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Romania’s “Witch Tax”: Magic Meets Bureaucracy

By Joseph Laycock

…whistle. About four in five Romanians are Orthodox Christians. Unlike self-described witches in the United States and Western Europe, Romanian witches do not see their practice as a religious tradition distinct from Christianity. Instead their rituals appear to be syncretic, combining Christian and pre-Christian symbols. The sign of the cross is ubiquitous in witch rituals and some blessings require candles purchased from a church. However, the s…

American Supports Ugandan Anti-Gay Bill

By Michael Wilkerson

…dealing with a controversy they never wanted.” He then pivoted to the blame-the-West assertion so popular among the bill’s Ugandan supporters. “What I found out was that NGOs, the UN, and UNICEF were coming in and promoting an agenda that the church of Uganda did not want to be in this nation.” Engle was careful never to explicitly call for the passage of the bill itself, and to avoid being accused of inciting violence. “We are not standing with v…

A Pastor Takes on BP in New Orleans

By Brentin Mock

…trainings at the church—which is more like a community center—to employ out-of-work fishers in oil clean-up. By the end of the meeting he was announcing that BP had agreed to this. Like Obama said, Father Vien gets what he wants. But the training was a bust, mainly due to the language complications. BP brought in two interpreters who not only couldn’t translate the technical terms of the hazardous material curriculum, but also used a dialect unint…

Rev. Smith Goes to Washington

By Frederick Clarkson

…inadvertently emulate the religious right by seeking to impose religiously-driven political views on the rest of society, and thereby become “left-wing theocrats.” How do you explain to voters how you relate your values to politics and public policy? If I ever felt that my role as an elected official would force me to violate my understanding of what it means to be a Christian I would resign my office. I want people to know that and understand th…

Religion vs. Girls’ Education

By Susan Henking

…ues arises. Most recently, for example, there is the movement toward gender-neutral housing at colleges and universities in the United States. This shift is linked to lesbian/gay and transgender rights, but also has the effect of complicating the safety of women; and thus a movement activists on the right and some feminists have questioned, while others are in substantial support ( see here and here). In the capitalist arena of college and univers…

Claremont and the Agony of the Seminaries

By Daniel Schultz

…heart came after the school managed to allay fears “that we were turning a United Methodist-related seminary into something very different.” The story points to something of the agony of seminaries these days. They can’t sustain the institutions without the support of the sponsoring denominations. But at the same time, they can’t exist with only that support, which means that they have to find other sources of revenue. It’s common for seminaries t…

Gay Marriage Supporters Rally People of Faith for Washington’s November Vote

By Nicole Neroulias

…m not throwing a bouquet,” he said, with a chuckle. His fiancée, an Episcopal vicar, made an “It Gets Better” video: But will it? If Referendum 74 passes, their state will become the first to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote. Washington United for Marriage has phone banks scheduled until November, with at least four more dedicated “people of faith” nights to make their case….

A State Without a Mexican

By Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado

…a on paper, it is indicative of a broader xenophobia that is engulfing the United States. A May Pew Research survey indicates that the majority of the US public supports Arizona’s law, including those provisions that were blocked by Judge Susan Bolton’s injunction. This, in spite of the fact that in another Pew survey, most Americans believe that Hispanics are the most discriminated against group in the contemporary United States. A recent CNN pol…

“Even the Rich Suffer”: An Interview with Google’s Jolly Good Fellow Chade-Meng Tan

By Max Zahn

…money, and the meaning of life. –The Eds. Also on The Cubit: Zen and the Art of Zombie Killing Follow The Cubit, RD‘s religion-and-science portal, @TheCubit…

The Way We Never Were: Calling Out Evangelicals For Hypocrisy Misses the Point

By Hollis Phelps

…vangelicals as hypocritical, as somehow out of step with otherwise stated ideals. Such ideals remain too abstract for the sake of criticism and, if we cut past the lofty religious rhetoric, we’ll find that contemporary evangelicalism is simply what it is. There’s no depth behind their political activism and posturing, for these simply constitute evangelicalism in its contemporary form. It’s their religion. Second, those on the so-called Christian…