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Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

Today Gallup announced the results of a survey in which 77 percent of Americans “say religion is losing its influence on American life,” which represents “the most negative evaluation” of religion’s impact since 1970. Writing today in Religion Dispatches, I have to wonder about the future of any publication with “religion” in its name. Is it time for a mission overhaul or simply rebranding? It’s not that RD has been oblivious to the trend. An int…

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Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue

…old Tyler Clementi, 13-year-old Seth Walsh, and 19-year-old Raymond Chase. Today, it is very clear to me that profound sadness and stunned silence is no longer a suitable, appropriate, or adequate response. From Lamentation to Indignation My sadness began to change into something different with each successive news story about another gay teen hanging himself, shooting himself, or jumping off a bridge. As I saw the faces of these young victims and…

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Politicized Religion Fuels Christian-Muslim Violence In Nigeria

…l the political troubles that plague everyday life in Northern Nigeria are today—which is precisely why this retreat to politicized religion has happened. Walking down the streets in the cities Jos and Bauchi and then venturing into the rural villages, dust and mud are the overwhelming hues. The land is difficult, not just because of the droughts slowly creeping their way further and further south from the Sahara, not just because the crops are su…

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Trump’s Fervent Christian Zionists Poised to Lead the Military — And US-Israel Relations

…with the founding of the UN. All of these things still resonate and matter today.” This story of divine providence, linking 1776 and 1948, is core to the Christian Zionist imaginary of the United States and Israel as twin ‘shining cities on a hill’ (to paraphrase Reagan, who borrowed it from Puritan John Winthrop), charged with a crusade to save the West. Hegseth summed it up in a March 2019 speech at the annual gala of the National Council of You…

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The Myth of ‘Voodoo’: A Caribbean American Response to Representations of Haiti

…gies, philosophies, languages, medical therapies, diets, rites of passage, codes of conduct, aesthetic norms, artistic conventions, and technologies furnish entire communities with a shared sense of identity and the ritual/theological grammars required to guide their common life and transmission of humanity from one generation to the next. If God’s good nature is reflected in the slave trade, what was the Devil up to? American ignorance of Vodou b…

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Modern Vampires: Your Neighbors and Spouses

…(Praeger, release date: May 30, 2009). What inspired you to write Vampires Today? What sparked your interest? Some people think I study vampires simply because they are unusual. I’ve even been asked if I am a vampire myself. The reality is that I became interested in the vampire community when I learned of a massive survey being conducted by the Atlanta Vampire Alliance (AVA). Their project was relevant to the sociology of knowledge: instead of de…

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Police in Ferguson Keep Praying and Preying

The Greater St. Mark Church was raided today as St. Louis County Police thought that protesters were spending the night in the church, which has been used as a staging area for protestors. Police have since closed the building and stated that if anyone congregates on the premises at night, there would be arrests. One member of the Dream Defenders said “what [the police] did today is tell us, what? There is no safety here.” The Pastor of the churc…

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Sacred&Profane: The Living Dead

…rits, it seems perfectly natural to dwell on the ghostly dead who haunt us today in this political season—what some have labeled the season of the witch. Surely this reorientation to mortal and immortal matters is not surprising considering this election’s campaign cycle has not only resurrected the memory of Robert Kennedy’s assassination in the democratic primaries, but also identified the accidental death of Joe Biden’s wife and daughter in the…

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A Catholic’s Eulogy for the Harvard “Black Mass” Controversy

…of anti-Semitism and white supremacy, no matter where you are in the world today). Unlike these symbols that are based in reality, however, a thoughtful investigation into the “black mass” would have revealed that this is actually a symbol in search of a reality. Boston University professor David Frankfurter, in his award-winning 2006 book Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History, argues that, when we apply the mos…

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When Corporations are “Persons” Under the Law: The Real Problem With Health Care

…me Court to release audio recordings of their questioning, but they did so today, and the revelations were revealing. The answer to my question became clear in the course of Chief Justice Roberts’s insistent questions. The question he kept pressing on those arguing incampaign finance laws and against the (anti)Clinton video was a strange one: “Isn’t a corporation really like an individual, under the law?” And it occurs to me that it is this very c…

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