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

By Chrissy Stroop

…f slowly at first. But then, what we found that really scared me is that a lot of smaller churches have adopted a complete digital interface. And this has happened so fast, because you want sign-in, you want to protect people’s kids, and you want to be able to track people and donations and all these things. And the churches themselves very often tell me, oh no, we don’t do that, we hire this software company, they’re very nice, and they do all of…

SoulCycle Looks to Sell its Soul

By Michael Schulson

…secular coastal elites. Preachers in the prosperity gospel tradition get a lot of flak for being exploitative, for being dishonest, and for making a lot of money. But I suspect that our deepest discomfort comes from their naked appeals to the perfect coherence of capitalist success and personal salvation. These appeals come through a relentless emphasis on individual improvement and positive thinking. An exercise studio is not a church. But SoulCy…

Holey Holey Holey: The Problem with a New Study Valuing Religion at $1.2 Trillion Per Year

By Michael Schulson

…f the total revenue of American religious congregations. To get that final number, the Grims took one estimate of the total number of congregations in America (344,894) and multiplied it by another estimate of the average revenue of each ($242,910). Depending on how you look at it, $378 billion is a lot of money, or it’s not very much money at all. It’s more than the net worth of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffet, combined…

Is It OK To Use a Cellphone in Church? Pew Surveys the New Etiquette

By Michael Schulson

…, speculating, and damn, those kids are all doing x, y, and z on their cellphones, and it’s an outrage! Pew’s study of cellphone etiquette gives us one way to begin digging into a much larger set of questions: which norms do we, and should we, place around the use of digital tools? When are these opinions just personal preferences, and when do they take on a more explicit ethical dimension? When should we enforce them? Part of the problem is that…

How Does an Atheist Come to Believe in God?: An Interview with Jacob Needleman

By Lisa Webster

…ills, I fished in my bag for the tiny microphone I planned to use with my iPhone, to record our conversation. “Is that what you’re using?” he asked, with great interest. He held up his own phone. “I just got one of these. Will this really work?” He sat next to me on the couch as I pointed him through the app store on his phone. “There it is,” I said, pointing to iTalk. “That’s what I’m using.” He tapped the screen, but the app that came up for dow…

Religious Hostility to Gay Nigerians; The Pope’s Visit To Africa; Ireland’s Religious Schools Can’t Discriminate Against Gays; Orthodox Church in Georgia Leads Anti-Gay Forces; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ho have to deal with it on a regular basis,” she said. “I have already had phone calls from irate family members: ‘how could I perform the ceremony, didn’t I know this was wrong and not biblical’. I have, in my studies, a different interpretation of a lot of what people say the Bible says. “I believe in the whole Jesus concept. You love people and there is no judgment. They have their belief system and I have mine and I’m living true to mine.” Dom…

Pastor of Kentucky Church Severed From Baptists Over LGBT Inclusion: Not Activism, Just Honesty

By Mike Greer

…ho have a completely foreign background and cultural experience. It took a lot of hard work but we reached a place a number of years ago where, while things are far from perfect, things work. We have learned how to be in community with others who are radically different from us. About three years ago we realized that in order to be authentic to gay and lesbian individuals in the pews and in our community we needed to clarify how we were going to b…

Is Joel Osteen, Success Mag Cover Boy, Really “God’s Best”?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…reduced to a kind of majordomo or personal assistant. He fixeth my parking tickets, he secureth me a good table in the restaurant, he leadeth me to book contracts. Even in these minor tasks, the invocation of God seems more of a courtesy than a necessity.” Gone, too, from Osteen’s theology is any mention of topics that might intrude on happy thoughts: Osteen avoids using current events in his messages so he doesn’t get sidetracked in controversy….

NPR “Ex-Gay” Report Neither “Fair” Nor “Balanced”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…people for “therapies” that can destroy them psychologically, while buying tickets to Toscano’s shows might result in some good belly laughs, but no pressure to convert. What makes this story so shameful, though, is how the true message is completely glossed over in the pursuit of finding out who is “right” and who is “wrong.” Both Wyler and Toscano are Christian men who were given the message early on in their lives that being gay or lesbian was…

Rage Against the New Age Machine: Three Days at the Osho International Meditation Resort

By Diane Winston

…and rustle up cash. I couldn’t set my own schedule. I had to buy special clothes, eat at mandated times and attend an orientation. Rather than the dream of a peaceful retreat I’d cherished for months, this was New Age fascism. While other guests enjoyed the dissonances – a search for self set against a late-night bar scene, costly multiversity classes, and nightly videos of Osho’s rambling, racist and misogynist lectures, I felt like screaming. S…