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A Peek Inside the ‘Onion’ of Scientology

By Kristin Rawls

…rs, those people who had a real connection to the material and who really knew what they were doing. While the substance has diminished, the externals of the Church have greatly expanded. So, you may look at the Churches of Scientology all over the world and say, “Wow, they’re really big!” But when I went to the New York organization five years ago, during the peak of the Tom Cruise period, there was no one there. I went back two or three times a…

Prisoners In the Hands of an Angry God: A Conversation About Religion and Reform

By Andrew Aghapour and Stephanie Gaskill

…justice system. It’s not just that American prisons hold disproportionate numbers of African Americans. It’s that this racial composition created public support for, or at least indifference towards, “tough on crime” and “law and order” policies. Politicians have been able to pass harsh sentencing laws and build more prisons in part because deeply entrenched racial prejudices make the general public less likely to sympathize with the low-income A…

The Quixotic Task of Debunking David Barton

By Paul Harvey

…futations of Barton’s bogus empiricism. I’ve considered these questions a number of times recently in observing historians struggling to deal with the popularity of figures such as David Barton, who bowdlerize history but get the kind of attention few actual historians receive for their work. To What Effect? These debates go back a long way. When I was in college at a Baptist denominational school in Oklahoma, the biology professor, a man about…

‘Religious Freedom’ Rally Sets Stage for 1st Amendment Collision

By Sarah Posner

…peddled by the Catholic Bishops and their supporters. Nettina claimed the number of abortions increase with greater access to contraceptives, a trope commonly used to assert that contraception fails and therefore does not decrease the number of unintended pregnancies. This claim echoes statements made by the Bishops themselves, as well as anti-contraception groups, that birth control doesn’t work and is harmful to women’s health. Hagen recommende…

Post-Election, “Is The Black Church Dead?” Redux

By Anthea Butler

…s mobilization, voter apathy, and a growing number of conservative African-American candidates. A record number of black Republicans ran in this midterm election (some had already lost their primaries), and two are heading to Congress. Tim Scott will be the first African-American Republican to represent South Carolina in Congress since Reconstruction. (He beat out Strom Thurmond’s son in the primaries.) Iraq war veteran Allen West will be headed t…

Growing Up Cult: A Memoir of Life with Sri Chinmoy

By Brittany Shoot

…into mainstream society. Cults, on the other hand, are commonly viewed as newer, informal organizations that are separate from mainstream society. My personal definition of a cult focuses on a number of key characteristics that cults share. The first is that a cult is centered around a single individual or a small group of leaders that possess total and complete authority over the members. The members cannot question, doubt, or criticize the lead…

$50 Billion Fundamentalist Free Fall

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…an the tip, the system is, if not quite secure, then stable at least. When numbers of new investors decrease, as is inevitable in a finite universe, the seismic shocks ensue. What triggered this now is the overwhelming feeling of crisis on Wall Street and throughout the country. Simply put, a number of Madoff’s investors needed their money (even the very wealthy are feeling pinched in this downturn), and he was confronted with the impossibility of…

‘Murder Among the Mormons,’ Latest True Crime Doc From Netflix, Highlights Issues of Faith, Skepticism, and Authenticity

By Benjamin E. Park

…was Hofmann a cold-blooded killer, but also the most successful forger in American history, having sold dozens of fake documents to a number of institutions for a total of over a million dollars. Hofmann’s is a story that is so enthralling that it would capture the nation’s admiration were it not for the outright fraud and tragic reality that it resulted in lost lives, broken homes, and devastated communities. This Wednesday, March 3, Netflix wil…

Catholic Voters No Longer Beholden to Bishops and Abortion

By Mary E. Hunt

…c, this alone is morally unspeakable. The larger picture is more promising in my view. A broader understanding of Catholic social justice teaching will prevail. War, want, and greed will be shown up for the contradictions they present to abundant life for all. New energy and new coalitions will emerge among those Catholics and many others who commit to creating a context in which peace, prosperity, and shared resources are the norm. How one cooper…

‘It’s a Gay Problem,’ and Other Myths From the Catholic Church’s Sexual Abuse Crisis

By Joelle Casteix

…re that tolerates them. In reality, the allegedly disproportionately large number of gay priests may be related to the problem, but it isn’t the cause of it. As Robert Mickens wrote in July, and as others have noted for years, the pathologizing of queer sexualities has driven many men to the priesthood, as the vow of celibacy offers what appears to be a safe haven from negotiating a forbidden path. As a result, although he’s careful to point out t…