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Covering Religion in The New Year: The Atheist Bus And More

By Diane Winston

…the atheist bus adverts, said: ‘You wait for ages for an atheist bus, then 800 come along at once. I hope they will brighten people’s days and make them smile on their way to work.’” So will it be a year of smiles for the faithless—or, perhaps, the faithful? A lot depends on the economy. Religion didn’t fare particularly well during the Great Depression. Despite the seeming need for alternative realities, church attendance didn’t swell in the 193…

Prosperity Gospel Is Not the Only Problem with Joel Osteen’s Harvey Response

By Brie Loskota and Peter Gudaitis

Twitter was outraged Monday. Megachurch Pastor Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church, housed in a former basketball arena, looked to be dry and quiet, even as thousands of Houstonians were seeking shelter from Hurricane Harvey. “Joel Osteen” started to trend on Twitter with comments about the hypocrisy of the prominent Prosperity Gospel preacher, who tweeted out that he and his wife were praying for Houston, while appearing not to do anything to address…

Trump is Helping the Economy… The Apocalypse Economy

By Jonathan Root

…h and South Carolina, the park was nearly twenty times larger than Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando. It featured campgrounds, an RV park, a water park, a television studio, an amphitheater, a 500-room hotel, shopping centers, and restaurants. In 1986, the park welcomed six million visitors, making it the most attended non-Disney theme park in America. The bonanza didn’t last. In 1987, news leaked that Bakker had had a one-time sexual encoun…

New Poll: Repeal DOMA

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…s, but the numbers [pdf] show that the sample actually skewed right. Of the 800 registered voters polled 38 percent were strong, weak, or independent-leaning Democrats with 41 percent identifying as strong, weak, or independent leaning Republicans. Conservatives outweighed liberals by 38 to 18 percent, and a full 74 percent of those polled identified as religious. Some 40 percent claimed the moniker of “born again,” and 33 percent said they attend…

Are Atheists Taking 1st Amendment Suits Too Far?

By Gordon Haber

While sanctimonious conservatives and godless liberals alike await the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Hobby Lobby case, two more suits with serious church and state implications are quietly making their way through the system. The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) is a group of “atheists, agnostics and skeptics” with a Scientology-esque fondness for litigation. Recently the FFRF has gone after the so-called “parsonage exemption,” which allow…

A Resurgence of “Ex-Gay Therapy” Under Trump/Pence? ABC News Report Offers a Platform to Hate Group Rep. Peter Sprigg

By Sunnivie Brydum

…herapy, it does not offer any additional resources to understand the real-world impact. Despite the existence of numerous peer-reviewed studies that have documented the harm such treatment inflicts on its subjects, the article does not broach the ethical or licensing issues that arise when licensed or religious therapists seek to use a tactic that has been denounced by the industry’s governing organizations. Instead, the authors of the piece let s…

The Feds: Gamblers And Addicts

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…agerly waiting to be put to such work? Perhaps. There certainly are in New Orleans and its environs. But enough to absorb these staggering sums? That seems doubtful. And I begin to worry that this proposal, well meaning as it is, is as little thought-through as most plaNeither the emotions created by scandal or by crisis are good for democratic deliberation; we have had ample evidence of this frightening truth as we have watched alleged economic e…

Catholic Church Ordained Women Before, Can Do it Again

By Phyllis Zagano

…e trajectory of deacon-priest-bishop is relatively recent—only about 700 or 800 years in the long history of the Church. In fact, the earlier understanding is that the deacon would become a bishop! I sometimes wonder if the naysayers are more afraid of women bishops than of women priests. But, in modern times, we have reestablished the tradition of a diaconate lived permanently. All priests are also ordained deacons, and in the most formal of litu…

The Intellectual Source Code For National Conservatism Can Be Found at This Niche Catholic Publication

By Peter Schwartz

…oot of everything. And that “secularism”—which by definition architects a world without God, and therefore a world with inherently defective and rotten moral foundations—is the root of all evil. Riffing on Neuhaus (and borrowing from Pope John Paul II), First Things intellectuals will often say that politics is downstream from culture and that culture is downstream from religion. What they usually don’t go on to tell you—at least not openly—is tha…

Behind the Inclusive-Sounding Ads of this $100 Million PR-Blitz-for-Jesus it’s the Same Old Conservative Christian Fantasy

By Chrissy Stroop

…ee those people who are living that lifestyle as they’re living it in our world today would [sic] REPENT and turn from that lifestyle.” As the CT report cited above notes, the “He Gets Us” website is working with Gloo, a Koch-connected company that uses big data to help churches target the vulnerable for outreach and conversion. The report also mentions that “He Gets Us” promotes Alpha, a global initiative launched in the UK known for its homophob…