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Sovereign Grace Sexual Abuse Lawsuit Just Got More Complicated

By T.F. Charlton

A number of developments in the lawsuit against Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM) have taken place since I first covered it for RD back in early March. On May 14, a second amendment was filed to the suit: [The suit] adds three new plaintiffs, making a total of 11. Five plaintiffs are now using their real names, and the rest are pseudonyms. It accuses church leaders of conspiracy, negligence, misrepresentation and intentional infliction of emotiona…

Yet Another Survey Shows ‘Nones’ Growth at Record Levels

By Elizabeth Drescher

…f Duke and 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 rel…

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’…

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…

First U.S. Visit of the Virgin Mary Confirmed in Wisconsin

By Lewis Wallace

…ce to meet that need,” he says. Gather the Children Karen Tipps, full-time caretaker at the shrine, adds: “A lot of people say well, why do you think it happened now? Well, every apparition is meant for its certain time in history.” According to the story, the Holy Mother asked Brise to “Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation.” The message about educating the children, she says, is especially ti…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…conflict and politics in a Muslim majority nation.” The abstract: While a number of investigations have examined how gay Muslim men view homosexuality in relation to religious Western homophobia, this research constitutes the first account of the experiences of self-identified gay men living in an African, Muslim nation, where same-sex sex is both illegal and actively persecuted. We interviewed 28 gay men living in Tunisia in order to understand…

Are You There God? It’s Us, Googling

By Michael Schulson

…that old Job-ian classic, “Why does God allow suffering?” But we should be careful here; Google search data offers a skewed sliver of insight into the full range of human motivation and behavior. The population of people who ask Google about God may not be reflective of the full population of people who have divine-related questions. And while Stephens-Davidowitz engages in some discussion about the social trends that drive these search patterns,…

Can the Catholic Church Survive Trump?

By Patricia Miller

…ops unambiguously associated the requirement to opt out of the [Affordable Care Act’s] contraception mandate with threats to destroy Christianity in the Middle East. They drew parallels to “governments who try to squash and destroy religious liberty,” and even to the specter of ISIS beheading those it considers apostates to the faith. As I have noted, there was a notable uptick in white Catholic concern about the “religious liberty” issue after th…

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

By Murali Balaji

…it is having on the Indian social fabric. It’s a conversation Uganda and a number of African nations have not had—which is having devastating consequences for the their LGBT communities. As scholar and social activist Jim Perkinson has reminded us, countries such as India are only a microcosm of the worldwide impact of missionary activity. “The effect on native people of predatory proselytization is typically cultural alienation, a growing sense o…

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…