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The Quixotic Task of Debunking David Barton

By Paul Harvey

…futations of Barton’s bogus empiricism. I’ve considered these questions a number of times recently in observing historians struggling to deal with the popularity of figures such as David Barton, who bowdlerize history but get the kind of attention few actual historians receive for their work. To What Effect? These debates go back a long way. When I was in college at a Baptist denominational school in Oklahoma, the biology professor, a man about…

Pastor Convicted in Lisa Miller Child Kidnapping Case

By Peter Montgomery

…d that as he drove home from the border, Mr. Zodhiates tried to call a cellphone number registered to Liberty Counsel, an evangelical legal group. That cellphone number has sometimes been used by Mathew D. Staver, the founder of Liberty Counsel, dean of the Liberty University Law School in Lynchburg, Va., and a leader of Ms. Miller’s defense team. The RICO filed by Jenkins includes information that RD readers learned last year from Sarah Posner’s…

‘Murder Among the Mormons,’ Latest True Crime Doc From Netflix, Highlights Issues of Faith, Skepticism, and Authenticity

By Benjamin E. Park

…sis. Though inextricably linked to Hofmann through his role facilitating a number of document purchases, he also had an eye to the future, envisioning a church that was much more media-savvy and tethered to the modern age. His quick work helped dissipate attention and avoid long-lasting repercussions. A decade after the bombing, in 1995, Hinckley became the church’s fifteenth president. His thirteen years at the head of the faith are now remembere…

Are We Entering the End Times for Mainline Seminaries?

By Elesha Coffman

…nce existed mainly to train full-time pastors faced reductions in both the number of churches that could support such positions and the number of people eager to take the more challenging, but lower paying, church jobs that remained. Some seminaries shifted their missions to serve the academy or society more broadly, while others trained more part-time, second-career and lay pastors. These shifts were less abrupt than decisions to close or merge a…

Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…s kinda, sorta how James Ray set up his spiritual Ponzi scheme, right? He knew someone who knew someone who did “Indian sweats” and presto and voilà, Ray is taking people on spiritual retreats at 10K a head and then people start dying. So, experts have to be brought in to figure out what happened. No Indians mind you, just experts. And the truth is, we don’t want to be experts. Why? Because we know there is no such thing as Indians, redskins, warr…

How to Make Nones and Lose Money: Study Shows Cost of Catholic Sex Abuse Scandals

By Kaya Oakes

…al, leaving the American church with a massive money problem and shrinking numbers of parishioners on the eve of Pope Francis’ arrival. A recent study by Nicholas Bottan and Ricardo Perez-Trugila in the Journal of Public Economics revealed that, unsurprisingly, “a scandal causes a persistent decline in the local Catholic affiliation and church attendance.” “Some Catholics join other religious denominations during the first three years after a scan…

Union Busting for God: Catholic Colleges Invoke “Religious Freedom” to Violate Catholic Teaching

By Kaya Oakes

…who asked to remain anonymous pointed out a letter he wrote to the school newspaper, in which he noted that DePaul’s administration has tried “to undermine and deter unionizing efforts, through both subtle and obvious methods, using unhelpful innuendo and scare tactics in their addresses to faculty, borrowing moves from a standard anti-union playbook.” Instead of allowing unionization, DePaul created an “adjunct faculty task force” that would bar…

After More Mass Shootings It’s Time to Call Out White Supremacy in the Pews

By Peter Laarman

…what’s going on, but too few seem capable of saying it. We now have a fair number of political and civic leaders who are willing to say the word trauma and talk about the all-pervasive violence in this culture, not to mention the extent of mental disturbance and the fact that American civilians have more assault rifles in their possession than does the U.S. military. All well and good. But we have too few leaders who will talk about the deeper roo…

RD10Q: The Fight Against Feminism

By Kathryn Joyce

…ind it hard to believe that this movement exists, and there’s certainly a “news of the weird” part of any story about an 18-child family. But whether people approach such news as something freakish or something beautiful, there’s so much more to the conviction than the novelty of such large families. I think most readers would be shocked and surprised, as I was, to read what a dramatic reversal of women’s rights the Quiverfull and patriarchy movem…

Like Azusa Street Baptized into Bureaucracy: Mexico’s Flourishing LLDM Church Loses its Apostle

By Michael Schulson

…nd 40 churches, and there are major congregations in Houston, Atlanta, and New York City as well. Along the way, LLDM has been able to take advantage of a broader growth in Latin American Protestantism—a trend that has tended to favor pentecostal movements. According to Pew Research Data, one in five people in Latin America now identifies with a Protestant denomination, nearly two-thirds of which are pentecostal. These numbers bear out in the Unit…