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If Modesto’s Public Schools Can Teach World Religions, It Can Happen Anywhere

By Jonathan Homrighausen

…lism. Modesto is the city where, as a teen, I was invited by a friend to a service at his church. It turned out to be a performance of “Heaven’s Gates, Hell’s Flames,” a dramatization of the final moments of peoples’ deaths. The play vividly promised eternal hellfire for those who had not given their heart to Christ. My fourteen-year-old self wanted to know: what about the Dalai Lama? Was he destined for Satan’s eternal presence? Modesto is also t…

Why We Should Stop Trying to Pigeonhole This Pope

By David R. Brockman

…erican Right, he calls upon Americans not to “be taken aback” by the sheer number of immigrants, “but rather [to] view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories.” On the other hand, Francis’ critique of capitalism emphasizes the collective over against individualism. Quoting from the encyclical Laudato si, Francis calls business “a noble vocation,” but stresses that it should regard “the creation of jobs as an essential pa…

“Little Sisters” Being Sold As Face of Contraception Case

By Patricia Miller

…es that requiring the sisters to notify the Department of Health and Human Services that it intends to opt-out of the contraceptive mandate, as allowed under the so-called accommodation provided by the Obama administration, is actually a “permission slip where we authorize the use of our religious health plan to offer services that violate our beliefs and waive our protections under federal civil rights laws. That’s why they need our signature.” W…

“I Was a Wild Man”: How to Decode Evangelical Testimony

By Eric C. Miller

…tates, he settled down, got married, and recommitted his life to Christian service. He thus received his true inheritance in the form of his father’s legacy. Later, this same trajectory would be followed by Tchividjian, with nearly perfect precision. In an interview with the Associated Press, Tchividjian declared that, as a younger man raised in the Graham dynasty, “I rebelled against everything my family stood for.” The article explains: At 16, u…

Women’s Equality in the Church is No Longer Negotiable

By Mary E. Hunt

…especially regular churchgoers, to redirect their giving. There are untold numbers of religious/spiritual non-profits, including women’s religious orders that are good alternatives to the local parish for providing services in the community. If one is conscience stricken about worshipping in a building one does not pay to heat, I suggest either worshipping elsewhere for a while and/or placing a check in the collection made out to the power company…

Hicksters, Stickers, and Affection: Why I Left D.C. for the Family Farm

By Timothy King

…tage or journey of self-discovery, as Thoreau had. Watching as inflation siphoned away nest eggs tucked into savings accounts in the 1970s led to a large-scale interest in investing in the tangible asset of land. The Nearings taught their acolytes how to invest in soil and get one acre to produce enough food to feed 30 families. Broad economic and social forces offer a partial explanation for why innovators and experimenters such as Thoreau, Borso…

Ben Carson’s Flat Tax Gets the Bible Wrong

By Sarah Posner

…ekel per person to build the Tabernacle. Yet later, the Talmud documents a spirited debate about how one would allocate the cost of building a wall. The rabbis came up with a system now known as the benefit theory of taxation—that people pay based on how much they would benefit from the service. That theory, though, has been dismissed in modern times because of the impossibility of determining such an allocation. Chodorow said that he was “deeply…

Competitive Religious Philanthropy in the Wake of the Nepali Earthquake

By Nalika Gajaweera

…s, the group claimed, are motivated by a Hindu sense of seva, or “selfless service for the benefit of all.” Other faith-based groups, in contrast, are “not always selfless,” having “ulterior motives, including evangelizing and church-planting,” the email argued. Faith-based giving is widely accepted today as important aspect of the international community’s response to emergencies. Less understood, however, is the role that intra- and inter-religi…

U.S. Christianity is Dead, Long Live U.S. Christianity

By Richard Flory

…r, more locally oriented church communities, and by larger churches that attract the masses for a spiritual or musical performance, and a sense of belonging to something much larger than themselves. Young people are looking for intimacy and personal connections, deep spiritual experiences, service to others and the opportunity to create their own community, whether religious or not. Religion is not going anywhere anytime soon, regardless how peopl…

Irish Vote Reflects Diminished Moral Authority of Catholic Church

By Peter Montgomery

Irish voters turned out in huge numbers on Friday and cast their votes 62 to 38 percent in favor of amending the country’s constitution to allow same-sex couples to marry, making the overwhelmingly Catholic country the first in the world to legalize marriage for same-sex couples through a national referendum. Trevor Gundy, writing for the Religion News Service just before the vote, had examined the decline of the Church’s power in Ireland. “Many…