Religion Dispatches
…evolution is incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” a significant number of evangelicals are working to convince their fellow believers of their compatibility. Their efforts are evident in the increasing number of books, conferences, and organizations—such as Francis Collins’ BioLogos—that have formed around the topic. Cracks are likewise showing in what once was understood as a unanimous and uncritical evangelical support of Israel as ep…
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…percent of the total Russian population in 2021—according to the official numbers. When read against the dwindling numbers of some of Russia’s largest ethnic minority groups, such as Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvash, Avars, Armenians, and Ukrainians, this data suggests that many Russian citizens do not feel safe enough to disclose their ethnic identity in the current political climate defined by the Russification of the nation. See Robert Coalson, “Russ…
Read More…eny minority of people may take away their right to tell gays and lesbians that God will send them to hell for all eternity — out of love, mind you. But, then again, anti-gay Evangelicals have a right to be afraid. After all, researchers say the actual number of Evangelicals may well be “as small as 7 percent of the total adult population.” Which means Evangelicals know just how effective a small number of people can be at taking away the rights o…
Read More…d between atheists and religious communities. Of course, there are still a number of people who are, if not entirely resistant to the ideas in the book, at least deeply suspicious about or don’t see much value in them. One thing I find valuable about Faitheist is that it moves atheism away from the kind of polemic that ends up focusing on truth claims in a very literal way and so mirrors the religious fundamentalisms it would like to dismantle. A…
Read More…d the 2008 election; as I’ve argued before, he gained support across the a number of demographic groups, and it’s difficult to make the case that Obama won because he finally shed the Democrats’ (imagined) hostility to religion. If you’re a religious person whose faith compels you to favor government programs to support the less economically blessed among us, pulling the lever for McCain-Palin probably wasn’t in the cards. To add insult to injury…
Read More…aception. So is the salient difference the size of the list? Is there some number of things-this-paper-can-be-used-for that puts the employer at a safe moral distance from the act, where previously they had been complicit? If so, what’s the number? How long does the list of possible uses have to be to assuage the employer’s conscience enough to let the employees use their compensation for things the employer finds morally repugnant? See, here’s th…
Read More…approached then-Speaker Newt Gingrich about obtaining a room for the small number of Muslim staffers to hold Friday prayers. Gingrinch granted that request, and the tradition continued through the tenures of Speakers Dennis Hastert, also a Republican, and Nancy Pelosi. Over the years, the number of people attending grew, eventually leading to the creation of the CMSA around 2007, when Khan has already left Hill service and was working in the Bush…
Read More…a “bad career move.” But this opposition has only steeled the will of many students, including 18-year-old Brian Lisco, a senior at Stephen Austin High School in the Houston suburbs. The school offered a compromise—call it a Philosophy Club and drop any affiliation with the Secular Student Alliance. He refused. “We atheists are already invisible—we don’t come out. That’s a form of repression in itself. It’s about getting pushed to the margin of ou…
Read More…e day before Oaks’ speech, on February 3, a gay-rights activist invited by students to visit BYU had his tires slashed while parked in the lot of BYU’s Law School. A painful juxtaposition, especially inasmuch as the tire-slashing incident has made the news in Salt Lake City, but has not yet been acknowledged by the campus newspaper or University officials. Another LDS RD reader made the equally provocative observation that 18 years ago Oaks himsel…
Read More…More Muslims participate in the fast than any other ritual. Let’s get the numbers in our head then: of the 1.3 billion Muslims, if less than half are children and even children fast, then you could say almost a billion Muslims are fasting. I don’t think we can make a case about Ramadan and what ever number of incidents that might occur due to some individual Muslims. There is no statistical corollary between fasting, Islam, Muslims and the (still…
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