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

By Kaya Oakes

…elt, as a journalist, I needed to set the record straight.” Reached on the phone on July 2nd, Merritt described a slowly degrading relationship with RNS, where he began blogging in 2013. Merritt was hired by former editor Kevin Eckstrom, who assured Merritt the blog would be fully under Merritt’s control. “Within six months,” Merritt says, “people really began to take notice” of his blog, and it soon became RNS’ “number one traffic generator,” and…

Spiritual McCarthyism and the Catholic Vote

By Bill Berkowitz

…on and same-sex marriage their top political issues.” In the 2000 presidential election, Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore won a small majority of Catholic voters over George W. Bush. Four years later, while the Gallup poll, exit polls and the American National Election Studies project disagreed on which way the Catholic vote had gone, it was clear Bush had closed the gap. The turnaround was in part due to a Republican Party project specif…

The Pope in My Pocket; We Are All Dilettantes Now

By Michael A. Elliott

…of reflection, also of silence… and surely they can contribute to a new socialization.” Socialization is the key to the success of the iPhone, which itself has inspired a level of devotion frequently compared to religious faith. The cult of the iPhone revolves around the notion that its smooth, technocolor surface signals a web of connections between its owner and a network of users who are global, hip, and savvy. But it is also true that the iPho…

Gay Marriage Supporters Rally People of Faith for Washington’s November Vote

By Nicole Neroulias

…of faith. Four years ago, they watched in horror and disbelief as California’s marriage equality law was repealed by Proposition 8, aided by the money of religious conservatives, much of which came from outside the state. Washington could go the same way, now that its February law has been stalled by the successful referendum petition circulated by churches, endorsed by the Catholic bishops, and helmed by Joseph Backholm, a prominent evangelical…

Google’s Benevolent Interfaith Big Tent

By Lucia Hulsether

…aring the story, she returns home, opens Google India, and tracks down the phone number for the sweet shop her grandfather mentioned. Within seconds, she has called the store on her smart phone, and Yusuf’s grandson—who answers—has likewise opened Google to research visas for a reunion too long denied. We can understand the implications of this storyline by putting it into conversation with its longer historical context. The logic of the plot—that…

How Muslim Civic Activism Helped Pass California’s Prop 47

By Nick Street

…ns to distribute voter pledge cards and enlist volunteers to canvass potential voters and staff phone banks. He said that the positive responses to his phone pitch for Prop 47 were an unexpected surprise. “It’s been amazing to see how many people were supporting this,” Hakim said. “There are more people that think about justice than I realized!” The momentum for collaborative Muslim faith-based activism around Prop 47 began to build earlier this y…

Behind a Recent Stunt in Idaho Lies a Dangerous Theocratic Movement

By Chrissy Stroop

…y for RD. Asked to explain how economic libertarianism gels with authoritarian Christianity, Ingersoll told RD, “These perspectives are compatible because, for far right-wing Christians, a society organized according to biblical law will leave patriarchal families operating unfettered by an extraordinarily limited civil government.” As an example, she mentioned Christian Reconstructionist leader Gary North, a sometime economic adviser to Ron Paul,…

On Pi Day, Puzzling Over the Most Famous Transcendental Number

By Ilana E. Strauss

…an papyrus from 1650 BCE goes with 3.1605. In 250 BCE, the Greek mathematician Archimedes discovered a geometrical approach to calculating pi, proving that pi is somewhere between 3.1408 and 3.1429. Today, supercomputers can calculate over 13.3 trillion digits of pi. It’s not just mathematicians who seem to be entranced by pi. Each year on March 14th, many people mark the time at 1:59 and 26 seconds—in other words, the time 3.14 1:59:26. Others wi…

Transgender and Christian: Finding Identity

By Jori Lewis

…eference to the metamorphosis of Jesus to a being with a visible divine radiance. Toscano describes the play as “a biblical magic trip.” It’s a one-man show that explores the stories people of indeterminate gender, of Joseph and his girl-like ways (remember his coat of many colors?), and of Deborah and her man-like ones. In Toscano’s play, he includes two sketches with eunuchs. In one of them, he tells the biblical story of the Ethiopian eunuch wh…

The March for Life: Grassroots Movement or Agitprop?

By Patricia Miller

…ganizers complain that the media ignores the march, evidence of liberal media bias against the pro-life movement. As Tim Graham of the conservative Media Research Center told Washington Times in 2009: Anyone climbing on a bus from somewhere else, thinking they’re going to wave into a network news camera, is going to be very disappointed. In the last 20 years, despite large annual crowds, the liberal manufacturers of TV have simply never found the…