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Rise of Episcopal Village

By Becky Garrison

…s shift in thinking are myriad and have only intensified since 2008 when a number of studies indicated that for the first time in US history, less than 50 percent of Americans classified themselves as “Christian.” Such shifts in church decline have been documented in the Church of England (UK) for decades. As reported by the Rev. Steve Hollinghurst, Researcher in Evangelism to Post-Christian Culture, the Sheffield Centre, Children’s Sunday school…

When Corporations are “Persons” Under the Law: The Real Problem With Health Care

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…were more mundane and predictable: Section Two redefined how we distribute numbers of representatives state-by-state, by “counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed”; and Section Three excluded from future service any member of the government who had previously sworn an oath of office to the State and then joined the Confederacy in open rebellion. Predictable stuff, really. After winning the War, Washington int…

Too Late for Apologies: Three Steps the U.S. Bishops Should Take to Prevent Another Sexual Abuse Scandal

By Grant Gallicho

…, for example, review board members were pressured to judge allegations according to the norms of canon law. In one case, a canon lawyer who attended board meetings claimed that because an alleged act of abuse was committed against a 17-year-old in 1995, the allegation should be thrown out. At the time of the alleged abuse, the canonist argued, canon law held that the age of majority was sixteen. But review boards were not established to serve a c…

Obstacles for Secularists

By Sarah Posner

…to become better organized as a political force, even as they increase in number. The major impediment to that kind of organization is the fact that it is very difficult for secularists to conceive of themselves in tribal terms. Most tribes, whether of nations or ethnicities or sports fandom, can easily demarcate their membership—it’s the people who look like us, or talk like us, or dress like us. Tribes organized around religious belief have rit…

The Sacred and the Dead: Truckin’ as a New American Pilgrimage

By Varun Soni

…l hierarchy that is bound by shared principles, goals, and aspirations. According to Turner, the physical journey is only one level of the pilgrimage, which is at its core a spiritual journey. So going on tour with Grateful Dead is not just an exercise in community building and tribal identity, but more importantly, it is an opportunity for personal transformation and spiritual growth. Perhaps no song better represents the role of pilgrimage in th…

Dispatch from Charlottesville: “It Was a War Zone. It Felt Like There Were a Million Nazis.”

By Sunnivie Brydum

…counter-protestors. That’s an exaggeration, but I’m just saying, that the number of nazis compared to counter-protestors was unreal. I’m just like, where in the hell did all these people come from? They took over the fucking city. So as things were heating up, we saw riot gear enter into our barricade, where we had been secured. And it was advised to leave that location and go to a secure location. And so, at that point we left that barricade and…

Missing the Anger for the Shoes

By Hussein Rashid

…President Bush was assaulted by an Iraqi reporter with a shoe. I think in order to understand the true import of an assault by a shoe, one needs to truly appreciate the insulting nature of the shoe, not only in Arab culture, but in Muslim cultures more generally. The shoe as tool of discipline is quite a common trope in Islamicate literatures. Salman Rushdie has used the idea of children being disciplined by champal (flip-flops) to great comedic…

The New Age Fantasy of a Celtic Church that Revered Nature and the Divine Feminine Never Existed — So What?

By Ed Simon

…and in Washington DC the Taoiseach will present the president with a Waterford Crystal filled with shamrocks. We’ll see kitschier associations as well, from “Kiss Me I’m Irish” t-shirts to full-grown adults cosplaying as leprechauns. Clergy have expressed concern about secular revelry obscuring the religious significance of what, after all, is a saint’s day. Fr. Ryan Jones, an Episcopal priest at the Eucharist Church in San Francisco, wrote last y…

Top Five (Less Sensational, But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson (1930-2023)

By Mark Hulsether

…at Robertson seems to consider appropriate, the more disturbing they are; bordering on what ordinary people might perceive as treason. On most days I suspect that Robertson is engaged in a split consciousness at this point. Just as he may say that he doubts evolution (in one compartment of his brain) while accepting the science of vaccinations against evolving bacteria (in another compartment), likewise he probably brackets certain ideas about Sat…