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Secularism in the US is Larger, More Diverse and More Dynamic Than Ever, But You Wouldn’t Know it From the Media

By Chrissy Stroop

…And so long as the legacy media continue to portray the nones in this way without actually talking to us, their reporting will inevitably imply that the nonreligious do not deserve to be taken seriously. This brings us back to the new secular media project, OnlySky. Founded by Silicon Valley tech veteran Shawn Hardin, who now acts as its CEO, OnlySky already boasts an impressive group of contributors who are well known in secular circles. These i…

Oklahoma Bill Would Violate Basic Freedoms, Rewrite the Ten Commandments

By Andrew L. Seidel

…ship a god, let alone which god. Americans are free to be godless (as a growing number are), or, if they wish, to worship every god from every holy book. Olsen’s commandments would prohibit free expression and art by outlawing the creation of graven images; prohibit free speech by making it illegal to take the Lord’s name in vain; and, per the tenth commandment, it would criminalize thought (potentially condoning slavery and the treatment of women…

Harry Reid vs. Islamic Cultural Center

By Joanna Brooks

…t’s not a proud day for freedom of religion when a prominent member of the number two most disliked major religion in America effectively sides against a honest project by the number one most disliked major religion in America. Especially when Mormons have just recently come through our own years-long struggle to build an LDS temple in Center City Philadelphia after Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter tried to extract a six-figure sum from the Churc…

New Report: Angels & Aliens in Texas Schools

By Mark A. Chancey

…lities (full disclosure: I was compensated for my efforts, though I’m otherwise unaffiliated with TFN). I was interested in the extent to which schools succeeded in meeting the bar set for them by federal district courts; namely, that discussions of religion should neither promote nor disparage particular religious beliefs, nor favor religion or non-religion over the other. The First Amendment Center’s The Bible & Public Schools: A First Amendment…

The Catholic Apocalypse Cometh

By Patricia Miller

…was likely to be dismantled post-haste by the Trump administration, it was flooded with some 1,000 comments, many of them negative. While there was the usual riff that Obamacare was “socialized medicine,” a stunning number of the comments groused about the birth control mandate. There’s significant evidence from earlier Pew Foundation polling that the Catholic bishops’ opposition to the contraceptive mandate and the subsequent war on “religious li…

Dieting, Sex, Jesus: The Body as Moral Battleground

By Lynne Gerber

…writing? I had a lot of audiences in mind and I kept imaging them fighting with each other (and with me): interview respondents, other conservative Christians, secular academics, fat activists, GLBT activists, GLBT Christians, liberal people of faith. Eventually I had to evict them from my mind just so I could get some writing done. Did you write to entertain, or to inform, or to piss people off? Sociologists often talk about making the familiar s…

‘Imagine Better’: Can Harry Potter Change the World?

By B. Howell Belser

…them. Harry Potter, the story goes, is a special young man and a talented wizard, who—with a lot of magic and the support of a strong network of friends and allies—is able to beat back the forces of evil and change the world. Of course, it’s the details that made the series so wildly popular; details that combine to create an alternative world of wizards, muggles, and good-versus-evil that has captured public imagination on an unparalleled scale….

No ‘Christian Compassion’ in Tony Perkins’ Response to Anti-Gay Bullying, Suicides

By Andrew Marin

…t people—closing with these words: “If the church is to ever have an impact [on] today’s culture it has to start by giving up its power. We don’t win anything by using power; rather we are [here] to influence with love and service.” Therefore I ask you, Mr. Perkins: stop being a gatekeeper and start acting like Jesus. All of Jesus—not just the parts you prefer to highlight….

The Anti-Trans Hate Machine’s Conspiracies Don’t Stop at the US Border

By Annika Brockschmidt

…center of this radicalization, which sees so-called “feminists” partnering with right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation to spread their bigotry. In fact, anti-trans hatred has been shown to be a pipeline to right-wing radicalization. United by the biological essentialist definition of sex and gender as one and the same, right-wing vocabulary and buzzwords like “gender ideology” have been mainstreamed in centrist and even some leftist c…

Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…ble, it will be our religious practices on trial in that courtroom. And it will be experts who will argue both sides of the case. Experts. Experts on terrorism have led the United States into two wars since 9/11 and this past week on Fox News, political “expert” and former governor Sarah Palin shared her view that the Obama presidency could shore up sagging poll numbers by invading Iran. Fertility experts have brought us the “Octomom,” and experts…