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Teaching Love: Soulforce Takes it to the Quad

By Nick Street

…o was working as a bar-back in the Stonewall Inn on the day of the riots in 1969. “For our first pride parade, we had over 1,800 protesters and over 3,000 people holding a prayer vigil. This past year we had just one rabid protester. We’ve come a long way.” Loyd, a soft-spoken Vietnam vet who grew up in a rural area near Conway, credits the peace that the couple currently enjoys to their willingness to confront their would-be oppressors head on. “…

Pentecostal Prayer Gangs: New Film Documents Religion in a Brazilian Prison

By Nick Street

…the inmates in this film. “If I Give My Soul” is screening at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles on February 6, 11 and 12. …

Gay Marriage to End “Culture Wars”?

By Bill Berkowitz

…y still have pull at the polls. According FRC’s “National Omnibus Study” of 800 likely voters, conducted over June 25, 26 and 29, “marriage protection amendments” on the November ballot in California, Florida, and Arizona are still firing up evangelical voters. An FRC press release issued on July 10, trumpeted the finding that anti-same-sex marriage initiatives have “the potential for significant political impact,” noting that: 58% of likely voter…

Normalization is Control: Telling Stories to Survive

By Mariam Durrani

…for myself, my family, and colleagues. So I’ve been trying to draft a short 800-word article for Religion Dispatches, as my attempt to make sense of this current moment, not because I chose this as an anthropological project, but here I am. Here I am listening to Trump’s transition team drop words like Muslim registry or that there is a precedent for internment camps in American history. The news that the KKK has been dropping their newsletter off…

Did the Pope Embrace the Prosperity Gospel?

By Sarah Posner

…f declared that “the miracle of unity has begun.” “Let’s give each other a spiritual hug and let God complete the work that He has begun,” said Francis. The Trinity Foundation, the Dallas, Texas-based Christian watchdog group that monitors and investigates televangelism fraud, has questions, asking why the Pope would meet with religious leaders “who engage in the same kind of excesses he’s been preaching against.” In a statement, the Trinity Found…

Burying the Future: Youth Violence in Chicago

By Ibrahim Abusharif

…here are many lighthouses in the Great Lakes region, she told me, more than 140 of various shapes and histories. She drove alone and spent more than $800 worth of gas to pursue her unusual passion, staying some nights at various towns along the way. It was enjoyable to hear her speak the way she did. Then she asked about neighborhoods, and I told her what I knew. Violent deaths are a scourge in Chicago among school-age children, especially on the…

On the Taliban’s Hit List: An Exiled Pakistani Singer’s Plea to Save Music

By Austin Dacey

…are of Mingora town. Journalist Shaheen Buneri has estimated that more than 800 music shops have been bombed or attacked in the Northwest since 2006. I spoke with a man who had personally witnessed Islamist thugs destroying traditional instruments in front of the players whose lives depended on them. It was against this backdrop that I put some questions to the man at the harmonium. Because of continuing danger at home, he wished to remain anonymo…

Play to Extinction: Religious Groups Unite Against Predatory Gambling

By Frederick Clarkson

…ction and democracy. Sacrificing Citizens Slots were legal in two states in 1985 (Nevada and New Jersey). Today there are 800,000 machines in 40 states. The new generation of electronic “slots” do not even use coins. You purchase and swipe an electronic card like you do at the ATM. The addictive nature of the electronic slots and their role as the main revenue stream of the gambling industry is not widely understood. Industry data show that 70-80%…

An American Muslim Abroad, Or, Things I Saw in Dubai

By Haroon Moghul

…ways, it reminds the historically-minded of how America was derided in the 19th and early 20th centuries. (There’s good and bad there, as any new capitalist conglomeration would feature.) Dubai is the biggest city in the UAE, with 2.1 million people. Recently I heard that some 13,000 people move to the city each month, which can be best described as clumps of skyscrapers along massive highways, some 6-8 lanes in each direction. But though it’s…

Lifestyles of the Rich and Pious

By Patricia Miller

…t “morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan,” lives in a “one of a kind,” 19-chimneyed mansion in the heart of Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood conservatively valued at $14.3 million. And he is waited on by three nuns who live in a nearby coach house—very Downton Abbey. • Seattle Archbishop James Sartain, who is currently in charge of making sure that the naughty nuns of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious don’t spend too much time wor…