Religion Dispatches
…llion atheists in the U.S., a full 26% of the country. The most charitable number I could find was from Gallup, putting the number of Americans in 2014 who say they don’t believe in God at 11%. To make things frustratingly worse, other atheists have been calling Silverman out for falsely inflating the number of atheists for more than four years. And last year, I specifically asked Silverman if he would stop reporting the stats on “nones” as being…
Read More…been your favorite comment from a reader, or, one or two of your favorite comments. [RB]: There’ve been a number who have said, “You know, I might actually believe in God now.” And that’s from across the spectrum of every sort of background and non-religious background, every sort of background. That’s been a consistent theme: “You know what? I actually might… I think I might now follow this Jesus.” [WG]: I know you’ve had some stunning negative…
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…isiana State University, has a similar story. Believing that even within a common faith community students ought to be free to explore a variety of perspectives, Overbay allowed his film students to create classroom projects that did not adhere to Asbury’s public performance guidelines. All public performances at Asbury, according to these guidelines, must “promote a Christian worldview,” while cursing, taking the Lord’s name in vain, and sexual i…
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…dings with the 11 subjects (from page 1555, see below). Bussee was subject number two and Cooper was number one. Both Bussee and Cooper were rated as Kinsey 6 (exclusively homosexual) before change and a 0 (exclusively heterosexual) after change. Since there was no follow-up, this study has been used to support the proposition that gays could change to straight via religious mediation. For instance, not knowing any of this background at the time,…
Read More…urdered more than 300 million individuals,” going so far as to divide that number up: “3/4 Hindu/Buddhist, Animist/Pagan 1/4 Christian/Jewish/Zoroastrian.” So, while it’s true that he borrows a lot of imagery and language from the Christian crusades, such a list of world religions indicates that Breivik also thought in terms of modern religious diversity. It wasn’t merely Christendom versus Islam, it was a world of peaceful religions defending the…
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…tic”—actions in the denomination, it is impossible to know whether opening communion would encourage newcomers or turn away existing members, but it is certainly an issue worth following. The End is Where? It goes almost without saying that mainline Protestantism is in an extended period of at least numerical, if not spiritual, decline, and many commentators have taken the occasion of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church—still an importa…
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…ary time―a kind of historical hinge point in our relationship to death and community. Could the unwelcomed ubiquity of death rupture our contemporary hesitation to discuss death openly, making death-talk less taboo? Rather than a typical American avoidance of any serious talk about death, will we turn toward one another in collaborative dialogue about end-of-life questions and advance directives, funerary rituals that honor our connection to the e…
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…igion that really doesn’t fit what is going on in real world. Rather than imposing a category that forces a multi-dimensional reality into a dichotomous measure of religious or not, or thinking about religion as a purely numbers game of what group has the most adherents, we might shift our attention to focus on how religion, values, relationships and meaning really operate in the lives of individuals and communities—religious or not….
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…” Why is it important for you to state that up front? To come out in black communities, to come out in the Christian church, even to come out in some womanist circles has not been a easy thing to do. I identify in these ways so that the reader understands that I’m taking a very serious stand. I’m saying: this is who I am. How I identify is not fully embraced by all people, but I am here. I exist. I won’t allow my existence to be erased by the poli…
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…lestinian refugees back into Israel each year for the next thirty years, a number that would not seriously endanger the population balance, apologize for its role in the 1948 expulsions of Palestinians (known as al Naqba), and offer to coordinate a worldwide effort to raise funds to compensate Palestinians for all that they lost during the Occupation; 4. Recognize a Palestinian state within borders already defined by the Geneva Accord of 2003. Thi…
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