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A History of the Unaffiliated: How the “Spiritual Not Religious” Gospel Has Spread

…favor of Darwinism, psychology, and comparative religions. The majority of today’s religious “nones”—those who claim no religion but still embrace spirituality—are engaged in the same task of renovating their faith for a new historical moment. And typically, they draw from this same liberal religious toolkit. Today’s unaffiliated, like the liberals of previous generations, typically shun dogma and creed in favor of a faith that is practical, psych…

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Christian Nationalism Was the Loser of Tuesday’s Debate

…st night’s otherwise circus-like debate. I’ll come back to what I do mean. Today’s authoritarian GOP is the party of white Christians and those who are willing to support an extreme Christian nationalist agenda. Today’s Democratic Party has thus become the party of literally everyone else who chooses to affiliate with one of the major parties in our broken two-party system. This situation makes for a messy coalition, but it also provides Democrats…

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Old Politics, New Bedfellows: The Olson/Boies Challenge to Prop. 8

…rganizing and firepower that progressives will need to defeat conservatism today. To be sure, there are cleavages within the conservative movement. Some cultural conservatives are willing to support contraception and comprehensive sex-ed in the name of reducing the need for abortion. Some hawks who supported the Iraq war nevertheless oppose torture and executive secrecy. And many fiscal conservatives are as disgusted with the lack of transparency…

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Pious White Reformers and Race, Then and Now

…condition that they be exiled beyond the Mississippi River; they could be freed but denied civil and political rights; or they could be freed and given the same rights as white people despite the ways in which slavery had “depraved their faculties.” The primary problem usually cited in regard to the third option was the one that John Adams raised in critiquing Tucker’s entire emancipation scheme: “Justice to the negroes would require that they sh…

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Rallies Honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s Support of Organized Labor

…ckelberry was one of the men who marched alongside King during the strike. Today, Mr. Nickelberry, 79, is still hauling Memphis’ garbage, as he has done for more than 55 years. I wrote about Nickelberry in September: Like his fellow sanitation workers back then, he heaved rusted cans over his head. Wet garbage and maggots leaked down his collar and the back of his shirt. There of riding the bus home and people complaining that he smelled because t…

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Top Five Toxic Religion Stories of 2014

…any of the religious standing up for a strong secular civil state, whereas today the vast majority of the self-described faithful in this contest are among those demanding greater deference to religious “liberty.” On the other side, worried about the new encroachments, you will find precious few who say their worry is grounded in part in their robust religious faith. This spells more setbacks for secularism, in my view. At least until the encroach…

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Escape From Manhattan: Tech, Tragedy and Storytelling in Sandy’s Wake

…cient for most people in their contemplation of supernatural other-spaces, today more and more people rely upon mediated worlds for this sense of voluntary displacement. So to see Manhattan itself go belly-up after the storm, to watch how carnal we become when met with loss of power, has been a sobering and a saddening experience. All of this has made me think more squarely about how inured we have become to screens as the mediator of our imaginat…

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Sex and the Chosen People: Be Fruitful and Multiply, Etc.

…to produce a child? Well, of course, there are so many more possibilities today in terms reproductive technology than the Torah, Talmud, or our medieval and early modern codes could have imagined! Certainly, some things possible in our world had been sufficiently anticipated by earlier Jews that we have a basis for discussion; there were forms of birth control mentioned in the Talmud, for example. And there are even intimations of the questions r…

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Opportunity Knocks in Pew Results

…ness and diversity of our tradition. Faced with the revelation that 73% of today’s American Jews regard remembering the Shoah as a lynchpin of their Judaism, I see educational and spiritual opportunity knocking. That three in every minyan don’t identify with a particular denomination intrigues me. Given today’s three transdenominational seminaries (ALEPH, AJR, and Hebrew College) I suspect that percentage may grow in years to come. For me that’s a…

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After Embracing Female Bishop, Pope Spins Again on Women’s Ordination

…ing able to do “many things better than men,” as he did on the papal plane today, why can’t he conceive of one of those things being the priesthood? Pope Francis repeated again today his idea of the “feminine dimension” of the Catholic church being represented by Mary, and also said once again that Mary is “more important” to the spirituality of the church than the apostles on Pentecost. What the pope is neglecting to acknowledge, however, is that…

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