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Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

By Diane Winston

…internecine squabbles and financial woes. But thirty years later, they’re still standing. Did we get it wrong or did we just forget to look behind the headlines? What’s it like to be a Lutheran in northern Minnesota? How has Vacation Bible School at a rural Arkansas Baptist church changed since the ’60s? Who are the women behind the biggest Methodist congregation in Cleveland? I want to know more about the people who believe religion to be a posi…

Sacred&Profane: The Living Dead

By Gary Laderman

…ts, and tied to autumnal celebrations and activities that would include ghost stories, harvesting rituals, and dressing up in costumes. By the early decades of the twentieth century, so these accounts claim, the holiday became primarily child’s play, and a secular, fun-filled, consumer-oriented, neighborly celebration where the dead were no longer “really” present and potentially dangerous to the living, but rather part of a “pretend” world imagin…

The Real Goal of Pro-Life Movement Support for Scott Brown: Kill Health Care Reform

By Sarah Posner

…le of Massachusetts. . . . Elections have consequences and the Democrats must understand that the consequences of a Sen. Brown victory mean it’s time to put a stop to the flawed government-run, pro-abortion health care program that’s been on a fast-track. For a movement with pretensions to ideological purity, the religious right’s support for Brown is calculated for the short term: hijack health care reform and push the narrative that the country…

The 17th Century Roots of Roy Moore’s Refusal to Concede the Election

By Karen E. Park

…ment in Israel … A democracy is, amongst civil nations, accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government. [To allow it would be] a manifest breach of the 5th Commandment.” – John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Tuesday night, after his surprising but solid defeat by Doug Jones, Roy Moore refused to concede. Even in Alabama, ground zero for voter suppression, mysteriously broken voting machines in poor black neigh…

Travolta Airlifts Scientology, Supplies, to Haiti

By Becky Garrison

…at Ground Zero after the September 11 attacks, I witnessed the Scientologists’ volunteer ministers in action. Once some semblance of order was restored after a few weeks, they were one of the religious groups kicked off the site for proselytizing and passing out pamphlets under the guise of providing “pastoral care.” Their counseling services included promoting their hotline number on Fox News under the title “National Mental Health Assistance.”…

Sacred&Profane: Wilco Worship and the “Churn” in American Religion

By Gary Laderman

…dscape, spiritual ground not quite as stable and secure as theologians and statisticians would like it to be in the twenty-first century. Given the kind of map these surveys are drawing, there’s only one game in town for scholars of religion: the surge in no religion and non-affiliated statuses, and even more specifically, seeking signs of religious life among the increasing number of those who self-identify with no religion. In order to pursue th…

Change v. Change at NPR

By Warren Throckmorton

…sociated with religious groups who question the APA’s findings. However, most of the therapists who argue with the APA are associated with churches and organizations which see homosexual behavior as immoral. There is debate but it is between the mental health establishment and a much smaller number of traditionally minded religious therapists. However, even if Spiegel had correctly identified the nature and participants in the debate, she still wo…

U.S. Bishops Reject Pope Francis’ Priorities

By Patricia Miller

…eption (or the lack thereof). Msgr. J. Brian Bransfield was elected as the conference’s new general secretary. NCR’s Winters, who has been an outspoken critic of the increasingly culture-warrior posture of the USCCB staff, called Bransfield’s election “a first-class disaster” for the conference. As Winter noted, “The sad and regrettable fact is that the USCCB of late has acquired only the smell of the neo-conservative, upper middle class Catholic…

Jesus Christ and Super Stars: How The Holy Rolled Mainstream in Pop Music

By Alana Massey

…ands like Jars of Clay essentially sang praise anthems while an angstier West Coast nouveau evangelical ethos emerged in bands like P.O.D. On the other side of this spectrum were bands that positioned themselves as anti-Christian, though even their blasphemies came up short. Marilyn Manson scared the daylights out of children and parents alike in his 1990s heyday, but his most controversial album, Antichrist Superstar, was little more than a play…

Orthodox Jews Begin to Reckon with Sexual Abuse

By Paul Berger

…the Orthodox world. Just a couple of months ago, two of the country’s largest and most influential Orthodox organizations, the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union, co-sponsored America’s first National Jewish Child Abuse Prevention Week. There’s nothing to suggest that sexual abuse is any more or less prevalent in the Orthodox community than anywhere else; but there are a number of peculiarities to Orthodox Jewish life that have m…