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

By Andrew Aghapour

…ical war between an Orthodox Jewish community and their Latino and African-American neighbors is a case study in religious pluralism (or the impossibility thereof). Our second category winner is the most popular podcast in history, the This American Life spin-off Serial, which just wrapped up its first season. Over twelve episodes Serial untangles the 1999 murder trial of Adnan Syed, a 17-year-old Baltimore Muslim who was accused of killing his ex…

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

By John Stoehr

…iven by God to his chosen, which is to say, to white people. To many white Americans, the election of a Black president was, quite literally, a robbery. The Second Amendment can therefore be understood as a remedy to the crime, as a means of restoring a religious covenant, the Constitution itself, which for many white Americans is “linked to white nationalism and the idea that God has ordained this country for whites and therefore licenses white n…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…n his role.” More from Foreign Policy: Berry, an openly gay career Foreign Service officer whom conservative groups have derided as Obama’s “top gay activist,” became the first person to hold the position in February 2015. In December, Tony Perkins, the head of the conservative Family Research Council, implored Trump to launch a major purge of pro-LGBT diplomats inside Foggy Bottom. “The incoming administration needs to make clear that these liber…

The Religious Right’s Apocalyptic Visions of an Obama Presidency

By Bill Berkowitz

…oppression has now taken over” the country, and “hundreds of thousands of ‘American sympathizers’ have been labeled traitors, imprisoned, tortured, and killed.” At home, Obama directed U.S. intelligence services “to cease all wiretapping of alleged terrorist phone calls unless they first obtained a specific court warrant for each case.” Captured overseas terrorists are no longer given military tribunals but are “now given full trials in the U.S. c…

Prisoners In the Hands of an Angry God: A Conversation About Religion and Reform

By Andrew Aghapour and Stephanie Gaskill

…justice system. It’s not just that American prisons hold disproportionate numbers of African Americans. It’s that this racial composition created public support for, or at least indifference towards, “tough on crime” and “law and order” policies. Politicians have been able to pass harsh sentencing laws and build more prisons in part because deeply entrenched racial prejudices make the general public less likely to sympathize with the low-income A…

The Quixotic Task of Debunking David Barton

By Paul Harvey

…he same tack with the likes of Barton? It’s not clear. In recent months, a number of voices have demanded that historians rise to the task of debunking Barton’s claims, insisting that they cannot remain in their ivory towers. Even some historians who consistently have done so, such as John Fea, were criticized; evidently for not doing it enough. In a more popular and polemical vein, Chris Rodda has also exposed Barton’s distortions. Not surprisin…

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

By Sarah Posner

…to refer victims of rape and sexual assault for contraceptive and abortion services. Although the Bishops and their Republican allies argue that requiring them to refer women and girls for reproductive health services amounted to a government interference with their religious freedom, Judge Richard Stearns held that allowing them to refuse to make these referrals amounted to an impermissible government endorsement of religion. While that case woul…

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

By Anthea Butler

…s mobilization, voter apathy, 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 t…

$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…

PCUSA’s Nod to “Traditional” Marriage Understandable, but Not Accurate

By William E. Smith

…t and change. Many of these developments, furthermore, continue to shape a number of the assumptions American Christians have about the nature of marriage. Consider the following examples of historical changes in Christian marriage and whether we can honestly still call today’s version “traditional.” 1) Were individuals always required to be conventionally alive? For the majority of the past two thousand years, Christian women could marry Jesus, w…