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The Battle for the Meaning of Religious Freedom Day

By Frederick Clarkson

…nizing on the principle of religious freedom for a long time. Indeed, what comes up first in a Google search for Religious Freedom Day is ReligiousFreedomDay.com, the work of a California-based Christian right agency called Gateways to Better Education. This group is part of a wider movement that seeks to evangelize children in public schools—as detailed in Katherine Stewart’s book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on Amer…

Russian Parliament Hosts U.S. Anti-Gay Activist Paul Cameron

By Chrissy Stroop

…ican crusader against homosexuality”—and particularly since he said he had come “to thank the Russian people, the State Duma, and President Putin… in the name of the entire Christian world.” To thank them, that is, for their uncompromising stance against same-sex relations which, in Cameron’s fact-free worldview, are destroying Western civilization. On Tuesday, Cameron took part in a conference hosted by the news organization Moskovsky Komsomolets…

Racist Remarks by popular BYU Religion Professor Spark Controversy

By Joanna Brooks

…e highest-rated professor in America in 2008, according to RateMyProfessor.com. He teaches large sections of required religion courses, including courses designed to prepare future missionaries, to as many as 3,000 students a year. This semester, more than 800 students are registered in Professor Bott’s classes. (Eleven are registered for BYU’s African-American history course this semester.) Professors at BYU routinely find themselves having to ad…

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

By Brie Loskota and Peter Gudaitis

…help build capacity and resilience—factors that allow congregations to act competently on their sense of compassion. Now is the time to examine what this church, and all other congregations of all faiths, can contribute, rather than just heed the call of an angry mob that sees an asset going unused. But in the long run, Harvey presents Osteen with a wake-up call to the deficit in his moral leadership, prosperity theology and organizational practic…

As Florida Attempts to Make it Illegal, an Argument for the Sacred Work of White Discomfort

By Robert P. Jones

…generations. If we white Christians can muster the courage to walk in its company, discomfort with our racial history can be a sacred and saving gift. ### This article was originally published on Jones’ #WhiteTooLong substack newsletter. To read more or sign up, go to robertpjones.substack.com. I would be remiss here if I didn’t give a grateful shout out to my friend Robin DiAngelo, who put her finger on this problem years ago in her best-selling…

The March for Life: Grassroots Movement or Agitprop?

By Patricia Miller

…the Christian Right. And now that it’s clear that this year’s march won’t come close to the numbers of the Women’s March, despite guest stars like VP Mike Pence. With only about 100 buses permitted for the city, compared to 1,800 for the Women’s March, organizers are suddenly claiming it’s not about the numbers after all. March for Life President Jeanne Mancini told the Times: I don’t think that these numbers are the most important. The number mo…

From Shofars to Hammers: The Spiritual Warriors of MAGA are ‘ReAwakening’ to Political Violence

By Mark Clatterbuck

…cy Pelosi, my thoughts returned to the ReAwaken America Tour that had just come to my town. The rally where all the targets lined up for annihilation in front of General Flynn-and-Company’s spiritual firing squad were exactly the same targets set in DePape’s sights. The rally where vendors sold doormats with “WIPE YOUR FEET HERE” plastered across the face of Nancy Pelosi. The rally where those doormats lay right beside a huge American flag featuri…

Rubio Leaves Science to the Theologians, or the Free Market. Or Something.

By Sarah Posner

…hoaxes, or anti-God, or otherwise untrustworthy. (Actually, you shouldn’t Google “how old is the earth” because you will discover that the creationists are actually very good at search engine optimization. And maybe Rubio did Google it, and discovered a jumble of results, including the scientific answer that it’s about 4.54 billion years old, give or take a bit, and also that a site claiming the earth is about 6,000 years old comes up before the…

How ‘Positivity’ Can Lead to Conspiratorial Thinking

By Susannah Crockford

…community in Sedona, Arizona, variations of prosperity consciousness were common. Positive energy attracts positive outcomes, I was told. Abundance, often a byword for wealth, can be manifested through positive thinking and affirmation. Saying “I AM abundant” every morning would bring more money into one’s life. Negative thinking, and by extension negative people, were to be avoided, as if their negativity were contagious and would bring misfortu…

Sit Down and Shut Up: Pulling Mindfulness Up By Its (Buddhist) Roots

By Max Zahn

…ind that this conversation is unfolding within a divided American Buddhist community. Specific numbers are hard to pin down, and estimates vary widely, but roughly three-quarters of American Buddhists are Asian. The remainder are predominantly white converts. Practitioners in the Asian diaspora typically join communities that are aligned with sects popular in their origin countries. Convert Buddhists, on the other hand, tend to congregate at medit…