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What Do ‘The Christians’ Believe? Easter Reflections from a Non-Christian

By Gary Laderman

…ses to Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity to get a feeling for the way this debate takes place in real time. And beyond the sorts of theological, political, and institutional differences among Christians of various stripes is the simple but complicating fact of globalilzation. Christianity is unquestionably the dominant religious presence in America, though the contours and composition of this tradition in the United States have been and…

The American Media’s Longterm Ambivalence About the Papacy

By Peter Manseau

…mage forecasts that Life’s Catholic coverage would differ from Time’s in a number of ways. First and most obviously, it depicts a woman; second and perhaps less so, it depicts work. The lives of Catholics, the picture says, do not require the stillness or the clerical luxury depicted in many of Time’s cover images of prelates and popes. Life’s cover images of lived-religion would continue with the then-famous Dionne sisters (the first known quintu…

Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue

By Cody J. Sanders

…e of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. I cannot count the number of times I have heard well-meaning, good-hearted people respond to this appeal, saying, “Things are a lot better for gay people today than they were several years (or decades) ago. In time, our society (or churches) will come around on this issue.” To these friends and others, I must say, “It’s time.” For Lucas, Brown, Clementi, Walsh, and Chase the time is up. For t…

We Were Here Before September 11th

By Amina Wadud

…ca for a select Brown Muslim population. Still African-American Muslims outnumber them, and face double invisibility and erasure: from within and from without. So, if you ever wonder why I don’t comment on some of the “top” stories in the news about Islam in America, I intentionally try not to respond to sensationalism. I don’t comment about a story if the story already gets enough media attention and if the story does not help script the dynamics…

Halloween, Evangelicals, and the Macabre

By John W. Morehead

…itique of all things macabre and “occultic.” American evangelicalism has always had a strong sense of evil which it battles in various manifestations—frequently in the form of popular culture. This sense of the presence of and confrontation with evil, however, ramps up during the Halloween season whether the focus is the holiday itself or those minority religions associated with it. In regards to the season itself, most evangelical churches will o…

Commies, Blacks, Jews, the UCC and Other Threats to America

By Daniel Schultz

…nal Urban League, the National Baptist Convention, People for the American Way and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. My first reaction to this was to wonder why the Times is acting as Glenn Beck’s hatchet man. About the only thing these groups have in common is that they endorsed this rally. What, exactly, is the point of listing them all together? To make clear who Beck doesn’t like? To convince readers that the UCC, black Baptists and oth…

Do Space Aliens Need Baptism? The View From Gliese 581g

By Paul Wallace

…stly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” What’s more, whether or not it reflects reality, there is an unavoidable psychological tendency to associate the small with the insignificant. This may be seen in the history of astronomy, which is a history of receding horizons. Scientists have often balked (and not always for scientific reasons) at man…

What Pence and Kaine Reveal About Divides in Catholicism

By Patricia Miller

…ted States has created an environment that bifurcates Catholics in unusual ways. But it’s not: In 2014, a global survey conducted by Univision found that most of the planet’s Catholics disagree with the church on birth control, abortion rights, divorce, and priestly celibacy. But of course what really divides the left and right isn’t just their views on hot-button issues. Increasingly it’s the question of exactly what it means to express those vie…

The Devil is in the Details

By Amina Wadud

…ash for travel with the knowledge that using ATMs abroad is always a great way to get the best rates. Yep that’s right. The U.S. always considers its own currency to have slightly greater value than the local money changers and banks. They consider their own currency to have the greater value. So I lived in Indonesia for a year and a half without ever getting a local bank account. At this point the ubiquitous ATM is one way to access your own reso…

Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

By Diane Winston

…of increased religious influence on American society is just a cataclysm away. Religion’s saliency for political machinations, cultural inspiration, and social movements is a separate reality from the growing number of nones. Both need coverage. But the Gallup data raises questions that I’ve rarely seen addressed in recent years. What does faith look and feel like in flyover country? As a cub reporter, I wrote about the greying mainline, their in…