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

By Nick Street

…ence as a filmmaker. How did the film come together? A friend of mine from New York who was a freelance photographer was willing to come to Rio, work for well below his usually daily rate and sleep on the floor of my apartment in order to help with the project. At that point I had built trust with the inmates over about seven months, and I knew who I wanted to interview for the film and that they would be willing to speak into a camera if I was in…

Women’s Equality in the Church is No Longer Negotiable

By Mary E. Hunt

…aim, as in the well-intentioned but naïve and patronizing editorial in the New York Times, that “Pope Stops Investigating the Good Sisters.” No, if anything the women religious and their colleagues stopped the pope’s men. I have every confidence in the integrity of the LCWR women and their commitment to function on their own terms but I think the whole church needs to set the bar higher on what equality, a “discipleship of equals,” looks like. We…

Latest “Religious Freedom” Bills Reveal a New Strategy

By Sunnivie Brydum

…ucky law makes no explicit mention of LGBT people, nor does it include the words “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.” Instead, in what critics see as an effort to shield such laws from legal scrutiny, the law positions itself as “viewpoint-neutral,” suggesting that “no recognized religious or political student organization is discriminated against in the ordering of its internal affairs.” While that language sounds innocuous, it doesn’t take…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…ts Issue,” criticizing atheist activists in the U.S. for comparing their struggles to the struggles of women, African Americans, and GLBTQ citizens. On a global scale, however, secularism most certainly is an issue of civil rights and of human rights. And it’s important to note that the suppression of religious dissent online is being carried out not just by government authorities but also by private corporations. During the Innocence riots, for…

Holey Holey Holey: The Problem with a New Study Valuing Religion at $1.2 Trillion Per Year

By Michael Schulson

…ry becomes even murkier. Take Trijicon, for example, chosen from a Deseret News listicle, “20 companies with religious roots.” Deseret News included Trijicon in the list because the company “inscribed coded biblical references on high-powered rifle sights used by the U.S. military.” That’s it. Other than the founder’s purported religious beliefs, its inclusion is arbitrary. Why not include Ebay, whose founder Pierre Omidyar is a Buddhist, or any o…

Just Your Average Teenage Muslim (Shapeshifter) Girl From Jersey

By Saadia Faruqi

…world. But Pakistan does have the second largest Muslim population in the world, so the probability of a new Muslim superhero being Pakistani are much higher than, say, Palestinian or Jordanian. Like everything else remotely related to Muslims, female Muslims, or Pakistan, Kamala will no doubt have her naysayers. The negativity is already on the rise, with Pakistani Muslims in particular remaining skeptical about this latest attempt to make a her…

Chris Caldwell Sees Muslim Bogeymen. Again.

By Bruce B. Lawrence

…problems but determined to address them, you pick analyses that suggest we live in challenging times where tough choices have to be made (but also can be made) that lead to a better, brighter future. Or you can select those nuanced screeds that remain screeds—decrying the present, presaging a dark future and ultimately an apocalyptic defeat for the forces of order, peace, and advance of the collective good. In “Europe’s Other Crisis,” his recent r…

Church of Pain: Religion, Ritual, and the Body in the New Serial Spin-Off, “S-Town”

By Spencer Dew

…ativity they demand to be heard. Amanda Hess, reviewing the series for the New York Times, calls McLemore, “the peppiest pessimist south of the Mason-Dixon line,” noting his “talent for profane rants about civilization’s downfall that he delivers in an Alabama drawl.” There is more than a touch of exoticism in S-Town. The weird old south gets trotted out for display: a secret segregated room with an empty stripper pole, full of casually racist dru…

Prophecy and Prosperity are Keys to Republican Christian Nationalism According to New Poll

By Daniel Schultz

…charismatic events in their churches, roughly the same number approve of Trump as disapprove of him. In other words, Christian nationalists are disproportionately charismatics, but not all charismatics are Christian nationalists. In fact, charismatic Christian nationalists make up only about one-quarter of all Republicans. That’s still disproportionate, but it’s not enough to explain MAGA by itself. So while going to church doesn’t appear to work…

New Poll Shows Most Americans Don’t Care about Romney’s Mormonism

By Joanna Brooks

…w wrote, “only Mitt Romney has broad potential appeal.” Only Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul come close to Romney in name recognition, but more than 60% of voters say they would never vote for any of them. The Pew survey also shed new statistical light on a favorite subject of media and Republican handwringing: Romney’s Mormonism. A healthy majority of Americans (68%) say that it would not matter to them if a presidential candidate was M…