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Response to Daniel Philpott: the Politics of Religious Freedom

By Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

…learning from our colleagues and exploring these complex histories over a number of years, we have found that religious liberty is not a single, stable principle existing outside of history, as it is often depicted (particularly in policy circles in North America and Europe and by many academics invested in promoting religious freedom). It is, rather, an inescapably context-bound, polyvalent concept unfolding within divergent histories in differi…

How Religion Shapes (or Doesn’t) Our Views on Public Issues

By Daniel Schultz

…dy late last week looking how religious beliefs influence perceptions on a number of different issues. A quick-and-dirty look at the results would tell you that religion doesn’t change much, with a few notable exceptions. For example, this surprising statistic: “60% of those who oppose gay marriage say religion is the most important influence on their views.” One wonders where the other 40% comes from. Likewise, social issues come in dead last on…

Refusal of Interracial Couple Shows How Slippery the Slope of LGBTQ Refusal Really Is

By Heron Greenesmith

…sippi Clarion Ledger reported earlier this year that the overall growth in number of interracial couples in Mississippi was behind the national average (less than 2.4 percentage points in Mississippi compared to 2.8 percentage points nationally). According to a report released by Pew Research Center in 2017, only 9% of Americans say that interracial marriage is “a bad thing,” while 17% of respondents to a 2018 YouGov poll said that interracial mar…

Religion vs. Science: America’s Perilous Fight

By Edward J. Larson

…istence of atoms or Adam? That last one may be a close call, but countless Americans do claim to feel a personal relationship with Jesus. How many claim to feel a personal relationship with evolution? For most Americans, God is more real and more important than evolution. Scientists fight religion at their peril. Religion addresses the great questions. Why are we here? Where did we come from? Why do we love, hate, or believe? To the extent that sc…

In the Papal Pocket: Benedict XVI and the Press

By Mary E. Hunt

…mproving press coverage of smaller, less well known groups. Second, if the American press cannot handle its responsibilities with regard to Catholicism (which is well known to many of them), how can we expect them to be helpful in reporting on Judaism, Islam, the Baha’i faith, Wicca, or any number of other groups that form the pluralistic religious mosaic in the United States today? No reporter or anchor could be expected to be an expert on the in…

Review: Is the Religious Right Dying?

By Laura R. Olson

…nd waning of the religious right is a reflection of the cyclical nature of American politics. In the mid-twentieth century, the religion-politics relationship in the United States was purely assumed to be one of liberal faith-based advocacy. To varying degrees, mainline Protestants, African-American Protestants, Catholics, and Jews joined together in the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement, the fair housing movement, the nuclear f…

The Story Behind the Catholic Church’s Stunning Contraception Reversal

By Patricia Miller

…limited to procreation; that it was acceptable to limit family size for a number of reasons; and that it was licit to use the naturally occurring sterile period to do so. Enter Catholic physician John Rock. By designing a contraceptive that used hormones already present in a woman’s body to mimic the natural infertility of a pregnant woman, he hoped the Vatican would find a theological basis to approve the method. In 1958, when the Pill was alrea…

Exclusion is Causing Great Harm: A Conversation With Suspended UMC Pastor Rev. Cynthia Meyer

By Joel Pitney

…than in the leadership? My congregation has been very supportive. A small number of people chose to leave. Some of them not because of their feelings around the issue of homosexuality, but they just struggled with the church being in the news. But that was a small number, and most folks have been very receptive. Many immediately began telling me about their family members, and all of their personal stories. My vulnerability in sharing let them op…

Condemnation, Condolences in Wake of Orlando Massacre and More

By Peter Montgomery

…ex of potential motivations. Although the shooter called a local emergency number during the attack to pledge his allegiance to ISIS, news reports have suggested that there is to date no evidence of any connection to the group. ISIS officials have encouraged supporters to launch attacks in their home countries during Ramadan. National Public Radio reported on Saturday morning that the shooter’s behavior before the killings did not fit typical evid…

For Conservatives, the Future Looks Dim… and Gay

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ble.” But those “moral objections” seem to be of less concern to a growing number of Americans: Just under half of Americans (45%) say they think engaging in homosexual behavior is a sin, while an equal number says it is not. Those who believe homosexual behavior is a sin overwhelmingly oppose gay marriage. Similarly, those who say they personally feel there is a lot of conflict between their religious beliefs and homosexuality (35% of the public)…