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

By Richard Flory

…many of the newer urban churches—and some of those that have a longer history in a particular city—are now congregations of mostly young creative types who live in the vicinity. What will happen when urban hipster churches, like Hillsong, Oasis and RealityLA, come into contact with other churches and urban ministries? (Indeed, do they ever come into contact or do they each maintain their own spheres of involvement?) And what will become of the Chr…

What Do ‘The Christians’ Believe? Easter Reflections from a Non-Christian

By Gary Laderman

…tutional differences among Christians of various stripes is the simple but complicating fact of globalilzation. Christianity is unquestionably the dominant religious presence in America, though the contours and composition of this tradition in the United States have been and are currently shaped by patterns of immigration. The arrival of Irish Catholics in the nineteenth century had an enormous impact on neighborhoods, local politics, and church m…

The Faith Outreach Canard

By Sarah Posner

…major problems with this argument: first, it’s factually inaccurate — the numbers are simply wrong. While Democrats experienced significant losses compared to the last mid-term election in 2006, which was a good year for Democrats across the board, Sapp overstates the losses by a factor of two. The actual decreases in support between 2006 and 2010 for Democratic candidates in the House were 8 points among all white Protestants (37 percent to 29 p…

The American Media’s Longterm Ambivalence About the Papacy

By Peter Manseau

…mage forecasts that Life’s Catholic coverage would differ from Time’s in a number of ways. First and most obviously, it depicts a woman; second and perhaps less so, it depicts work. The lives of Catholics, the picture says, do not require the stillness or the clerical luxury depicted in many of Time’s cover images of prelates and popes. Life’s cover images of lived-religion would continue with the then-famous Dionne sisters (the first known quintu…

55% of Utah Mormons Believe LGBT People can “Change”

By Joanna Brooks

…studied and understood. Any doctrine that would be used to exclude a good number of the earth’s people from full equality before the law and God should be very carefully examined. When it comes to gay issues, most Mormons have only the muddiest understanding of what life is like for gay people or about the doctrinal reasons their LDS leaders say and do the things they do. In fact, most Mormons have only the muddiest understanding about what their…

The Devil is in the Details

By Amina Wadud

…if lost or stolen, but only if you first write down each and every serial number. Then you have to keep this information somewhere that’s not the same somewhere you keep the checks. But then they really do NOT spend just like cash—especially abroad where we meet and mix with people in their own places. Such places are not subject to our being guests there. So I do tend toward keeping travel cash in an odd place. (No, I’m not gonna share with you…

What Pence and Kaine Reveal About Divides in Catholicism

By Patricia Miller

…Vitae encyclical. The church’s decision to ban birth control despite the recommendation of Catholic theologians and committed lay people taught Catholics that the Vatican was more concerned about power and male privilege than either theology or Catholics’ actual lived experience of their religion. Is it any wonder then that, when Roe v. Wade legalized abortion and the church insisted that Catholics opposed the decision, a significant number of Cat…

Do Space Aliens Need Baptism? The View From Gliese 581g

By Paul Wallace

…s grown enormously since Brahe’s time, and with every step the earth has become tinier, its inhabitants more inconsequential, and, paradoxically, more ignorant. And with every outward step, as our universe and our ignorance grows, so do the number of potential space alien hideouts. So does the belief that there must be someone out there. So every time I read about the discovery of a new Earth-like planet or read about NASA’s upcoming Kepler planet…

Commies, Blacks, Jews, the UCC and Other Threats to America

By Daniel Schultz

…Mother A.M.E. Zion Church Lemeul Haynes Congregational Church Jewish Labor Committee Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral United Church of Christ American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA) Beulah Church of the Nazarene Bethel Tabernacle AME Church, Brooklyn Pax Christi USA Tikkun-Network of Spiritual Progressives Jewish Funds for Justice Disciples Justice Action Network Sojourners Scary people, al…

Halloween, Evangelicals, and the Macabre

By John W. Morehead

…ism must be evil is ignored; as is that fact that Halloween incorporates a number of elements and influences that have accrued during its journey through various cultures. In truth, some of these elements are Christian, like the feast of the dead that attempted to maintain communion with the saints, both living and deceased. The Roman Catholic Church continues to include this element in its festivities, and thus, as historian Ronald Hutton argues…