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How the Study of Evangelicalism Has Blinded Us to the Problems in Evangelical Culture

By Christopher D. Cantwell

…hey Have Been, Are Now, and Could Be, the book brings together some of the most influential pieces of scholarship on evangelicalism from the last forty years and places it alongside a handful of new essays that finally do attempt to grapple with evangelical support for Donald Trump. The sense of surprise that continues to confront evangelical zealotry for Trump might be Noll, Marsden, and Bebbington’s greatest legacy. The table of contents is a ve…

Modern Vampires: Your Neighbors and Spouses

By Joseph Laycock

…inced that this is a sizable community worthy of serious study. What’s the most important take-home message for readers? By studying vampires, we study ourselves. I am concerned that despite the best intention of many scholars, the term “new religious movement” (a label that has been applied to vampires) carries with it the subtext that a group is totally “other.” While it may be comforting to think that we are totally different from vampires, thi…

Welcome to the Shari’ah Conspiracy Theory Industry

By Sarah Posner

…center stage in the halls of the United States Congress in the latest and most blatant McCarthy-esque twist in the rising level of Islamophobia in the United States. Anti-Muslim diatribe and activity have reached what Marshall Breger, a law professor at Catholic University, an Orthodox Jew and a Republican, has described as a “season of singular national distemper where, for reasons best understood by social psychiatrists, the American people hav…

UPDATED: Religion Has Been Framed; Covering the Aga Khan’s Visit

By Hussein Rashid

…. It was a moving piece on nature of hope and belief. Aslan’s post focuses mostly on the charitable work of the Aga Khan and asks the key question that immediately came to my mind when I started looking for coverage of the Aga Khan’s visit: “Americans are interested in hearing a major Muslim leader speak of tolerance and cooperation, so why isn’t the media covering the Aga Khan’s visit?” Patel, with his interfaith interest, focused on the message…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…ious control of family law; • and religious control of public education. Almo*]}*st half of the countries of the world have laws or policies that penalize blasphemy, apostasy, contempt of religion, or religious “hate speech,” according to the new analysis by Pew. Of the 198 countries studied, 32 (16%) have anti-blasphemy laws, 20 (10%) have laws against apostasy, and 87 (44%) have laws against the defamation of religion, including hate speech against…

Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

By Diane Winston

…gion would be positive for the country. Not surprisingly, churchgoers were most gung-ho about religion’s beneficial impact. But “over half of those who seldom or never attend [services] and close to one in the three Americans who say religion is not important to them personally still say it would be positive for society if more Americans were religious.” What planet do these Americans live on? Here in the U.S., religious fervor is at the center of…

Sacred&Profane: The Living Dead

By Gary Laderman

…history does shed light in the darkness, and the history of Halloween, as most readers here know, is primarily about collapsing the boundaries between the living and the dead. Most accounts begin with Samhain, a pagan holiday that marked the beginning of winter but also celebrated the migration of the dead to the next world. The pre-Christian Celtic cultures throughout Europe, Ireland, and England understood the period around November 1 as not ju…

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

…de. Moore’s short non-concession speech late Tuesday night was comprised almo*]}*st entirely of a paraphase of Psalm 40. He attempted to prop up the sad and subdued crowd by saying: But we also know that God is always in control. You know, part of the thing—part of the problem with this campaign is we’ve been painted in an unfavorable and unfaithful light. We’ve been put in a hole, if you will. And it reminds me of a passage in Psalms 40. I waited pat…

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.”…