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‘My Name is Legion’: Sources and Forces of White Supremacy in the U.S.

By R. Drew Smith

…hate group and white supremacist group content has skyrocketed—even as the numbers of those groups have themselves noticeably increased. For example, the number of known hate groups is reported to have increased from roughly 600 in the year 2000 to 930 in 2014. Moreover, major television networks such as Fox TV have ushered hate content and white supremacist content into the media mainstream, featuring racialized rhetoric that ranges from disparag…

Religious Leaders Need ‘Empty the Pews’ Which Chronicles the Darker Side of the ‘Nones’ Phenomenon

By Kaya Oakes

…ce even publishes an entire column dedicated to statistical data on Nones, compiled by the sociologist Ryan Burge—and a growing number of books exploring the narrative stories of Nones have appeared in recent years, including a book of my own. Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church Chrissy Stroop and Lauren O’Neal Epiphany Publishing November 29, 2019 What many of these articles and books share in common is a sense of confusion or despair….

Francis Must Make Changes to Have a Real Effect

By Patricia Miller

…ed to a few key numbers that I found interesting. Apparently, according to Commonweal’s Grant Gallicho, my reading of the numbers—which was more critical than his—amounted to an “extended raspberry.” Just to get a couple of housekeeping details out of the way. Obviously, my dogma/doctrine typo was just that, as was the difference in Francis’ and Benedict’s net favorability rating, which is 11 points, not 6. But my point remains. Given the near-con…

The Vatican v. Protestant Free Thinkers

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…, represented was the triumph of a new kind of mathematical science, where numbers and computation were esteemed in a whole new way. Copernicus, be sure to recall, did not yet have access to the telescope, so he was basing a number of his computations on things he could not see. In this brave new world, then, the scientists were also casting their “faith in things not seen.” It’s just that what they “saw” was perceived to run counter to the Roman…

The Anti-Trans Hate Machine’s Conspiracies Don’t Stop at the US Border

By Annika Brockschmidt

…per, Die Welt, escalated the mainstreaming of right-wing talking points. A number of researchers wrote an op-ed, in which they accused the ARD and ZDF, the independent, state-funded TV news stations (the German version of the BBC) of “indoctrinating” kids with “gender ideology” in order to sexualize and “re-educate” them. The article hits all the right-wing bullet points of a shadowy conspiracy at work: The media, driven by secretive “trans-lobbyi…

Raelians’ “Clitoraid” Met With Suspicion in Burkina Faso

By Joseph Laycock

…r of fund raising projects, including an “Adopt a Clitoris” campaign and a number of partnerships with companies that make vibrators. This funding was used to recruit and fund a team of surgeons (who are not Raelians) and to establish a “pleasure hospital” in Burkina Faso. There is some controversy as to what percentage of women who undergo the surgery will be able to experience orgasms as Clitoraid, claims. But so far, Clitoraid has received much…

Religious Kids Are More Selfish: The Stickers Don’t Lie

By Michael Schulson

…e full-of-shit than the humanists. The fact that someone like Decety feels comfortable taking his sticker games and making public comments about the fundamental nature of morality and secularity feels slightly surreal. (It’s not just in Forbes interviews. Here’s the final line of the paper: “More generally, [our findings] call into question whether religion is vital for moral development, supporting the idea that the secularization of moral discou…

Updated: G-O-D Plays a Bit Part in First GOP Debate

By Daniel Schultz

…en for thinking that Reagan was God, or at least a patron saint, given the number of times he was name-checked in the debate. Mostly it went like this. The candidates did talk about hot-button social issues, but they held back from claiming religious sponsorship of their ideas. It’s not clear if they’d gotten the memo about not antagonizing religiously unaffiliated voters, or if they simply didn’t see much advantage in differentiating themselves a…

Harry Reid vs. Islamic Cultural Center

By Joanna Brooks

…pokesman, after Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle demanded he take a position on the matter. It’s not a proud day for freedom of religion when a prominent member of the number two most disliked major religion in America effectively sides against a honest project by the number one most disliked major religion in America. Especially when Mormons have just recently come through our own years-long struggle to build an LDS temple in Cent…

Is Army’s New “Humanist” Designation Just Semantic Hooey?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ounseling and gathering spaces for Humanist groups. It also means that the numbers and distribution of Humanists in the military can be tracked along with those of other religious groups, potentially inviting a reshaping of the military chaplaincy, which critics complain is inappropriately weighted in favor of Christian, and specifically Evangelical Christian, denominations. A study by the Military Association of Atheist and Freethinkers (MAAF)—t…