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American Christianity Is Changing Fast: Five Stories to Watch in 2016

By Richard Flory

…lic model) sets them apart. How long will this trend continue, and in what ways will it develop over the coming years? One of the drivers of this effort is related to the desires of younger Christians to live and work in urban areas. But with the influx of mostly younger and white members, what happens to the city, and the Christian voice that remains? 5. Urban Ministry Goes Mainstream There is a long history of urban churches and ministries in th…

The Year of the Abusive Priest

By Anthea Butler

…of aging priests and clerics. The people of God and their money are going away, if they haven’t already. By putting the emphasis on the office of the priesthood, the Pope has ensured that the future of the Catholic Church will be in futile attempts at attempting to restore its evaporating moral authority. The Church will not be able to adequately insure its clergy with any reputable insurance agency against malpractice; educational institutions fo…

An Unholy Holy Week: Is the All-Male Rule of the Roman Catholic Church Self-Destructing?

By Anne Eggebroten

…llenging priests when they spent unusual time alone with children. John Conway, supervisor of a vocational rehabilitation program in Wisconsin in the 1970s, heard from deaf men about sexual abuse and collected affidavits, but he trusted Archbishop William F. Cousins to take care of it. Priests where Fr. Peter Hullermann worked in Essen sent him to Munich for treatment and trusted the office of Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger to make sure this predator…

8: The Mormon Proposition Gets It Right

By Joanna Brooks

…have dismissed the film as blatantly false. But what I’m hearing from a number of Mormons deeply familiar with the Proposition 8 campaign is that the film gets it mostly right. [See also Holly Welker’s review here. – Eds] Some take exception to editing choices that sequence events out of context for dramatic effect; others wish that the filmmakers had not been so cartoonish in their depictions of anti-gay-marriage standpoints, using only notori…

Debate Heats Up Over “Francis Effect”

By Patricia Miller

…aniel Burke at CNN.com in a lengthy, mostly anecdotal piece, “there’s more way than one to measure the pontiff’s influence” than, say, actual metrics like the number of people going to mass or returning to the church. According to Burke, you just have to “ask around” Boston to find folks who know someone who’s thinking about returning to the church or who feels less horrible about the church than in the darkest days of the U.S. clerical sex abuse…

Dear White Evangelicals: A Black Square Ain’t Gonna Cut It

By Jhas Williams

…to be here, but we’ve conferred with Jesus and have decided to allow it anyway. It’s because of this that watching those same teachers, pastors, former students and the like develop a sudden interest in posting black squares or release statements to the effect that they “stand with their black brothers and sisters in Christ” is at best, laughable. At worst it stirs up old trauma that I and others who share my experience have spent small fortunes i…

My Business, Myself: Piercing the Corporate Veil

By Howard M. Friedman

…whether the business entity itself has religious rights. However, in other ways, corporations often do have constitutional rights. A corporation cannot be convicted of a criminal offense without the protections given by the Constitution to criminal defendants. And in the famous 2010 Citizens United case, the Supreme Court held that corporations have the same First Amendment rights of political speech that “real people” do. If the First Amendment h…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…o “blasphemous content.” The IHEU reports being contacted by an increasing number of secularist groups organizing on Facebook, including groups in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, and Sudan. In all of this, the United States is an anomaly since it rejects even laws against religious hate speech, which were found in 36 of 45 European states in 2011. It’s the best place in the wo…

More Than Big Hair and Money: Jim, Tammy Faye and the Media “Holy Wars” of the 80s

By John Wigger

…nterviewed dozens of people for the book, some of whom thought PTL was the best thing they had ever been involved with and others who thought it was the worst. Jim and Tammy were nothing if not provocative. They put themselves at the center of some of the biggest divides in American religion and culture, which meant that they had no shortage of supporters and critics on either side, particularly with regard to the prosperity gospel. What alternati…