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Data-Mining The Denominations: The Southern Baptists in Four Charts

By Daniel Schultz

…, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, North and South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. That won’t be a surprise to most Americans, but the extent to which the SBC depends on this “base” might be: since 1950, about 75-80 percent of the total membership has lived in those states. Texas alone makes up almost 20 percent of the total.* And here the trouble begins. If you look at the rate of growth—not the total number of people…

Are the Culture Wars Over? Look at the States

By Sarah Posner

…e, “Overtly Christian prayers at government meetings are not rare in North Carolina. Since the Republican takeover in 2011, the state Senate chaplain has offered an explicitly Christian invocation virtually every day of session, despite the fact that some senators are not Christian.” (And more than a few North Carolina citizens, one would presume.) On another front, 13 state attorney generals have filed comments with the Department of Health and…

NC’s “Bathroom Bill” Shows Problem With “Religious Freedom” Label

By Stephanie Russell-Kraft

…went on to give two examples of “religious freedom laws,” including North Carolina’s HB2. “It’s more like ‘The Religious Right Wants To Keep Transgender People Out Of The Bathrooms That Correspond To Their Gender Identities Because They’re Scared Of Them…’ Act,” Smith said. In another video, the Atlantic’s Emma Green also characterized North Carolina’s law as a “religious freedom bill” that creates “protections for people, mostly Christians, who…

UCC First Church to Sue State Over Gay Marriage Ban

By Peter Montgomery

…y Ellett Allison at at Holy Covenant United Church of Christ said: “North Carolina’s laws prohibiting same-gender marriage designate some citizens as unfit for the blessings of God. We reject that notion. As all of God’s children are welcome to receive the sacraments of communion and of baptism, so all of God’s children should be able to receive the sacrament of holy union and marriage.” He also quotes Luke Largess, a partner at Tin Fulton Walker…

Gutless Americans: Religion-Baiting Heading into Election Day

By Evan Derkacz

…s Americans“ ad, which promptly got her excoriated by nearly a dozen North Carolina papers, handily rounded up in a response ad from Hagan, which ends by telling Dole to not “bear false witness against fellow Christians.“ Ouch: The Carolina papers’ criticisms were uncharacteristically sharp, using words like “shameful,“ “egregious,“ “false,“ “insulting,“ and many noted that attacks this unscrupulous signal a sense of “desperation“ in the Dole camp…

LGBTQ Equality Pendulum “Abruptly” Swinging Back as Religious Exemptions Gain Victories

By Patrick Hornbeck

…accommodation would cause an undue burden.” Devine ordered that the North Carolina courts provide Myrick with back pay, compensate her for her attorney’s fees, and determine whether a position exists to which she might be reinstated. As we recently learned, the parties ended up settling for nearly $225,000 in compensation and $115,000 in attorney’s fees. Two cases do not make a trend, but these decisions from California and North Carolina suggest…

By the Way: Religious Right Losing its Grip?

By Randall Balmer

…ing about meaningful reform on this issue is to change the terms of the conversation and alter the moral climate. Besides, the only thing that both sides of what currently passes for debate over abortion agree on is that making abortion illegal will not have a significant effect on the number of abortions. The developments at Regent University and the University of Notre Dame suggest that younger evangelicals understand that, as do a growing numbe…

Waiting for Lightning to Strike: A Wobbly Agnostic among the Atheists

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…applaud this news, a murmur through the convention hall, Blackberries and iPhones tweeting on all sides of me. “When you come out of the closet, shut the door behind you because you won’t need it anymore,” he continues. (Who’s he talking to? He’s preaching to the choir, isn’t he? As far as he knows?) “If you don’t have a deity,” he says, “you are an atheist.” I’m an English teacher and I agree this may indeed define an atheist—someone without a g…

The Sacred and the Dead: The Trouble with Sugar Magnolia

By Kaya Oakes

…omething-year-old Deadhead guys hit on my teenage friends by offering them tickets to shows. Deadheads were anathema to my chosen subculture of socially conscious punks. East Bay punks were aggro and in your face about social justice, feminism, human rights; Deadheads, in our eyes, were too stoned and obsessed with their god Jerry to care. Sometimes, I’d be out in Berkeley at night, coming out of a punk show in some basement or garage, and I’d hea…

Science Mike Building a “Christian Science” Liturgy for the Nones

By D. Ashley Campbell

…mmunion there anyway. It was after communion that he took a walk along the beach and started speaking to the waves about his tumultuous faith. The waves responded, McHargue says, when he spoke Jesus’ name. “Time stopped. The waves seemed to stand still, as if an unseen hand had pressed pause on the universe’s remote,” writes McHargue. “I felt God with me, in me, and through me.” But even after hearing God, his scientific mind struggled with his re…