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Turn On The News: This Isn’t a Split, It’s a Tiny Sliver of Conservatives Walking Out the Door — Introducing A New Media Criticism Column

By Daniel Schultz

…mpanion kept 95.7% of it.) It’s possible this is part of a larger trend. A number of paragraphs down there’s mention of a long-delayed vote on the future of the denomination, which might lend credibility to the headline, but no details are given, so it’s not possible to evaluate the claim. Likewise, near the top of the story comes a paragraph with a quote from an RCA pastor about the financial difficulties this will create. Does he speak for the d…

American Christianity Is Changing Fast: Five Stories to Watch in 2016

By Richard Flory

…ken a much more adversarial stance to LGBT acceptance. However, increasing numbers of evangelical churches are accepting LGBT individuals as members. This development is not without its opponents, however. Many evangelical organizations—most significantly colleges, universities and seminaries—are mobilizing to retain their “religious right” to discriminate against LGBT individuals. More than 30 evangelical higher education institutions have petiti…

Neuroscience Says Evil is “Over”: Not So Fast…

By Paul Wallace

…question is twofold: “What do scientists say, when they are handed a microphone and placed on a lighted stage in the public square? And how does that compare with what one might find in the scientific journals?” This question may be more difficult than the first, but it’s more urgent. Because it often happens that scientists, like so many priests and other religious leaders, use their hard-earned authority unwisely. They go just a little outside…

Top Five (Less Sensational, But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson (1930-2023)

By Mark Hulsether

…an anti-Semitic screed and neo-conservative allies yawn. Robertson’s 1991 book, The New World Order, recycled anti-Semitic conspiracy theories reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and stated that George Bush Sr. was part of a conspiracy to institute “an occult-inspired world socialist dictatorship” (through his work with the United Nations in the first Gulf War). This caused few of Robertson’s neoconservative allies to break with hi…

Conservative Christians Insist the Toxic Theology Portrayed in the Duggar Family Doc is ‘Fringe’ — But is it Really All That Different?

By Caroline Matas

…hooling movement in the 1980s and the brother of Joshua Harris, whose 1997 book I Kissed Dating Goodbye made waves in American evangelical purity culture. Alex Harris—a lawyer who has clerked for both Justice Anthony Kennedy and then-Judge Neil Gorsuch—tweeted that he participated in the docuseries to tell the story of his own family’s involvement in the movement to “take America back for God” and to explain how his own religious views have shifte…

New Poll Reveals That Anti-Trans Rhetoric isn’t Just Affecting Republicans and White Evangelicals

By Chrissy Stroop

…mple, 86% of White evangelicals said there are only two genders, with that number rising to 92% in 2023. The report also states, “Among White Christian groups, White evangelical Protestants (82%) and Latter-day Saints (72%) are much more likely than White Catholics (51%) and White mainline/non-evangelical Protestants (50%) to strongly feel there are only two genders.” None of this is particularly surprising, but what I do find both surprising and…

The Only Common Denominator of American Conservatism is Anti-Blackness

By Yannick Marshall

…damentally post-racist country, the racists “are just a few idiots,” not a number tallied in the millions. In “conservatism,” the intellectual legacy of the Confederacy has been normalized and an entire population of Negrophobes is absorbed into society and allowed space to push their anti-Black agenda everywhere from the Senate floor to bank cubicles. It’s been said that politics is the continuation of war by other means. After the surrender at A…

LDS General Conference in the “Mormon Moment”

By Joanna Brooks

…lude churches like the Disciples of Christ), generating its own additional books of scripture, a distinctive notion of Christian perfection (or “sanctification,” to use the theological term) centered in LDS temple worship, and a history of distinctive social practices. But that innovation should not obscure the fact that a belief in Jesus Christ as savior is at the core of Mormon worship. Every Sunday, we take a bread-and-water sacrament in rememb…

Obstacles for Secularists

By Sarah Posner

…to become better organized as a political force, even as they increase in number. The major impediment to that kind of organization is the fact that it is very difficult for secularists to conceive of themselves in tribal terms. Most tribes, whether of nations or ethnicities or sports fandom, can easily demarcate their membership—it’s the people who look like us, or talk like us, or dress like us. Tribes organized around religious belief have rit…

New Study Touts Success of “Praying Away the Gay”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ouse, and his colleague, Rob Tisinai, gives a better breakdown of what the numbers really mean—and it isn’t a rousing success story about “change.” “Out of 98 highly-motivated subjects, the authors found that a small, unspecified number can use prayer and counseling to shut down their sexual feelings or become a bit more bi. And possibly none who turned straight.” Even the researchers call their conclusions “overly optimistic.” “These results do n…