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Lying About Our Religion, And Other Problems With Polling

By Michael Schulson

…vast as The Public, is difficult work. It’s even harder because The Public doesn’t like to answer its phones. Some people are more difficult to reach than others, such that these representative samples may not be so representative. Wuthnow points out that response rates for surveys have been declining steadily over the decades. Today, even a high-quality Pew study is unlikely to get even 25% of its randomly selected households to respond. Some rec…

Presidential Pep Talks and the Religion of Fear: How did an Uncontroversial Speech Become a National Controversy?

By Eric Reitan

…our care will never call us to harm an aggressor in their defense. But it does mean that even our most dangerous opponents will be seen as fellow human beings with a capacity to care about the good. Those who live by the religion of hope are therefore more inclined to pursue reconciliation even when there are risks, and more likely to forgive even when a past wrong is truly grave. And when and where the religion of hope prevails, it is difficult…

Does Record Number of Religious “Nones” Mean Decline of Religiosity?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…an religiosity—about religion as it is lived in the United States today? A number of what I would see as problems in the Pew report suggest to me that our growing fixation with religion-by-the-numbers may be distracting us from richer, more nuanced understandings of American religious practice. Wanted: A Community that Doesn’t Share My Beliefs and Values Take the demographic category of “Nones” itself. The Pew report notes the difficulty with sur…

Constitutional Attorney Changes into Drag During Talk on Cancelation of West Texas A&M Drag Show

By Chrissy Stroop

…ents, booked an on-campus venue, and began to advertise the event and sell tickets. Then, 11 days before the drag fundraiser was set to take place, WT President Walter Wendler, who has a record of inserting his right-wing Christian bias into his public roles, unilaterally canceled the performance via a pedantic email. Seidel tells the story of the drag show cancelation at West Texas A&M (clip=5.5 minutes): Much of the moralizing communique was cou…

Detroit’s Baggy Pants Fatwa

By Svend White

…addressed, I wouldn’t find it so disturbing. Were Detroit’s finest giving tickets to Speedo-clad gentlemen terrorizing Americas beaches and public pools, I think they’d have a case. I think it’s safe to say that for most people what is ultimately repugnant about the aforementioned policies in some Islamic societies today is not their religious inspiration, but their ultimately tyrranical nature, the imposition of the opinions of one segment of so…

My Value Voter ’rents go Obama

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…” I was flabbergasted at what I was hearing—a staunch Republican switching tickets. It wasn’t long before my shock increased when my mother later that same morning said of McCain, “I can’t vote for him. He acts like he’s supposed to just be elected without doing anything.” When I asked if she would vote for Obama, she hedged. “I don’t have to vote for anybody.” True, she doesn’t, but I hate to think she might not vote for Obama simply because he’s…

Thoroughly Modern Mormons

By Joanna Brooks

…ly wage. One gay Mormon friend told me, “I read The Book of Mormon, and it does not say that gay sex brings the downfall of a civilization. The consumption of fine linens and costly apparel—pride—does.” But most of the Mormons shopping City Creek this Saturday General Conference afternoon put such thoughts out of their minds. There is, instead, a sense of assurance—in seeing so many other LDS people of all ethnicities and nationalities in one plac…

Orthodox TV Channel Offers Gays One-Way Ticket Out of Russia; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…equal marriage rights in the upcoming elections. Until now the AfD, which doesn’t have a single seat in parliament, had been noticeably quiet about gay marriage. One of the AfD’s two so-called lead candidates who would take a top government post if it won is Alice Weidel, a gay woman who lives in a registered relationship with another woman. LGBT activists in neighboring Switzerland hoped that the German move might boost chances for passage of ma…

Kirk Cameron Joins the Anti-Mormon Chorus
(Sort Of)

By Julie Ingersoll

While a number of conservative Christian leaders raise questions about Glenn Beck’s Mormonism, Worldview Matters’ host Brannon Howse continued his attack in a conversation with Kirk Cameron about why Cameron did not participate in Glenn Beck’s Divine Destiny. Howse marveled at the “thick irony” wherein Cameron (the actor who played Buck, the converted journalist warning about the “demonic spirituality of a one world religion” in the Left Behind m…

Is Joel Osteen, Success Mag Cover Boy, Really “God’s Best”?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…n happy thoughts: Osteen avoids using current events in his messages so he doesn’t get sidetracked in controversy. Instead, he tells feel-good stories that help people relate to everyday trials. Some of the stories come from his life growing up, others from e-mail. He hears more stories after a worship service, where as many as 1,000 visitors are invited to meet him. I apparently missed the seminary class that taught pastors not to get “sidetracke…