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Debate Heats Up Over “Francis Effect”

By Patricia Miller

…one to measure the pontiff’s influence” than, say, actual metrics like the number of people going to mass or returning to the church. According to Burke, you just have to “ask around” Boston to find folks who know someone who’s thinking about returning to the church or who feels less horrible about the church than in the darkest days of the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal, which had Boston at its epicenter. That’s a pretty low bar, but of course n…

Arizona Supreme Court Rules Against Disenfranchisement — But Privacy Issues Remain

By Steven Gardiner

…vote the full ballot, state and federal. The situation stems from a unique-to-Arizona state law that requires voters to prove their citizenship before they can legally register to vote, and regards an Arizona driver’s license issued after October 1996 to be sufficient proof. A coding error in the state’s DMV database incorrectly marked tens of thousands of voters, mainly in Maricopa County, as having complied with the identification requirements…

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

By The Editors

…mitates 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 from Religion Dispatches on Vimeo….

Pop Culture Yogi B. K. S. Iyengar Dead at 95

By Andrea R. Jain

…counterculture of Indian ascetic renouncers, to the counterculture of turn-of-the-century American practitioners of tantra, to the counterculture of Transcendentalism and metaphysical religion, to the counterculture of proponents of physical culture. It wasn’t until the 1960s that it no longer opposed prevailing cultural norms and became readily available to the masses. The 1960s proved to be the ideal time for the global dissemination of yoga,…

Newsweek’s Strange Faces of the Christian Right List

By Sarah Posner

…a member of the Christian right. Rogers, who has worked for the pro-church-state-separation group the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty, and now has an affiliation with the Brookings Institution, is one of the country’s best authorities on church-state separation law, and an advocate for enforcement of the Establishment Clause. Not only would Rogers herself be surprised to be on the list, I’d imagine, but so would the Christian right i…

Diplomatic Suckerhood: Why Israel Is Fighting Toward its Own Demise

By Ira Chernus

…d in perfect harmony.” That’s the tragic fruit of a culture built on a self-image of weakness and victimization. That self-image is so pervasive, it has now become a self-fulfilling prophecy that can shape Israeli policy. According to an unnamed “senior Israeli official” quoted in Ha’aretz, “Israel is skeptical” that US envoy George Mitchell “would be able to coax Arab states to make concrete normalization commitments if only a temporary settlemen…

An Unholy Holy Week: Is the All-Male Rule of the Roman Catholic Church Self-Destructing?

By Anne Eggebroten

…ers, or “marriages” surrounded by a conspiracy of silence. In fact, the all-male rule of the Roman Catholic Church is self-destructing. Ordained men, from priests to the Pope, are proving that it wasn’t a good idea to leave Church governance to an old boys’ network. They have been focused on forgiving each other and covering up crimes “to avoid scandal”—that is, to protect each other, their power, and the church’s wealth. “Call No Man Father” Here…

The Year of the Abusive Priest

By Anthea Butler

…with 300 being incidences of pedophilia, and 600 priests defrocked in a ten-year period. These cases, according to Monsignor Charles J. Scicluna, represented sexual abuse cases that had occurred over the last fifty years. Unfortunately, this is a very small percentage of the cases worldwide, in part because Scicluna states that between 1975 and 1985, “I do not believe that any cases of pedophilia committed by priests were brought to the attention…

American Christianity Is Changing Fast: Five Stories to Watch in 2016

By Richard Flory

…attention, from religious observers as well as religious leaders, is the so-called “Rise of the Religious Nones.” The number of dropouts/defectors from church involvement has risen significantly over the last several years, such that about 23 percent of the American population now claims no religious affiliation. They leave for many reasons, ranging from a general disillusionment with large-scale institutions in general to the politicization of re…

Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

By Lisa Miller

…ogy. I spoke to the head of The New Yorker’s cartoon department about cloud-and-angel cartoons; to David Byrne, formerly of Talking Heads, who wrote that great song “Heaven” (“a place where nothing ever happens”); to Albert Brooks, who wrote and directed Defending Your Life. I included references to Marc Chagall, The Simpsons, folk songs, slave spirituals, Monty Python, Michelangelo, Hamlet, Homer, popular jokes, my grandparents, Giotto, Billy Gra…