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What Can Fascination With ‘Sister Cindy’ Teach Us About the ‘None’ Generation?

By Chad Bauman

…ful conservative religious people would likely be concerned to discover—to use Christian language—that the scandal of the gospel has largely lost the power to scandalize (an enervation for which they themselves are, in my view, largely responsible). And if religion indeed no longer has this power, then we may perhaps imagine that religion of the kind that made real claims on and demands of people is heading, like that elderly aunt, rather headlong…

Yes, It Can Be Hard to Be an Atheist in America; Now We Have the Data

By Chrissy Stroop

…o get at “a coming out experience,” though the survey deliberately did not use that language in order to avoid possible confusion. Asked whether she thinks the phrase “coming out” belongs only to the LGBTQ community, Gill remarked, “I would vehemently disagree with that; I think it belongs to everybody. And I see a lot of similarities between being nonreligious and being LGBT.” She stressed that this does not mean that the stigma and discriminatio…

Ultra Orthodox Murder-Suicide Makes Headlines

By Shalom Goldman

…an on a Tel Aviv street and then turned his gun on himself, was trained to use a gun. In fact he had been working as a security guard. Among Israeli Jews, for whom there is universal military conscription, this type of work would not have been at all unusual, but among the ultra-Orthodox it was striking. For under Israeli law the ultra-Orthodox are exempt from the draft. All Haredi men and women are free from the responsibility of spending years i…

Palin Cries ‘Blood Libel’: Can Words Harm Us?

By Susannah Heschel

…eace and prosperity for all, not just for ourselves. Palin’s insistence on freedom seems to suggest freedom for oneself, without assuming any responsibility for others; a perspective that would create a wild realm in which each person looks out for herself, not for the collective. Yet again, that is not the message of the Bible. When God points out immoral behavior, it is of the collective people, not individuals. The prophet Amos condemns the cri…

The Problem With Solving The Abortion Problem

By Daniel Schultz

…ns who suffer because of non-existent or inadequate health, or worse — because the Insurers have had the freedom to play God with their lives. How is it that we’ve rewarded those hateful charlatans with fame and fortune while effectively shunning those who actually minister to real people with real problems? Maybe now that change is in the air, now that unprecedented numbers of our citizens need an unprecedented amount of help, we’ll look to the r…

Evangelicals Call Christian Zionist Uncritical “Support” for Israel “Appalling” and “Intolerable”

By Sarah Posner

…ined “the Arabs living in that land right now under Israeli control have a better quality of life, they’re freer and more prosperous than in any other Arab country.” Gushee and Stassen, though, continue with a sharp rebuke of Christian Zionism and its role in the oppression of the Palestinians: This Christian version of Zionism matters deeply, not just because theology intrinsically matters, but because it is overwhelmingly clear that American eva…

So What if Psychedelics Are ‘Just’ Spiritual?

By Hollis Phelps

…it’s pretty much a commonplace among many researchers that the intentional use of psychedelics in certain environments (what users and researchers refer to as “set and setting”) can mimic and perhaps even produce authentic mystical experiences. Indeed, many who take psychedelics do so mainly for what they consider to be the spiritual benefit of the experiences they offer. Using psychedelics isn’t so much recreational, in this sense, but a controll…

Religion as a Front for Tyranny: A Roundtable on the Timeliness of Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”

By Anita Little

…, agency and voice. The Handmaid’s Tale series feels so relevant today because it focuses on the experiences of a woman living under an oppressive regime. When reproductive rights activists in Texas and Missouri staged protests wearing handmaid’s costumes, it was a chilling statement that the Gilead regime does not seem far-fetched but frighteningly familiar. Patricia Miller: I think it’s important to note that Atwood said she didn’t put anything…

Mass Conversion: Changing Churches to Stop the Church From Changing

By Elizabeth Drescher

…copal churches functions less to “bridge and heal a wound that has existed between Rome and Anglicanism for nearly five hundred years” than as a salve for the sting of change that continues apace in every religious institution—the Roman Catholic Church included? Is the fantasy at work in the Maryland congregation’s appeal to the magisterial authority of the Roman Church is that changing churches can somehow stop the church from changing? Inventing…

The ‘Charlie Charlie Challenge’ and Teenage Yearning for Supernatural Encounters

By Joseph Laycock

…arlie as a demon appears only to make him more appealing. Ellis notes that use of the Ouija board has a structure similar to exorcism, in which an entity is called forth, named, questioned, and then dismissed. The Charlie Charlie challenge eschews some of these elements because the conjured entity is already identified and the game/ritual does not allow for open-ended responses. And yet the ritualistic opening and closing remain. Players emphasize…