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Exclusive: Columnist Jonathan Merritt on his Sudden Departure From Religion News Service

By Kaya Oakes

On June 28th, highly regarded and popular religion writer Jonathan Merritt posted a letter to his website informing readers that he would no longer be writing for Religion News Service. As Sarah Jones recently reported in the New Republic, the 84-year-old wire service has been undergoing what many insiders see as a “spectacular implosion,” with editor Jerome Socolosky being fired in an email by publisher Tom Gallagher, and veteran reporters Kimbe…

Spiritual McCarthyism and the Catholic Vote

By Bill Berkowitz

…paign appointed a Catholic National Advisory Council—made up of elected officials, scholars, and activists and co-chaired by Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine and several others—to reach out to Catholic voters. Less than a month later, Bill Donohue, the president of the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights (and a notorious opponent of progressive causes) called on the Obama c…

How Muslim Civic Activism Helped Pass California’s Prop 47

By Nick Street

…ward national trend in this week’s midterm elections. The victory of Proposition 47, for example, makes California the first state in the nation to “de-felonize” drug use. This sentencing-reduction measure won 60 percent of the vote and united a surprising array of supporters, including a conservative evangelical Christian billionaire whose advocacy for criminal justice reform attracted the attention of “some of his friends on the left.” Another s…

Behind a Recent Stunt in Idaho Lies a Dangerous Theocratic Movement

By Chrissy Stroop

…athering was “protected” by heavily-armed men, including infamous “Vanilla ISIS” terrorist Ammon Bundy, a Mormon anti-government extremist who led the occupation of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016. Having failed to gain the backing of the state GOP apparatus or of any state senators, the small group of extremist legislators ultimately admitted that they did not have a quorum. Nevertheless, they grandstanded and read the proclamat…

Is Joel Osteen, Success Mag Cover Boy, Really “God’s Best”?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…reduced to a kind of majordomo or personal assistant. He fixeth my parking tickets, he secureth me a good table in the restaurant, he leadeth me to book contracts. Even in these minor tasks, the invocation of God seems more of a courtesy than a necessity.” Gone, too, from Osteen’s theology is any mention of topics that might intrude on happy thoughts: Osteen avoids using current events in his messages so he doesn’t get sidetracked in controversy….

“You’ve Never Met a Muslim”

By Hussein Rashid

…community life, on the courage and goodness of New Yorkers, and on the horrific event that has shaped a generation of American Muslim life. Hussein Rashid_________ September 11, 2001. The day I became Muslim. That’s a lie. I am now a Muslim. I was not always. America made me Muslim. I was born into a Muslim family. Like all good children of immigrants, I rebelled. By the time I was 16, I was a firm Marxist, rejecting religion as an opiate of the…

Virgins and Vampire Worship: The Religion of Twilight

By Linda Kay Klein

“Why do you think girls like Twilight?” I asked my boyfriend’s 11-year-old daughter. “That’s easy,” she answered. “Boys without shirts.” When it comes to the casual fan, I gotta say, I think she’s right. The Twilight series is a kind of fashion show in which men model cloaks of masculinity. Their fictional enhancements represent masculine archetypes: Edward the vampire is cold, brooding, and obsessive; Jacob the wolf-man is warm, earthy, and oh y…

Advice from a Disaster Pastor: Open Your Wallet, Not Your Closet

By Carlos Wilton

…recovery process. Yet, many high-minded and generous people shrink from writing such a check. They’d rather fill a shopping cart with items for the disaster-relief truck than contribute an equivalent amount in cash. Why is that? Why hesitate to give money? There are two reasons, I think: money is an abstraction; and money is dangerous. There’s an inescapable material reality to natural disasters. Winds tear off roof-shingles. Water rises to the t…

On Pi Day, Puzzling Over the Most Famous Transcendental Number

By Ilana E. Strauss

…al of nerds, a math class gimmick, a chance to pause and reflect on the infinite, or just a good excuse to eat a lot of sugar. For these and many other reasons people around the world have taken March 14th to ponder geometry’s most popular constant. Pi (π), a number used to measure the circumference of circles, is approximately 3.1415. I say approximately because pi is a transcendental number, meaning that its decimal digits actually go on forever…

Contraception Isn’t Meat

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…Commonweal that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act violates religious freedom by requiring religious employers to provide health coverage that includes contraception with copay; I respectfully disagree that the analogy he offers is a valid one, and in a moment I’ll try to float my own. But it, too, will be imperfect—which I think just goes to show some of the absurdity of employer-sponsored health care in the United States. Boudway wri…