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A History of the Unaffiliated: How the “Spiritual Not Religious” Gospel Has Spread

…favor of Darwinism, psychology, and comparative religions. The majority of today’s religious “nones”—those who claim no religion but still embrace spirituality—are engaged in the same task of renovating their faith for a new historical moment. And typically, they draw from this same liberal religious toolkit. Today’s unaffiliated, like the liberals of previous generations, typically shun dogma and creed in favor of a faith that is practical, psych…

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Angry Voters, Right-Wing Populism, & Racial Violence: People of Faith Can Help Break the Linkages

…to be held accountable for their racism. Too many people are hearing this coded rhetoric and deciding that the real problem with the economy must be folks of color, immigrants, and the Jews.” During the last period of Patriot and militia growth in the mid-1990s, Ward witnessed this coded racist rhetoric being tested in the margins of the right-wing media, though it has since moved into the mainstream. In the past year I’ve interviewed dozens of a…

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Opportunity Knocks in Pew Results

…ness and diversity of our tradition. Faced with the revelation that 73% of today’s American Jews regard remembering the Shoah as a lynchpin of their Judaism, I see educational and spiritual opportunity knocking. That three in every minyan don’t identify with a particular denomination intrigues me. Given today’s three transdenominational seminaries (ALEPH, AJR, and Hebrew College) I suspect that percentage may grow in years to come. For me that’s a…

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The Reagan Era, Still Going

…and capitulation to Wall Street leading to a colossal financial crash. But today the Reagan era is enduring in stranger forms than ever. Republican leaders want to bust unions and give another tax cut to corporations and the rich, plus eliminate taxes on capital gains and inheritance. They want to privatize Social Security, turn Medicare into a voucher program, reduce Medicaid to block grants, and abolish the Affordable Care Act. They want a balan…

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Lurid Picture of Nigeria’s Muslims in Newsweek

…of the country (the so-called Middle Belt), attempts to partition Nigeria today would leave the Muslim majority in the country’s northern third high and dry in economic terms. It would also plunge the religiously-mixed Middle Belt into endless chaos, as much based on the tensions between farmers and herders as on religious differences. Level heads in all parts of Nigeria, Christian and Muslim, realize the essential interdependence of all the coun…

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‘This is a War Meeting…This is Gonna Get Dirty,’ Anti-Woke Capitalism, & American ‘History’: Day 2 Roundup

…e key to these local victories. Pastor Jentezen Franklin, Senior Pastor at Free Chapel, based in Georgia, exclaims during his speech that “America is the greatest nation on earth. God—well, after Israel, that is.” Franklin lavishes praise on Tony Perkins, calling him a leader “who is carrying the torch, fought the fight, defended this land physically and defended this land even more when he came out of the military by defending freedom.” Perkins n…

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New Book on Trump and Evangelicals Gets it Mostly Right

…merge with their national counterparts until 1968 and 1983, respectively. Today’s Presbyterian Church in America emerged from pro-segregation Southern Presbyterians and only recently repented of its racist roots. A key question today might involve the degree to which a Southern ethos, complete with its implicit racism, shapes American evangelicalism. This is a good and timely book. Fea is correct that evangelicals feel a sense of cultural disenfr…

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Religion at Decade’s End

…Western-style political leaders like the Shah. We live in that world still today, and it is in this sense that we did not need the September 11 attacks to learn that a certain form of neotraditional religiosity was alive and well around the world.  What happened in the new century, and what has taken up a great deal of our cultural attention in the past decade, is that certain forms of neo-traditional religion became increasingly violent, very fas…

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‘Biblical’ Disaster in Haiti: Pat Robertson and the Curse of Unyielding Ignorance

…ing the same platitudes that others spout on days when it does not matter. Today it matters, though, and Robertson seems oblivious to the fact that today the rules have changed. Pat is undoubtedly bad public relations. But does Jesus need a PR firm? Shouldn’t He be able to take care of himself? Offended Christians should hold their existential crisis in check and act as they claim Jesus would. Suffering Haitian people don’t need a theological defe…

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Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

…rsonally satisfying visions and leaving aside the rest is testament to our freedom, democracy, and relative affluence. In the West, life is good and we have things in abundance. Heaven, then, is an extension of the best of this life. When ideas of heaven were first cohering, life for believers was not at all good. The Jews who first conceived of heaven as we know it today were under assault, literally, from their Greek rulers. Christians, at the b…

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