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Religious Leaders Need ‘Empty the Pews’ Which Chronicles the Darker Side of the ‘Nones’ Phenomenon

By Kaya Oakes

…stical data on Nones, compiled by the sociologist Ryan Burge—and a growing number of books exploring the narrative stories of Nones have appeared in recent years, including a book of my own. Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church Chrissy Stroop and Lauren O’Neal Epiphany Publishing November 29, 2019 What many of these articles and books share in common is a sense of confusion or despair. The primary question they ask is often framed in the…

Faith-Based Bailout Part 3

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…t markets. The subtext of story number one, which will likely become story number two in the next day or so, is the partisan sniping that has already consumed the issue. A conservative core of House Republicans now claim, with a semi-straight face, that a partisan floor speech from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi actually turned them against a bill they came prepared to vote for. The speech “was” partisan—in the extreme, and far too much so for my tast…

Hobby Lobby: Key to a More Liberal and Less Religious America?

By Rebecca Sager

…te hearts and minds, and moving people out of the pews across America. The number of nones (people with no religious preference) is on the rise, with over 20% of all Americans claiming this status, and many point to the increased politicization of religion as the cause. This trend of legal victories will, in the long run, very likely create a more secular America. Recent data indicate that this process is already clearly under way. A poll just rel…

Where Do “Sacred” Values Live in the Brain?

By Arri Eisen

…he emotional center of the brain. Perhaps not too much surprise there. Why does any of this matter? It goes back to why we believe what we do; the military strategists, the politicians. People make decisions—and act—based on their beliefs. The more we understand about the mechanism of why people believe what they do and how they act on it, the more we understand about people, period. In fact, Berns et al. showed that folks with stronger activation…

Why the Women’s Ordination Question Will Shape the Future of Mormonism

By Joanna Brooks

…riesthood? If so, how, and how soon? Systematic theological deliberation does not receive institutional support in Mormonism. Throughout the twentieth century, most of the energy and creativity in Mormon life was absorbed by the pragmatic challenges of transforming an upstart American religious movement into a global bureaucratic institution. In the service of bureaucratic uniformity and simplicity, complicated aspects of Mormon history and th…

Why Liberal Religious Arguments Fail

By Peter Laarman

…on or health care. Yes, the storytelling business is messy and diffuse. It doesn’t lend itself to sound bites as readily as the “I’m right/you’re wrong” confrontational throwdown does. But religious progressives in particular might well benefit from going this route, because so many of us have journeyed farther and over rockier ground than have our conservative counterparts. Storytelling is already powerful when we hear the stories of others, bu…

Michael Jackson, Perfect “God” for the Media Age

By Kathryn Lofton

…lly ambiguous figment of our imagination, and for many millions of fans it does not matter if he was “black or white” because the impact of his life and music and moves and memory on their lives has nothing at all to do with “the standard read.” Remember the episode on The Simpsons where Homer is placed in an insane asylum and his roommate is a 300-pound white guy who claims to be Michael Jackson? Homer brings him home after he is released, and th…

Mumbai, Five Months After: Searching for a Coherent Stance on Religious Violence

By Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad

…extremist Muslim groups and concentrating solely on their violent enemies, does not help Muslims trying to escape the politics of hate. In India, Muslims generally do not want analysis of the Mumbai massacres to proceed through narratives of violence against Muslims because this suggests that there is a justifiable link here. In effect, it endorses the claims of the Lashkar-e-Taiba-trained attackers that they were acting on behalf of Indian Muslim…

Newsweek’s Strange Faces of the Christian Right List

By Sarah Posner

…at Wallis and Hunter are close spiritual advisors to the president, if one does consider them part of the Christian right, then one should conclude that Obama has had a most remarkable right-leaning spiritual evolution from Chicago to Washington. Considering Newsweek chose this list to represent the increasingly “diffuse” movement, it missed much of what makes it tick. The people on the list represent a visible slice of the Christian right (or don…

Modern Vampires: Your Neighbors and Spouses

By Joseph Laycock

…infringes on that comfort. By the end of this study, I was shocked at the number of educated people I met who dismissed my work as a book on “freaks.” Ideally, I would like readers who dismiss this community to stop laughing, and readers who fear this community to perhaps smile. What alternative title would you give the book? So many books have been written about vampires that almost every clever title has been taken. Our Vampires, Ourselves was…