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‘Cult’ Is an Inaccurate, Unhelpful and Dangerous Label for Followers of Trump, QAnon, and 1/6

By Catherine Wessinger

…d to leave when they choose. Such totalistic institutions range from some unconventional religious or political groups to prisons, concentration camps, and authoritarian governments of nations. Americans generally agree that they’re abusive. Currently it’s fashionable to use the word “cult” to describe all sorts of groups and movements that people don’t like. It’s said that people who support former President Donald Trump constitute a “cult”; the…

Religion and Other Animals

By Paul Waldau

…le,” opened with the lines, “Attendance at a Buddhist temple in Japan has increased since the temple’s pet, a two-year-old dog, has joined in the daily prayers. Conan, a Chihuahua, sits on his hind legs, raises his paws and puts them together at the tip of his nose.” That the dog’s actions might not have involved praying of the human kind, as it were, is signaled by the quotation marks around “praying,” and by quotes from various people that sugge…

No Conspiracy Theories Needed: Abortion Foes Cry Racism

By Kathryn Joyce

…tmacher Institute found that these statistics were due simply to a higher incidence of unwanted pregnancies among women of color—“No conspiracy theories needed,” remarked Guttmacher—anti-abortion activists continue to claim that providers are targeting black and Latino populations, and have leafleted inner-city neighborhoods with denunciations of “Klan Parenthood,” juxtaposing images of lynchings and aborted fetuses with the slogan “lynching is fo…

Evangelical Pastor Argues for Full LGBT Inclusion: “I Think It’s Inevitable”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…very shortly, there will be an expression of evangelicalism which will be inclusive of LGBT people. There are a number of evangelicals that are very open to this and are having the same experience I had of actually knowing gay and lesbian people, so I think it’s inevitable. I think there will be a sector of evangelicalism that will go past mainline protestant denominations, which have more institutional restraints. The more autonomous congregation…

Islamic Intellectual Leadership at a Crossroads

By Amina Wadud

…not Tariq Ramadan feels comfortable being included among them. We have an increasing number of men recognized as intellectuals whose self-appointed role as leaders gives me pause. Is this the result of having leading ideas that we all can follow and benefit from, like these three men? Or what about the question of the integrity of leadership, does it bring the scholarly contributions under question? Whatever happens in the future, if women’s ways…

Lessons from the Defeat of the Oklahoma Personhood Bill

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…tate of fertilization or conception, regardless of age, health, level of functioning, or condition of dependency[.]” As HR1054 was discussed on the floor, its sponsor, Rep. Vaughan, wept openly as he exhorted his fellow legislators to support the non-binding resolution. But HR1054 had no legal ramifications: it was not a bill to change the state legal code, as was SB-1433. It also stipulated that the bill would not apply to in vitro fertilization….

Two Women and a Mosque: A Convert Community Grows in Panama City

By Aliyya Swaby

…in Panama live in the major cities of Panama City and Colón, with smaller numbers in other provincial cities. The Panamanian government does not collect information on its religious composition, but a 2009 international report estimated the number of Muslims at around 24,000, comprising less than one percent of the country’s population. Most are of Lebanese, Palestinian or Indian descent. Though small, Panama’s Muslim community has grown increasi…

The Internet Is Not Killing Religion, Religion is Killing Religion

By Elizabeth Drescher

…l Smith’s conception of “faith,” to consider what elements of human experience are deliberately and incidentally left out of whatever it is we might understand as “religion” in its institutionalized forms, and why. Who is served by the various exclusions and inclusions of institutional religion? To what ends? And who is harmed? What we might consider, then, with much more nuance and complexity than mere data manipulation can possibly tell us, is w…

The Catholic-Evangelical (Non-)Coalition

By Patricia Miller

…of trends, 40% of Catholics supported same-sex marriage in 2001 with that number increasing to nearly 60% by 2014. By contrast, only 13% of Evangelicals favored same-sex marriage in 2001 and just 23% approve of it today. Writing in The Atlantic, PRRI’s Robert Jones gets at the truth behind these numbers: “there is more support for official Roman Catholic Church positions among white evangelical Protestants than among Catholics.” But, as he notes,…

A Jewish Perspective on Reparations

By Moriel Rothman-Zecher

…. I could not but feel, in those sorrowful years, that this human indifference, concerning which I knew so much already, would be my portion on the day that the United States decided to murder its Negroes systematically instead of little by little and catch-as-catch-can. If Coates is right that reparations at least partially correlated with German societal and cultural reckoning, then one can see their fruits in Germany today. Last month, followin…