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El Salvador’s Newest Martyr?

By Becky Garrison

…undocumented workers) approximately one out of every hundred people in the United States come from this tiny country. As a taxpayer, I am more connected to this country than I thought I was. So, I wanted to go down to El Salvador to learn how this all started. What did you discover upon your arrival? When we went to the forensics lab in El Salvador to learn about the massacres that occurred in the 1980s and early ’90s, we learned about the level o…

What the Ferguson Protests Mean for Religious Progressive Activism

By Shannon Craigo-Snell

…as one among many who participated in protests in 170 locations around the United States. As the police gathered in numbers, as they ran towards us in the street, I felt an odd sense of hope. The ridiculously extreme response of authorities in Ferguson is an inverse measure of the potential of this movement. For people invested in white rule and racial disparity, the current protests are, indeed, a threat to the American way of life. But for many…

New Challenges to Gay Marriage Bans From Within States & Denominations

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…nk there is no doubt that the advocates who are driving this effort in the United States want to see us end up in that same place,” Cruz said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. He is, of course, not alone in his freak out. Certainly, it is only a matter of “when,” not “if,” marriage equality will eventually be the law of the land in the United States. Those who continue to stand in the path of the growing snowball of support…

Did the Church Create or Co-Opt Human Rights?

By Austin Dacey

…of Human Rights. The preamble to the Charter begins WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to regain faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small . . . . The preamble was drafted by the head of the South African…

Mercy and Justice Can Meet at the Border

By Michael Brendan Dougherty

…orderly and just position is not denying family reunification to keep the numbers more manageable. When Pope Benedict visited the United States in 2008, he cautioned that the separation of families “is truly dangerous for the social, moral and human fabric.” Working male immigrants who live with almost no prospects for marriage or separated from their family are much more likely to fall into alchoholism and crime. And family life is the engine of…

‘People You May Know’ Reveals a War on Democracy Being Waged With Big Data [Part II]

By Chrissy Stroop

…in countries that are more secular, and that’s really interesting. In the United States we’re on Sundance and Fusion, and via Prime, for Sundance. But I think there’s a nervousness on the part of broadcasters in America—not about taking on politics or Donald Trump, but about taking on the CNP. The fear of taking on the CNP is that you have these national religious broadcast networks, and if I were a big broadcast network in the United States, yea…

Obama Foes Misrepresent Islam with “Apostate” Tactic

By Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`im

…esident of the United States could cause serious complications between the United States and the Islamic world because Mr. Obama is an apostate, a result of the likely Democratic nominee being born to a Muslim father and raised Christian by his mother. The penalty for such heresy, Mr. Luttwak explains, is execution by the state or possible assassination by believers, not to mention the difficulty Muslim states would have dealing with a president w…

Is ‘Beyond Doubt’ Correct About the Decline of Religion? Yes… Sort Of.

By Lucas McCracken

…rman, and Cragun show that “modernized” or “modernizing” nations, like the United States, China, Australia, Thailand, Czech Republic, and many more are becoming less religious by the day. Plus, the authors see good reasons to believe that this trend will continue for years to come. Beyond Doubt is written like a victory speech. It delivers a comforting message to nonbelievers and anyone else worried that Christianity—particularly its evangelical i…

New Book by Olivier Roy Argues that Aggressive Attempts to Christianize the West Actually Hasten Secularism

By Ivan Strenski

…Christian belief and participation. The numbers of those attending Sunday services have tumbled into the single digits, and roughly the same number disavow belief in major Christian doctrines. Despite the political impact of white evangelicals, and the United States’ claim to being exceptional in escaping Western Europe’s radical de-Christianization, Gallup reports that fewer than 50% of Americans declare membership in a church, synagogue, or mos…

Republicans Claim Shari’ah Law Threatens Constitution

By Sarah Posner

…at a mortal threat to the supreme law of the land, the Constitution of the United States by its own terms, and the freedoms that we hold dear that are guaranteed by it, if we accept the insinuation and ultimately the adoption of shari’ah in the United States. So this panel is, we hope, part of a debate that will become much more vigorous in this country in the days ahead. We hope that in particular the kinds of efforts to insinuate shari’ah that h…