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Creeping Shari’ah… Ahem, Excuse Me… Biblical Law

By Julie Ingersoll

…rnor Rick Scott wants to move prisoners from government institutions to privately run facilities and increase the 4300 inmates already held within faith based programs by increasing the number of programs from four to six. While inmates in these facilitates choose the faith based programs over other options, it’s not, as proponents like to argue, fair to say that they choose to be there. Opponents of the plans argue that inmates in faith based pro…

Why the Church is Struggling to Hold Onto Millennial Catholics

By Kaya Oakes

…Catholics who will take an interest in serving the church for life and in evangelizing their non-religious peers. Whether groups like FOCUS or Opus Dei or schools like Ave Maria will be able to recruit enough young Catholics to counterbalance the increasing number of Nones, however, is unclear. What is clear, however, is that the more young Catholics start to embrace marriage equality, safe and legal abortion, access to contraception, and the libe…

Atheists Ignore Islamophobia at their Peril

By Chris Stedman

…y what “social justice” means. From dictionary.com: “the distribution of advantages and disadvantages within a society.” A recent study by philosopher Jeremy Stangroom may shed some light on why some atheists’ definitions of social justice don’t seem to include the religious. He found that 32% of atheist respondents felt that “they are not morally obliged to help somebody in severe need in India, even though to do so wouldn’t cost them much, compa…

Why Religious Exemptions Matter

By Sarah Posner

…ans United for Life, and the American Center for Law and Justice. As to private employers, the proposed rule takes note of the fact that private employers are not entitled to religious exemptions under other federal laws, such as Title VII, prohibiting discrimination in employment. Based on that precedent, the administration declined to extend an exemption to private employers here. The expansion of the exemption to religious entities other than…

5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Overthink the New Pew Data’s Impact on Politics

By Sarah Posner

…ng Republicans and Democrats. 3. Keep in mind that, politically speaking, evangelicals, and in particular white evangelicals, have been highly politically organized for decades. As the sociologist Lydia Bean documents in her book, The Politics of Evangelical Identity, through churches and parachurch organizations, evangelicals’ political views are shaped by a “narrative of Christian nationalism,” a “24/7 narrative” that “liberals basically destroy…

Unprecedented Anti-LGBTQ Statement By Orthodox Church in America Should Be Christian Nationalist Warning Sign to US Orthodoxy

By Katherine Kelaidis

…l Patriarchate of Constantinople in the modern Turkish state and the preservation of the Greek language in America, the GOA has remained a relatively inhospitable environment for converts, a feature not terribly great for Christian evangelism but which probably offers a something of a firewall in the current climate. This suggests that the culture-war mentality (not to mention the chilling authoritarianism) that we see present in the OCA Synod’s m…

Elephant Orphans and Ecological Spiritualities: An Earth Day Reflection

By Jacob J. Erickson

…ysteries of these creatures. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. A large number of the “spiritual but not religious” crowd in the West are self-proclaimed ecologists or naturalists. A large number of atheists and agnostics are deeply passionate about ecological ethics, or how we might be more “in tune” with nature. Culturally, they become fascinated in the personalities of cats and cat videos, the companionship of dogs who offer a kind of faithf…

None Means None (Not Atheist, Agnostic, Unbeliever…)

By Elizabeth Drescher

…liated in the United States does focus substantially on belief, offering a number of significant findings among Nones. I’ve discussed some of these previously here and here, but the pervasiveness of the idea that Nones are unbelievers suggests that the major data highlights bear repeating: 68% of the Unaffiliated in general believe in God or a Universal Spirit Among those who self-identify as Atheist/Agnostic, 38% say they believe in God or a Univ…

New Report: Muslim Terrorism a ‘Minuscule Threat’

By Hussein Rashid

…orism overseas in places like Somalia and Yemen. Even if we take the conservative number of 2 million Muslims in the U.S., that means 0.01% of Muslims are involved in terrorism-related activity over the span of a decade. Per annum, it is 0.001%. If we take a more realistic number of 4 million American Muslims, the numbers become 0.005% over a decade, or 0.0005% per year. Last year there were 14,000 homicides in the U.S., and with a population of 3…

Why We Must Reclaim “Religious Freedom” from Christian Conservatives

By Bill Berkowitz

…hristian Right mounted a major effort to redefine religious freedom. Conservative evangelical leaders working in close—and I think underappreciated—alliance with leaders of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have reconfigured the Christian Right to wage the culture wars of the 21st century. Religious freedom is central to their strategy. I would go so far as to say that no understanding of the Christian Right is complete or even accu…