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Debate Heats Up Over “Francis Effect”

By Patricia Miller

…one to measure the pontiff’s influence” than, say, actual metrics like the number of people going to mass or returning to the church. According to Burke, you just have to “ask around” Boston to find folks who know someone who’s thinking about returning to the church or who feels less horrible about the church than in the darkest days of the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal, which had Boston at its epicenter. That’s a pretty low bar, but of course n…

When God and Gender Mix: New Book Examines the Southern Holiness Movement

By Colin Chapell

…ge how they understand their own identity. If academic achievement and the number or type of initials after your name is the most important thing in the world to you, then it will change how you view your own masculinity and femininity. Similarly, if having children matters most to you, then you can only be truly “manly” or “feminine” if you have kids. Is there anything you had to leave out? Historians always want to include every interesting anec…

More Than Big Hair and Money: Jim, Tammy Faye and the Media “Holy Wars” of the 80s

By John Wigger

…ative. They put themselves at the center of some of the biggest divides in American religion and culture, which meant that they had no shortage of supporters and critics on either side, particularly with regard to the prosperity gospel. What alternative title would you give the book? My working title was Pressed Down, Shaken Together, which comes from one of the favorite Bible verses of prosperity preachers at the time, including Jim Bakker. But m…

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

By Alana Massey

…ls her ‘mission statement, if I have one,’” writes Rachel Syme in a recent New Yorker profile. On the track, Baker declares, “But I think there’s a god and he hears either way when I rejoice and complain/Lift my voice that I was made/And somebody’s listening at night with the ghosts of my friends when I pray.” This God is not an amorphous therapeutic deity of yesteryear nor a mostly ornamental cross in a photo shoot. This is the living Lord who he…

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…

A Debate Rages in India Over Conversion, Secularism, and “Spiritual Violence”

By Murali Balaji

…rely come under scrutiny, save for an occasional piece in outlets like the New York Times. Moreover, aggressive proselytizing by Christian groups has actually increased, including attempts at converting Hindu temple-goers right outside the temple doors. To be sure, from a distance, it would appear that India’s religious minorities might suffocate from the weight of a nearly 80 percent Hindu population. But Hindu majoritarianism in India isn’t just…

False Saviors: Trump, Cruz, and the Gospel of the Quick Fix

By Marcia Pally

…minated the headlines, but Cruz has been called a “firebrand” by Bloomberg News, while the New York Times says he uses “the most bellicose language,” second only to Trump. In Washington, Cruz is known for his showmanship, inflexibility and lack of teamwork—of which he is proud. He refused, for instance, to vote along with his party to extend the debt limit, and when this earned him the exasperation of his colleagues, he gleefully recounted their a…

And What of the Non-Jewish Jews?

By Shaul Magid

…gion, those we conventionally call “Jews.” The fact that there are so many Americans who identify in some way as “Jewish” while not being Jewish is fascinating. In a world where very recently being “Jewish” was a liability and anti-semitism was palpable, the number of non-Jews today who identify as Jewish seems historically distinctive. We could, perhaps, point to the so-called “fearers of heaven,” an undocumented community of Hellenes in late ant…

There’s Something Rotten in Ireland

By Haroon Moghul

…down, having failed to advance a positive image of the country.) That the New York Times is reporting on the story indicates how much negative press has been generated; some of the postings are stunningly offensive—and the embassy might be better off looking more seriously into them. Certainly, they do not help the current Israeli government’s declining popularity in the eastern half of the West. More worryingly, the deliberate provocations seem…

Too Late for Apologies: Three Steps the U.S. Bishops Should Take to Prevent Another Sexual Abuse Scandal

By Grant Gallicho

…urprise. In October 2005—just three years after the bishops’ adopted their new norms—the Archdiocese of Chicago’s review board recommended removing an accused priest, Daniel McCormack, from ministry, and Cardinal Francis George refused to do so. He wasn’t removed from ministry until January 2006, and McCormack later pled guilty to abusing five kids. As the victims’ attorney Marc Pearlman told NPR, “I just don’t know… how many kids were abused betw…