Search for "cheap round trip airline tickets to san diego ca from san francisco phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Are Conservative Churches Really Winning by Being More Orthodox?

By Daniel Schultz

…articularly controversial. In fact, aside from a few nuances, what I’ve reported is essentially the consensus of American demographers of religion. Nor is this material trivial. The story of the rise of the nones in particular is vast, rich, and complex. Its social and political ramifications continue to unfold. Admittedly, there’s only so much room in a five-minute interview, but as it was, NPR wound up giving a platform to a shallow version of o…

More Thoughts on Media Coverage of Liberal Religion

By Sarah Posner

…spurred the Democratic Party to action on gun control. Why, one could logically ask, can Republican politicians continue to oppose same-sex marriage despite the tidal wave of change in public opinion and the law, yet Democrats fall silent on gun control, and specifically on positions supported by this interfaith gun violence prevention group, background checks and assault weapons bans? According to a 2013 poll, 92% of Americans favor background c…

Fusion Politics: A Way Forward for Bernie Sanders?

By Daniel Schultz

…uld get out of the race. As many have argued, when we get to Philadelphia, Sanders can use his total delegate count to leverage changes in the party platform or nomination process. He could press for a $15/hour minimum wage plank, for example, or try to get the Democratic party to abandon closed primaries. He’ll have to be selective—he won’t be able to shoot the moon—but there’s every reason to think Sanders and his movement will be strongly influ…

Do iPads Cause Religious Experiences?

By Andrew Aghapour

…k. At first Riley stayed mostly at the periphery of the crowd, shooting sarcastic looks to the camera and lobbing one-liners about the seemingly religious ecstasy of the “glassy-eyed” consumers being ushered in by a team of Apple’s blue-shirted “preachers.” Entertaining as these loose comparisons might be, it was what Riley did next that caused a brief media flurry and garnered coverage by MSNBC, Business Insider, and over two hundred blogs, news…

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

By Chrissy Stroop

…vitable misgendering tantrums lobbed at Jenner by her fellow White evangelicals, Americans were learning about trans people, and that encouraged me as a trans woman who had yet to come out. I felt like acceptance was just around the corner. How quickly times change. Things went downhill fast when Donald Trump became president and prioritized the Christian Right’s policy goals, including attacks on the rights of transgender Americans. And even now…

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…

Turn On The News: This Isn’t a Split, It’s a Tiny Sliver of Conservatives Walking Out the Door — Introducing A New Media Criticism Column

By Daniel Schultz

…hurch, “the question of women’s ordination is a ‘second tier issue’ that local leaders can address in their own contexts.” In other words, they’re conservative evangelicals who are going to stay rigidly opposed to marriage equality, but might allow women to be ordained—maybe. After all that, the pastor of a congregation that has decided to stay in the denomination for now talks about grieving for the people who have left, and—twenty-five paragraph…

From Licking Floors to Praying for an Inept Government, Churches React to C-19

By Daniel Schultz

…ght, you’re potentially responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Pascal’s countryman (and NBA star) Rudy Gobert learned this the hard way. Wouldn’t it be better in the eyes of your fellow citizens and whatever power you believe in to have erred on the side of caution? Or, you know, sure, don’t be a pansy. Go ahead and put the vulnerable at risk to make America great again. Super idea. And to my fellow Christians: St. Pe…

Christian Epistle on Islamophobia

By Haroon Moghul

…sts at all). I also received an e-mail from a participant in the event who came by because of RD: Dear Haroon, Thanks for your talk at WSU tonight and [for] your perspective on things. In many ways I feel that the American attachment to sensationalism, half truths and fear makes your perspective all the more important. I work with internationals at WSU and lately have made some friends among the Islamic community. I have studied side by side with…

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

By Kathryn Joyce

…Haley Harris, part of the Oklahoma family band that created the unofficial Santorum campaign song, “Game On!”: “If he can run his household, he can run the country,” Harris (whose pastor dad is part of her band) told the crowd. “One of the things that kind of caught our eye with Rick was the size of his family,” yet another supporter told the Washington Times in January. “We’re Gonna Outnumber Them!” It’s familiar rhetoric to me, after years of co…