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YOU Are Spiritual But Not Religious: The Secret Spiritual History of the Choose Your Own Adventure Books

By Daniel Silliman

…he had grown lazy while making up a rambling, multi-part bedtime story for his children. When he began to ask them what they wanted the character, a shipwrecked boy named Pete, to do, it occurred to him this would be an interesting idea for a book. Packard was more interested in the puzzle of producing the book than in the spiritual vision that inspired Montgomery. He liked the challenge of charting out the possibilities within the physical constr…

As Tensions Escalate in the Balkans, the West Could Hand Putin a Valuable Weapon

By Katherine Kelaidis

…their efforts to win new converts, allowing them to argue that there’s a “hidden history” of Christian persecution and suffering that’s being kept from them. And there’s evidence that these efforts are already afoot. Early in 2021 the National Catholic Register, a conservative publication, ran a piece entitled “The Silent Persecution of Christians in Kosovo,” which, while undeniably biased, was not entirely untrue. Likewise, in September, in a pi…

UPDATED: Oklahoma Personhood Bill Not Dead…

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…hey’ve made plenty of pro-life statements, thanks, and so they’ll pass on this one. This is a bad defeat for the personhood movement. What this means is that their ballot initiative strategy failed in very conservative Mississippi, and now their strategy of getting legislators to sponsor personhood bills has failed in very conservative Oklahoma. They’ve spent a not inconsiderable sum of money in Oklahoma, and it looks as though they may have ticke…

Trump’s “Muslim Ban” A Gift to Terrorists

By Ali Olomi

…his finger at. Some may take heart that his order only focuses on a small number of countries, but if his authoritarian tendencies remain consistent, then we should know that all autocrats start at the margins until they reach the center. Make no mistake, Donald Trump’s actions demonize an entire faith. In fact, for those who challenge the framing as a “Muslim ban,” it should be noted that, as the Times and others have noted, the order effectivel…

Swimming Against the Tide: Religious (Non) Affiliation Might Not Mean What You Think It Means

By Timothy King

…to choose (or not to choose) to affiliate religiously. A prime example of this shift might be the structure of a key question in the Pew survey itself. The Big Question In Appendix C, a section many readers might have overlooked, the researchers note that, “all major religion surveys find that the unaffiliated share of the U.S. population (the percentage of religious ‘nones’) is growing rapidly.” Still, Pew’s study has higher rates for this popula…

3 Reasons Catholic Bishops Are Holding Their Tongues on GOP Health Care Debacle

By Patricia Miller

…riages. And, like the bishops, she suggests that natural family planning, which has the highest failure rate of any contraceptive method, is a suitable alternative: “There are other ways to avoid pregnancy and to space children’s birth if necessary and appropriate, if a family or a woman wants to do that,” Ms. Talento said. “You don’t have to ingest a bunch of carcinogens in order to plan your family.” Mathew Bowman, who is now a lawyer for the De…

Amway, Religious Right Pyramid Scheme, Returns to the Motherland

By Bill Berkowitz

…hanges. He continued: Colson may say that he’s been forgiven; those around him say that his ministry is proof of this. The business of calling people ‘terrorists’ probably stems from being convinced, to the utmost degree, that you are right. However, I prefer the idea of God tendered by Karl Barth, who refers to him as the ‘divine incognito.’ Barth writes that ‘God is the unknown God, and, precisely because he is unknown, he bestows life and breat…

Demonized and Demonizing No More.

By Joanna Brooks

…ple into considering the questions he was posing rather than forcefully pushing his conclusions onto them. Inviting people in takes a lot of vulnerability, especially for atheists who are so often the object of vilification in American society. The surveys, for example, routinely show that Americans are less likely to vote for an atheist for president than an individual of any other social, religious, or ethnic group. This vilification has really…

The Fretting About Whether Democrats Are “Friendly” To Religion

By Sarah Posner

…ertainly they are well aware that good Catholics can part company with the hierarchy on any number of issues, including abortion. Catholics represent about 23% of the American population, so they are obviously a significant voting bloc with a chunk in the middle that are crucial swing voters. But the quest to satisfy them by bending to the bishops or straining to be “friendly” to religion is not only misguided, but undemocratic. According to the P…

The Abortion Debate, Texas Style

By Dhawn Martin

…ther expressed dismay that “‘they’ always paint ‘us’ as godless.” All the while a man walked about the rotunda bearing a notebook-sized sign with the word “theocracy” crossed out. It was a day of high stakes and emotion as people continued to debate the role of government, faith, and human agency in questions of how or why to regulate women’s bodies. Over the next days, the Texas House and then Senate will conduct their floor debates. It was just…