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Swimming Against the Tide: Religious (Non) Affiliation Might Not Mean What You Think It Means

By Timothy King

…llowing such a line of reasoning might mean we are seeing an uptick in the number of American’s who will report a life-changing Christian experience while simultaneously being less likely to identify with any particular Christian institution. This raises questions about the complicated relationship between Americans and their willingness to affiliate with large institutions (religious and otherwise) in general. The rate of decline in affiliation f…

Exclusive: Christian Right Bill Mill, Project Blitz, Hasn’t Gone Away, It’s Just Gotten More Secretive

By Frederick Clarkson

…ding that area to Americans United for Life, which has served as the main bill mill for state antiabortion legislation.) “Opposition to the measures in this category,” the new playbook warns, “will often be well-organized and well-financed. More care must be taken to avoid bringing this legislation to a vote unless the vote can be won. A defeated measure can often hurt more than help and will put allies and leadership in a difficult position.” Cat…

Dispatches from the Workplace: Postville: Ground Zero for the Intersection of Immigrant and Workers’ Rights

By Kim Bobo

…h the criminalization of immigrants and unethical working conditions. Postville not only illustrates the insanity of the current punitive and mean-spirited immigration policies and the complete abdication of the government enforcement of workplace laws (like paying people for all their hours worked and prohibitions on child labor in slaughterhouses), but it also clarifies the changes needed in national immigration and workplace enforcement policie…

Amway, Religious Right Pyramid Scheme, Returns to the Motherland

By Bill Berkowitz

……The finding that 20% of the population of Iberia is descended from Jews will likely take Spain and Portugal by storm…Imagine if just 5% or even 10% of Spanish and Portuguese descendants of Jews were to return to Judaism. It would mean an additional 500,000 to 1 million Jews in the world.” Interestingly enough, one of those who has found Freund’s work fascinating is James M. Hutchens of the Christian Zionist “Jerusalem Connection,” who has been p…

UN Human Rights Council Creates LGBT Watchdog; Orthodox Council Affirms Traditional Teaching on Family; Pope Francis Says Church Should Apologize to Gays; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…tside the church will bring their children to Sabbath school and a growing number of openly gay students will attend Adventist academies and colleges. Like the SCC’s black members in the 1960s, gay Adventists will be able to hold their faith community legally accountable for any discriminatory responses. And, as was the case with segregation, the church will find itself once again in a losing battle against social change unless it learns from its…

Show Me the Way of the Hebrews: The Making of an African American Rabbi

By J. Lester Feder

…the words of this Torah,” it is written in Deuteronomy 28, then the “Lord will bring you back to Egypt in ships…. And there, you will seek to be sold to your enemies for slaves and handmaids … [and] serve other deities unknown to you or your forefathers.” The ships were the clincher—why would Jews be carried back to slavery in ships if they were living in the desert? This could only refer to the ships that carried Africans to the New World. This d…

An Extravagant Welcome For All: Believe Out Loud, a Faith-Based LGBT Campaign, Launches

By Peter Laarman

…t Loud has attracted over a thousand Facebook fans. They are convinced it will have special appeal to younger people, and they are making sure that BOL subscribers will have access to all of the goodies that today’s young social networkers crave, such as opportunities to gift each other with campaign tokens. Whereas many socially progressive movements have been four or five beats behind the emerging technology curve, Intersections project manager…

A Post-Christian America? Not Quite—Though Devoutly to be Wished

By Peter Laarman

…say about Jon Meacham’s Newsweek piece on the fairly sharp fall-off in the number of Americans self-identifying as Christian (in the newly-released ARIS survey), this bloghead initially demurred. I mean, the amiable and well-informed Meacham said what I would have said: on balance, it’s a good thing that the various and dangerous forms of grievance associated with “Christian nation” thinking should now recede. It’s a good thing that more have come…

After More Mass Shootings It’s Time to Call Out White Supremacy in the Pews

By Peter Laarman

…n culture is “exceptional”—exceptional in its toxicity, that is. A growing number of truth telling historians are eager to help us discover these deeper roots if we are willing to listen. Here I’m thinking mainly of scholars like Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Gerald Horne who focus on the connections between settler colonialism, white supremacy, and an unparalleled level of gun violence. To me the question that grows more acute daily is how to amplify…

Life as a Game Show: Reading Slumdog Millionaire

By Paul Courtright

…as the story is—a fairy tale—we are caught up in the hope that the prince will not give up and will find his love at last. There is an echo for some with the story of our young prince in the White House, who came from obscurity, got the princess, and won the grand prize. The Obama story, to some at least, has a similar “it is written” quality about it. Perhaps the film holds a special appeal these days as many Americans reckon with a financial vul…