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Yet Another Survey Shows ‘Nones’ Growth at Record Levels

By Elizabeth Drescher

…UC-Berkeley researchers highlights the continuing growth in the number of Americans who indicate no religious affiliation, with a full 20% now answering “none” when asked “What is your religious preference?” Michael Hout and Claude S. Fisher of UCB and Mark A. Chaves of Duke drew on data from the most recent General Social Survey (GSS), which has tracked religious preference since 1972, when a mere 5% of Americans self-identified as religiously u…

Not a ‘Weenie-A** Lodge’: James Ray Trial Begins

By Johnny P. Flynn

…ss, and fifteen were reported to be suffering ill effects. In spite of the number of people who experienced difficulties during each of the eight fifteen-minute rounds, Ray contends he did not know that there were problems. In fact, Ray is accused of ignoring the pleas of those who wanted out; in one case an individual went out through the side of the sweat lodge to escape the heat. The prosecution played tapes of Ray before the sweat saying, “It’…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…y LGBT people in “one of the most sexually conservative countries in Latin America.” A lack of legal protections and prevalent macho attitudes have long stoked discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people in the poor, mostly Roman Catholic country. Advocacy groups fear the stigma and attacks on the LGBQT community could get worse now that the education minister has banned classes about sexual diversity in schools and eve…

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…

Are You There God? It’s Us, Googling

By Michael Schulson

…rs on everything from gefilte fish recipes to evolution. In the context of American Judaism, both organizations are unusual: Chabad is a messianic Hasidic sect; Aish, as I’ve chronicled before, is a right-wing organization designed to draw non-Orthodox Jews into the Orthodox world. Aside from glossy websites and good search engine optimization, nothing makes them more authoritative than other, more mainstream Jewish sources. But when you look up,…

Can the Catholic Church Survive Trump?

By Patricia Miller

…administration and the mandate. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of white Catholics who said the Obama administration was “unfriendly to religion” more than doubled from 17 percent to 36 percent between 2009 and 2014. And starting around 2012, white Catholics broke for the GOP by historic margins. It’s also worth noting, as Michael Sean Winters has, that this occurred around the time the administrative staff of the bishops’ confer…

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

By Murali Balaji

…a and WorldVision are among the largest benefactors of aid, primarily from America. While these missionary groups coerce peacefully, or simply just offer money from their well-funded coffers to get locals (usually village elders first) to convert, the predatory proselytization reflects what religion scholar Rita Sherma calls “spiritual violence,” a derivation of Johan Galtung’s concept of cultural violence. From a historical perspective, however,…

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

By Marcia Pally

…nted for 60% of employment in 1979 accounted for only 46% by 2012; and the number of persons not in the labor force is growing. While some are getting richer, the numbers tell us, middle income earners are hobbled by shrinking purchasing power, disappearing job opportunities, and increasingly out-of-reach education. This is problem enough for the many who work hard and can’t figure out why they’re “losing ground,” as Pew wrote. Add to that fears o…

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

…ring who it is being directed to and where it is apparently originating. A number of Palestinians are Christians, and that Christianity is of course traced back to the time of Jesus himself. The Palestinian weekend is Friday and Sunday. In addition to being the world’s most annoying and dissatisfying weekend schedule (there should be an award for that, or maybe financial compensation), the days reflect the primary religious affiliations of Palesti…