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Reactionary White Buddhists Have Joined The Fight Against Critical Race Theory

By Ann Gleig

…s itself as transcendent of ideology. Such an approach is clearly at work among white Buddhists who claim to be apolitical while mobilizing conservative assumptions and strategies to delegitimate anti-racist work in Buddhism as “ideological.” A good example here comes from the transnational Buddhist Triratna community. Given their strong links to the Ambedkar Buddhist Dalit community, an engaged Buddhist lineage that has combatted caste violence a…

“Can You Tell Me Who The Villains Are?”: Rock and Religion, Irish-Style

By Lisa Bitel

…me who the villains are?” the Saw Doctors go on to ask. The answer is obvious to an Irish band: self-proclaimed faith leaders and putative models of morality who don’t understand the lyrics….

Is Obama the Antichrist? Why Armageddon Stands Between the President and the Evangelical Vote

By Matthew Avery Sutton

…tration? Nothing very promising. Despite the president’s desire to find common ground with evangelicals, he is unlikely to be able to penetrate the apocalyptic fears that have characterized the evangelical movement since the Great Depression. Obama is caught in a classic catch-22. The Antichrist, the Bible explains, is going to masquerade as an angel of light. This means that the more Obama accomplishes as president and the more he improves Americ…

The “Mormon Moment” Yields… Not So Much

By Joanna Brooks

…campaign must have yielded a net positive for public understanding of the Mormon faith. But new data released by the Pew Forum suggests otherwise. 82% of Americans surveyed by Pew say they learned little to nothing about Mormonism during the 2012 campaign. Nearly 50% said they still know “little to nothing” about Mormonism, a proportion unchanged from 2011. And only about 40% could answer two basic factual questions about the faith, a proporti…

For Conservatives, the Future Looks Dim… and Gay

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…poll, 52% of those who continue to oppose equality for LGBT people cited “moral objections to homosexuality, that it conflicts with religious beliefs, or that it goes against the Bible.” But those “moral objections” seem to be of less concern to a growing number of Americans: Just under half of Americans (45%) say they think engaging in homosexual behavior is a sin, while an equal number says it is not. Those who believe homosexual behavior is a…

Stupak Forming Fault Lines in Left-Leaning Faith Groups?

By Sarah Posner

…p to the Stupak amendment demonstrates the propensity for advocates of “common ground” to sweep essential debates on issues like abortion under the rug. The outcome portends fissures, not just for faith groups’ position on abortion funding in health care reform, but for other so-called “common ground” initiatives on abortion. In the interest of promoting the passage of a health care reform bill, pro-reform faith groups had months ago agreed to dis…

By The Numbers: Jeb Opposes Francis on Climate Change at His Peril

By Daniel Schultz

…’re just not sure. The numbers attributing warming to human activity rise among moderates and liberals, of course, but they’re not going to vote for Jeb anyway. There is one number Bush might want to worry about, though: 85. That’s the percent of Hispanic Catholics who think climate change is a real problem: For a guy who’s been touting his potential to draw Spanish-speaking voters into the Republican fold, this is a sticky situation. Hispanic Cat…

How to Make Nones and Lose Money: Study Shows Cost of Catholic Sex Abuse Scandals

By Kaya Oakes

…f the clergy sex abuse scandal, leaving the American church with a massive money problem and shrinking numbers of parishioners on the eve of Pope Francis’ arrival. A recent study by Nicholas Bottan and Ricardo Perez-Trugila in the Journal of Public Economics revealed that, unsurprisingly, “a scandal causes a persistent decline in the local Catholic affiliation and church attendance.” “Some Catholics join other religious denominations during the fi…

The Vatican v. Protestant Free Thinkers

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…John Paul II was as anti-modern a Pope as the Church has seen in recent memory; his successor even more so. But on the devilish topic of religion, science and free enquiry, these same Popes have elected to stand emphatically on the side of the moderns. This volume offers an extraordinary glimpse back on a time when it was not yet so. But it is so, now, in the Vatican Library and in the Museums, which can make them both seem very far away from a C…

Five Social Media Trends that are Reshaping Religion

By Elizabeth Drescher

…he bottom half of the top twenty. In all, more than half of the top twenty most engaging pages—pages that move beyond mere broadcast messaging to share content that inspires participants to interact with one another—are religious. While tracking Twitter trends is somewhat trickier, hashtagged memes like #prayer, #spirituality, #bible, #Jesus, #Buddha, #Allah, and so on are consistently robust, and event-related hashtags like #haroldcamping, #raptu…