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In the Aftermath of the “Himalayan Tsunami”

By Luke Whitmore

…d an unwillingness to slow down the pace of development in the face of ever-rising numbers of visitors to the region. Ravi Chopra has noted that for the careful observer of Indian weather patterns of the last two decades the intensity of the flooding should not have come as the utter surprise that it did. These broader trajectories underlie what is happening now. From the safety of my office, as I read the news and engage with observers online,…

On Pi Day, Puzzling Over the Most Famous Transcendental Number

By Ilana E. Strauss

…its like a mantra. Cliff Pickover, a math and science author and the editor-in-chief of the IBM Journal of Research and Development, says that pi’s endless stream of numbers must contain all possible numerical representations. If you calculated pi long enough, you’d eventually find the works of Shakespeare coded in 1’s and 0’s. “Somewhere inside the digits of pi is a representation for all of us — the atomic coordinates of all our atoms, our genet…

Malta Adopts Marriage Equality Over Objections of Catholics and Evangelicals; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…cher at a religious think tank who calls Protestant churches “the most well-connected and well-financed lobby machine in this nation”: Many South Korean churches took their cues from evangelical US megachurches that since the 1980s have expanded their influence through campaigns against abortion and homosexuality, Kim said. South Korea is also home to many megachurches, including the world’s largest congregation of nearly 800,000. But their reputa…

Religious Exceptions Not So Exceptional According to New Study

By Patricia Miller

…most Catholic health care institutions have accepted the accommodation, a number of the nation’s 260 Catholic institutions of higher learning as well as Catholic nonprofits are seeking a broader exemption that would in effect bar their insurers from providing contraceptive coverage as specified under the accommodation designed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a consolidated case challenging th…

Milquetoast Liberal Religion Won’t Challenge Conservative Values: A History Lesson

By Sheila D. Collins

…rything else in social ethics. Faced with mass unemployment, social workers-turned-government administrators like Harry Hopkins, head of Roosevelt’s Federal Emergency Relief Administration, and his assistant, Aubrey Williams, held the view that unemployment was caused by a lack of jobs, not by the failure of the unemployed to seek or accept work, which was the view (supported by the teaching of classical and neo-classical economists) on which the…

Vatican Reverses Anti-Liberation Policies in Mexico

By Ruth Chojnacki and Jennifer Scheper Hughes

…ndigenous deacons in Chiapas was the brainchild of Bishop Samuel Ruiz (1924-2011), one of the beloved (so-called) “red bishops” of Latin America and a renowned advocate of Mexico’s Maya and other indigenous peoples during his four decade episcopal ministry. An erstwhile seminary rector, Bishop Ruiz was “converted” by the poor of his diocese, much as Oscar Romero had been. There are more than two million Maya indigenous in the Diocese of San Cristo…

Heterosexual Martyrs and Gay Saints: Did AIDS Coverage Clear the Way for LGBT Equality?

By Diane Winston

…rested in the gay community and assumed their view reflected the population-at-large. The only stories that roused them were marked by sensationalism or conflict. As the dimensions of the AIDS epidemic emerged, these two themes—gay libertinism and religious condemnation—became frames for seeing the disease as a moral as well as medical problem. Even stories that were not about religious responses to AIDS often evoked the moral/medical axis. As the…

Clergy May Soon Find Taxes Soaring As Result of an Under-the-Radar Ruling

By Patrick Hornbeck

…housing allowance exemption fails the Lemon test. The exemption for church-provided housing, which excludes from taxation the cost of housing provided directly by a religious employer, has secular analogues and can be construed as falling within the longstanding tax exemptions for housing provided for the “convenience of the employer.” But the housing allowance rule, Crabb held, serves no secular purpose and in fact gives preferential treatment t…

“Tell Me What You Believe About Ferguson, and I’ll Tell You What You Believe About God”: A Missouri Pilgrimage

By Anita Little

…a bus to Ferguson with two local activists—Rika Tyler and hip hop artist T-Dubb-O—to walk the same path that the eighteen-year-old Brown took on that fateful day in the summer of 2014. Both in their 20s and born in St. Louis, Tyler and T-Dubb-O became engaged politically after the death of Mike Brown, putting themselves on the front line of the uprising. They soon started Hands Up United, a grassroots organization that fights for the liberation o…

Is Joel Osteen, Success Mag Cover Boy, Really “God’s Best”?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…and be rich. Not all rich people are heartless bastards.” Osteen’s Houston-based Lakewood (mega-)Church reaches about 40,000 people a week with Osteen’s folksy, feel-good, “God wants you to succeed, too” theology. Osteen took over the church from his father and more than quadrupled the 6,000 member church into what it is today. Osteen told the magazine his success—multi-million dollar contracts for books, a nice home, national media attention—has…