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“One of Us”: Rick Santorum and the Politics of (Very Big) Family

By Kathryn Joyce

…atirizing The View, and was feted by fellow panelist Star Parker for having 19 children because, as Parker proclaimed, “We win if we just keep having children, ’cause we’re going to outnumber them!”—a staple argument of the Quiverfull movement. Weeks earlier, Santorum had transformed this rhetoric into policy proposal at a South Carolina Fuddruckers appearance with the Duggars, where he argued that low birth rates and a declining American populati…

Obstacles for Secularists

By Sarah Posner

…to become better organized as a political force, even as they increase in number. The major impediment to that kind of organization is the fact that it is very difficult for secularists to conceive of themselves in tribal terms. Most tribes, whether of nations or ethnicities or sports fandom, can easily demarcate their membership—it’s the people who look like us, or talk like us, or dress like us. Tribes organized around religious belief have rit…

A Queer Atheist In the Heart of Mormon Country

By Chris Stedman

…But as was evident at this year’s Utah Pride, there is also a fast-growing number of Mormons who are working for change. They may be less visible—after all, our society, and the media in particular, privilege polarizing perspectives—but these Mormons are there, doing difficult but important work. Among them is Joanna Brooks, who served as the Mormon panelist at the conference. She has been an advocate for LGBTQ equality and acceptance among Mormon…

The Threat to Democracy Runs Deep, But Mathematics Could Address the Abominable State of Representation and Voting

By Ismar Volić

…nt republic of Yugoslavia, a country whose socialist-era days were clearly numbered. Three ethnic parties, representing Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Serbs, swept the election and formed the new seven-member presidency. The dream of Bosnia as a multicultural, multiethnic model of tolerance and coexistence for the rest of Yugoslavia—and Europe—had started to unravel. On June 25, 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia. A bri…

Speaking with Palestinian-American Republican Who Confronted GOP at Debate

By Haroon Moghul

…ash, since a political Palestinian identity has been dated well back to the 19th century, and anyway Palestinians are still Arabs. Both candidates shifted Hassan’s question in their own special way; that Republicans might be Arabs and even Palestinians seemed too much of a contradiction for Gingrich’s ideological fluff or Romney’s well-crafted, test-marketed style of engagement. Both candidates also used the opportunity to charge off in another di…

New Pope Accused of Conspiring in Kidnapping

By Nicole Greenfield

…Bergoglio noted disapprovingly in a 2007 speech. Meanwhile, an astounding number of women in Argentina, women without access to or education about contraception, die annually as victims of botched abortion procedures carried out in secret. If we do dig a little deeper into Bergoglio’s past, we find that he was accused of participating in one of the numerous human rights violations committed during Argentina’s Dirty War (which ended up resulting…

How the Study of Evangelicalism Has Blinded Us to the Problems in Evangelical Culture

By Christopher D. Cantwell

…thought to date, has robbed the concept of both its analytical utility and spiritual vitality, suggesting that it should, for a time, be abandoned. Essays by noted minister Timothy Keller and Global Ambassador of the World Evangelical Alliance Brian C. Stiller, meanwhile, argue that “real” evangelicals in the Bebbingtonian sense need to differentiate themselves from their politicized brethren. But what if the evangelicals who voted for Donald Trum…

New Poll Reveals That Anti-Trans Rhetoric isn’t Just Affecting Republicans and White Evangelicals

By Chrissy Stroop

…mple, 86% of White evangelicals said there are only two genders, with that number rising to 92% in 2023. The report also states, “Among White Christian groups, White evangelical Protestants (82%) and Latter-day Saints (72%) are much more likely than White Catholics (51%) and White mainline/non-evangelical Protestants (50%) to strongly feel there are only two genders.” None of this is particularly surprising, but what I do find both surprising and…

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…

LDS General Conference in the “Mormon Moment”

By Joanna Brooks

…ave asserted the Christianity of Mormon belief for national audiences, the number one reaction has come from Christians who seek to correct my understanding of my faith and remind me that Mormons are not, in their eyes, Christians. Some assert that they’ll be praying for my mistaken soul (and the soul of my Jewish husband too). Others seek to engage in a friendlier conversational exchange about whether Mormons profess the Nicene Creed. (We do not…