as Elvis (not the young one, I’m afraid!) and participate in the ghoulish fun of resurrecting and playing with the dead. While I have a predilection for the macabre generally, and tend to be a little too preoccupied with…

The Real Goal of Pro-Life Movement Support for Scott Brown: Kill Health Care Reform

By Sarah Posner

…a Sen. Brown victory mean it’s time to put a stop to the flawed government-run, pro-abortion health care program that’s been on a fast-track. For a movement with pretensions to ideological purity, the religious right’s support for Brown is calculated for the short term: hijack health care reform and push the narrative that the country is moving to the right. But something tells me if he’s ever invited to address the Values Voters Summit, Brown wo…

The 17th Century Roots of Roy Moore’s Refusal to Concede the Election

By Karen E. Park

…clear violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment and any number of Supreme Court cases. He was removed again last year for refusing to uphold federal law on same sex marriage, on the grounds that it was in violation of God’s law as found in the Old Testament. Like Winthrop, Moore believes that the Old Testament should order American society, whether Exodus or Leviticus. The ancient Israelites in these societies either adhered, or…

Travolta Airlifts Scientology, Supplies, to Haiti

By Becky Garrison

“John Travolta to airlift desperately needed e-meters to People of Haiti,” reports Gawker. Even though relief organizations like Doctors without Borders face difficulties landing their planes, Travolta has apparently “arranged for a plane to take down some volunteer ministers and some supplies and some medics.” Travolta is not the only Scientologist who is clear about the need to provide services to Haiti. According to a press release issued by t…

Sacred&Profane: Wilco Worship and the “Churn” in American Religion

By Gary Laderman

…he social science-minded and the parochial scientist, as it is for the know-it-all journalist and the know-nothing policy wonk who still believe it’s possible to define religion definitively and operationally. Wilco Show: As Meaningful as a Religious Service Religious life outside of faith communities is elusive and unstable, though if you look and listen carefully, the sacred begins to surface when people describe certain experiences from a varie…

Change v. Change at NPR

By Warren Throckmorton

…icle by Mimi Swartz and published in the New York Times Magazine about same-sex attracted religious people who accept being same-sex attracted but do not identify as gay. I was quoted extensively in that piece and one of my former clients was interviewed for it. Here is what Schumacher-Matos surmises: In 2009, a task force of the American Psychological Association came out clearly against trying to convert someone’s sexuality because of its harm a…

U.S. Bishops Reject Pope Francis’ Priorities

By Patricia Miller

…Francis wasn’t a willful rejection of the pope’s agenda, but more of a wait-and-see attitude of exactly what that agenda was and how it could be implemented in concrete detail. But the jig is up. Its been nearly three years. The pope has clearly laid out his priorities, first in Laudato si and then during his recent trip to the U.S. But at their fall meeting in Baltimore this week, the majority of the bishops forcefully rejected giving Francis’ co…

Jesus Christ and Super Stars: How The Holy Rolled Mainstream in Pop Music

By Alana Massey

…ere.” The cognitive dissonance required to listen to an album in which play-by-plays of the Transfiguration of Jesus and the Binding of Isaac are thoroughly detailed and not declare it either pedantic or preachy is a deep dissonance indeed. Sufjan Stevens plays like, seven hundred instruments. He composes for ballets. The dude likes his details. Why couldn’t critics just let Sufjan Stevens bear prophetic witness? Perhaps it’s that the aftertaste o…