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More Thoughts on Media Coverage of Liberal Religion

By Sarah Posner

…rty depend on the votes of religious conservatives, it has gone out of its way to affirm their view of religion-based government and public policy. In its 2012 platform, for example, the party declares its support for public displays of the Ten Commandments as a reflection of “our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage,” school prayer, and “every citizen’s right to apply religious values to public policy.” When the religious right, then, seeks to apply…

Are Conservative Churches Really Winning by Being More Orthodox?

By Daniel Schultz

…rants—again, especially Hispanics—who still account for a disproportionate number of all births in the U.S. But the overall fertility rate has crashed since 2007—led by a sharp decline in immigrant fertility, particularly among Hispanics. What’s changed since then? Hint: it’s not a radical change in the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. In fact, a few peaks and valleys aside, the US birth rate has been pretty stable since 1970, and in recent…

Life Imitates Satire Imitates Life: Rep. King Revives Manchurian Candidate

By The Editors

…ndly American Muslim leader, Shaykh Hisham Kabbani. In honor of this magic number and the hearings King will hold next month in order to address the “creeping threat of Sharia law,” RD presents the first edition of Life Imitates Satire Imitates Life. In this clip, from the Manchurian Candidate a Joseph McCarthy stand-in uses his own investigative tool to determine how many crypto-commies there really are… Rep. Peter King (R-NY), minus 45 years f…

How the Politics of the 1890s Explain the GOP’s Health Care Woes

By Patricia Miller

…riffs both as an imposition on the functioning of the free market and as a way to starve the federal government of revenue so it couldn’t do things like expand infrastructure. Throughout much of the 1880s, the Democrats used a series of procedural maneuvers to hamstring Congress, delaying progress on reforms the country needed in order to keep pace with the industrial revolution and the increasing urbanization and interconnectivity of life. In 188…

Sovereign Grace Sexual Abuse Lawsuit Just Got More Complicated

By T.F. Charlton

A number of developments in the lawsuit against Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM) have taken place since I first covered it for RD back in early March. On May 14, a second amendment was filed to the suit: [The suit] adds three new plaintiffs, making a total of 11. Five plaintiffs are now using their real names, and the rest are pseudonyms. It accuses church leaders of conspiracy, negligence, misrepresentation and intentional infliction of emotiona…

Yet Another Survey Shows ‘Nones’ Growth at Record Levels

By Elizabeth Drescher

…nd continued, reaching 18% in 2010. The report makes clear that the trend away from affiliation with organized religion is not an indication of declining religious belief. They write that “conventional religious belief, typified by belief in God, remains very widespread—59 percent of Americans believe in God without any doubt,” adding that, “Atheism is barely growing,” with 1% in 1962 and 3% in 2012 indicating no belief in God. The report raises i…

First U.S. Visit of the Virgin Mary Confirmed in Wisconsin

By Lewis Wallace

…f the December 8 announcement, Tipps says, the shrine saw an unprecedented number of people. Visitors from as far away as New Mexico wandered onto the grounds, with several walking into the Tipps’ home assuming it was a visitor center. The shrine rented a port-a-john in order to have enough bathroom space, but it was quickly blown over by winter winds. Asked if she is happy about the developments, Tipps laughs. “We’re kind of being a little bit se…

Size Matters According to New Study

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ns of the brain that remain unactivated in the rest of us. There are any number of weird implications and outright contradictions in these sorts of studies. The first is this: do the authors of these studies believe that religious belief or practice has the power to effect the size of the human brain? If so, that would seem to grant an astonishing power to religion to effect real world, and very nearly miraculous changes. Or perhaps the claim i…

Indonesian Court Rejects Religious Conservatives’ Bid To Criminalize Gay Sex; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ays after the House of Assembly voted 24-10 to take the right to marriage away from same-sex couples, the Senate voted 8-3 on Wednesday to send the bill to the governor for final approval. The legislation would reverse a May Supreme Court ruling that granted same-sex couples the right to marry and would instead codify domestic partnership rights. The Progressive Labor Party, which the New York Times describes as “backed by many traditionally conse…

Are You There God? It’s Us, Googling

By Michael Schulson

…ion in “Google searches for churches,” yet more evidence of the increasing number of “nones,” or that “searches related to the Bible, God, Jesus Christ, church and prayer are all highly concentrated in the Bible Belt. They rise on Sunday everywhere.” Other patterns are more jarring: “Relative to the rest of the country, for every search I looked at, retirement communities search more about hell,” he writes. Each month, on average, 422 people in th…