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Now That ‘Serial’ is Over: 2014’s Best Podcasts about Religion

By Andrew Aghapour

…ilored distract us during mundane tasks, that you just might stave off holiday depression. I’m talking about podcasts! Podcasts are digital audio files that can be streamed on the web or downloaded straight to your smartphone (think radio meets YouTube). Low overheads have made podcasting a diverse and democratic medium, attracting everyone from established radio programs to Christian pastors and stand-up comedians. To help you make it through the…

What do the January 6 Commission, Covid Deaths and Gun Massacres All Have in Common? God’s Chosen

By John Stoehr

…like it implicitly—in that they have decided, as a political party over a number of years, that only Republicans can rule legitimately. The country is politically polarized, because the Republicans now insist on a polarized worldview in which the Republicans are good, because they are good and the Democrats are bad, because they are bad. Calls to “do the right thing,” like establishing a truth commission, cannot therefore be seen as merely “doing…

Warships, Animals, Pubs Eligible For Blessings From Church of England, But Not Same-Sex Couples; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…or now,” he said. The secretary general was addressing Synod in London the day after it rejected a report from the House of Bishops on marriage and sexuality. He told the meeting he knew the issue of same-sex marriage was highly emotive and any decision they took would leave some disappointed and wounded. He said that in his home nation of Nigeria the single most pressing issue around human sexuality was the criminalisation of homosexuality. “The…

The Quixotic Task of Debunking David Barton

By Paul Harvey

…futations of Barton’s bogus empiricism. I’ve considered these questions a number of times recently in observing historians struggling to deal with the popularity of figures such as David Barton, who bowdlerize history but get the kind of attention few actual historians receive for their work. To What Effect? These debates go back a long way. When I was in college at a Baptist denominational school in Oklahoma, the biology professor, a man about…

The 50 Shades of Evangelicalism

By Jonathan D. Fitzgerald

…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…

‘Religious Freedom’ Rally Sets Stage for 1st Amendment Collision

By Sarah Posner

…’s rhetoric, along with that of Sandra Nettina of the anti-choice group 40 Days for Life, was a textbook example of unscientific anti-contraception propaganda peddled by the Catholic Bishops and their supporters. Nettina claimed the number of abortions increase with greater access to contraceptives, a trope commonly used to assert that contraception fails and therefore does not decrease the number of unintended pregnancies. This claim echoes state…

Post-Election, “Is The Black Church Dead?” Redux

By Anthea Butler

…and a growing number of conservative African-American candidates. A record number of black Republicans ran in this midterm election (some had already lost their primaries), and two are heading to Congress. Tim Scott will be the first African-American Republican to represent South Carolina in Congress since Reconstruction. (He beat out Strom Thurmond’s son in the primaries.) Iraq war veteran Allen West will be headed to Congress from Florida, despi…

Growing Up Cult: A Memoir of Life with Sri Chinmoy

By Brittany Shoot

…xperiments), she began to question the idea of devotion to a guru. After a number of attempts to leave, she broke free of the group at age twenty-five. I recently caught up with Tamm to talk about Sri Chinmoy’s death, her use of the word “cult,” and what her spiritual life looks like today. ** Did it make a difference to his followers that Sri Chinmoy was from India? Did it give him extra authority? In the late 1960s, there was a trend to look to…

$50 Billion Fundamentalist Free Fall

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…an the tip, the system is, if not quite secure, then stable at least. When numbers of new investors decrease, as is inevitable in a finite universe, the seismic shocks ensue. What triggered this now is the overwhelming feeling of crisis on Wall Street and throughout the country. Simply put, a number of Madoff’s investors needed their money (even the very wealthy are feeling pinched in this downturn), and he was confronted with the impossibility of…

Catholic Voters No Longer Beholden to Bishops and Abortion

By Mary E. Hunt

…ittee on Pluralism and Abortion took out an ad in the New York Times on Sunday, October 7, 1984, a month before the election, to claim that “a diversity of opinions regarding abortion exists among committed Catholics.” The text continued: “A large number of Catholic theologians hold that even direct abortion, though tragic, can sometimes be a moral choice.” The ad included a call for “candid and respectful discussion on this diversity of opinion w…