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What Does the ‘Traditional Family’ Have To Do with Pussy Riot?

By Gillian Kane

…were insightful: We respect religion in general and the Orthodox faith in particular. This is why we are especially infuriated when Christian philosophy, which is full of light, is used in such a dirty fashion. It makes us sick to see such beautiful ideas forced to their knees. This distortion of religion for political gains is, of course, familiar to American readers. Protection from perceived religious persecution is the driving force behind man…

Mass Bible-Based Sexual Dysfunction as Root of Culture Wars? Frank Schaeffer Breaks It Down

By Frank Schaeffer

…a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. It inspired me when I was a teen, made my mind race then and still does now. It’s one of the best novels of the twentieth (or any) century and achieves a devastating and darkly funny social commentary informed by a spiritual intuitiveness that has not been matched. What’s your next book? Perhaps something for or about children since the only pa…

An Agnostic Biography of the Prophet Muhammad

By Lesley Hazleton

…into exile from his home in Mecca. The psychology of exile thus played a large role in the armed conflict over the subsequent eight years, until Mecca finally accepted his leadership in a negotiated surrender, with strong emphasis on avoiding bloodshed. Is there anything you had to leave out? I know there’s a tendency to elide certain issues of Muhammad’s life, not least among them the rapid deterioration of his relations with the Jews of Medina,…

A Life After Death Double-Feature: Eastwood’s Hereafter and Noe’s Enter the Void

By Jay Michaelson

…ts. It couldn’t just be coincidence, she said, that they all reported similar near-death experiences. Well, fair enough, but all of the people reporting experiences had human brains, right? So if the NDE is a phenomenon of the brain, it would make sense that everyone reports more or less the same phenomenon. Some scientists believe that the NDE is basically, as 2001 promised, the “ultimate trip.” The pineal gland contains within it a dose of DMT,…

What the Critics of the Mindfulness Trend Don’t Get

By Hollis Phelps

…w us to grasp the way that ideologies function to organize our lives in a particular ways, ultimately cutting through them to offer a glimpse of something different. Meditative practices, in this sense, don’t offer us an escape, a way out, but an opportunity to engage the world more critically and radically—which is a precondition for politics. Seen this way, mindfulness and meditation are the enemies of apathy—if that’s true, the migration of min…

Dear Timothy Keller: The “Evangelical” Problem isn’t Pollsters

By Jessica Johnson

…ice without the support of, and often in struggles against, so many white E/evangelicals? And why doesn’t Keller just come out and say that white E/evangelicals may want to rethink the relationships between their theology and politics in lieu of casting ballots in such large numbers for the likes of Trump and Moore? Instead of performing linguistic gymnastics in order to save face, and relying on others to do the work of renewal, Keller should ope…

Are Liberals Too “Special” to Go to Church?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…to move their agenda directly into the halls of Congress. The researchers are careful to point out that other motivations—“need for closure and uncertainty avoidance,” for instance—distinguish liberals, moderates, and conservatives. And, their study focused on political groupings, not religious or other social configurations. However, questions in the study about abortion do sit on the boundary between the religious and the political. Further, w…

Rewriting the History of Catholic Schools in America

By Marian Ronan

…Vatican II. Nevertheless, if we’re going to resurrect “Dagger John,” there are a few little details that need to be acknowledged. The first thing you might wonder is why, given Hughes’ success at winning religious freedom in the public schools, he went on to found the US Catholic school system. The short answer is that his battle for “religious freedom” in the public schools was a strategy; the archbishop wanted a separate Catholic school system a…

Obama’s Supposed “Religion Dilemma” and American Exceptionalism

By Sarah Posner

…a critical difference between Americans who say Obama’s religious beliefs are very different and those who say they are only somewhat different. Among those who say his religious beliefs are only somewhat different, a majority (56%) still have a favorable view of him, although this is significantly lower than among those who see their beliefs as similar to the President’s. This is not a “religion dilemma.” We’ve known from numerous surveys over t…

What Romney Didn’t Tell You about Mormonism at the RNC

By Joanna Brooks

…ice; especially after so much hype and caricature of the faith. (See also Mary Barker’s analysis of the Romney testimonials here at RD.) But as I reflected, I realized that Romney’s convention was not a moment when the story of the Mormon people was connected to the American story in any meaningful way. Prominent Mormons may be celebrating Romney for leading the charge on changing public opinion on the faith. But really, Romney has done very, very…