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Census Reveals Gay People are Shockingly… Normal

According to new census figures, the number of people reporting that they are living with a same-sex partner has risen 52 percent in the last decade. That’s almost 902,000 people who are living all across the United States. Even here in my own incredibly conservative state of South Carolina, the number of same-sex couples increased and a quarter of them are raising children. It’s those kinds of facts that have right-wing media like the Christian…

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New Research Links Spiritual-Not-Religious to Mental Disorder

…ity of these identified as Christian. Nineteen percent self-identified as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR), while 46 percent described themselves as neither spiritual nor religious. American “Nones,” however, seem less inclined to embrace the “spiritual but not religious” label, with fewer than half in the Pew population of the religiously unaffiliated identifying as such. In the British study, SBNRs were found to be significantly more likely…

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

…ming to remake the world and the self. The popular characterization of the spiritual-but-not-religious person is of someone a bit flighty and unserious. The spirituality is a pastiche of confused and conflicting ideas. The seeker is typically thought of as embracing a mishmash of conflicting ideas—Catholicism and reincarnation, Buddhism and crystals, kitschy angels and dreamcatchers—which, if taken seriously as ideas, would not seem to fit togethe…

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

…de against Albanian Kosovars in the late 1990s. The fact is, a significant number of Serbs, and even a large number of others from traditionally Orthodox backgrounds, continue to harbor a great deal of anger about Western intervention in the Kosovo War, which they see as a failure by the West to comprehend the historical role-reversal that’s taken place, including the persecution of Orthodox Christians by Albanians and other majority-Muslim ethnic…

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UPDATED: Oklahoma Personhood Bill Not Dead…

…e for their unwillingness to put their reassurances in writing, proposed a number of amendments. So did other legislators, such that by the time SB-1433 was scheduled to be voted on, it was groaning under the weight of amendments.  But the real turnaround came when Speaker Steele proposed an amendment to an amendment that, in essence, would have given teeth to the reassurances that the Oklahoma bill would do no more than the Missouri language. Tha…

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Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

…t is with Indian traditions. That is kinda, sorta how James Ray set up his spiritual Ponzi scheme, right? He knew someone who knew someone who did “Indian sweats” and presto and voilà, Ray is taking people on spiritual retreats at 10K a head and then people start dying. So, experts have to be brought in to figure out what happened. No Indians mind you, just experts. And the truth is, we don’t want to be experts. Why? Because we know there is no su…

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

…llowing such a line of reasoning might mean we are seeing an uptick in the number of American’s who will report a life-changing Christian experience while simultaneously being less likely to identify with any particular Christian institution. This raises questions about the complicated relationship between Americans and their willingness to affiliate with large institutions (religious and otherwise) in general. The rate of decline in affiliation f…

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

…not to … preventing birth.” But, as New York Times reports, under Trump a number of anti-contraception activists have been given prominent roles in the administration. They are moving not just to finalize a rule that would allow any entity to opt-out of the contraceptive mandate for any reason, which has long been on the bishops’ wish list, but have a history of attacking contraception in general. Katy Talento, who is now a White House domestic p…

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Amway, Religious Right Pyramid Scheme, Returns to the Motherland

…odern-day America, redemption has become a cultural construct as well as a spiritual state. Who confers redemption? Is one redeemed because a president or head of a foundation or charity allows that you are? Can redemption be earned, say with a string of good deeds, or handsome donations to homeless shelters or battered women’s refuges? Does one campaign for it by hiring a good public relations firm? Is there a “redemption” school or camp? Is maki…

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Demonized and Demonizing No More.

…d between atheists and religious communities. Of course, there are still a number of people who are, if not entirely resistant to the ideas in the book, at least deeply suspicious about or don’t see much value in them. One thing I find valuable about Faitheist is that it moves atheism away from the kind of polemic that ends up focusing on truth claims in a very literal way and so mirrors the religious fundamentalisms it would like to dismantle. A…

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