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

By Sunnivie Brydum

…orts,” is indeed “long-discredited.” But then they offer what amounts to an 800-word platform to the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg. The short piece serves as a teaser for Friday’s episode of 20/20, the result of a year-long investigation into several ex-gay “camps” located in the American South. The 20/20 segment features interviews with at least two young people sent to the camps—as well as self-described pastors and administrators of th…

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

By Brie Loskota and Peter Gudaitis

…r instance, about two-thirds of the social service agencies involved in Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts were faith-based organizations, including both congregations and faith-based non-profits. Katrina revealed not only the shortcomings of federal, state and local government disaster response, but also faith-based organizations’ ability to mobilize in a time of need. Congregations and other faith-based organizations often serve as centers of co…

Rep. Cleaver’s ‘Awoman’ Prayer Enrages Christian Nationalists Who Taste Their Own Medicine and Still Miss the Point

By Andrew L. Seidel

…going to be exclusionary. Government prayer will always be divisive in America. We are a pluralistic society made of people from many religious backgrounds and 80 million who are not religious at all. The Founding Fathers chose to keep state and church separate precisely because religion is divisive. It always has been and it always will be, no matter how good one’s religious intentions are. Rep. Cleaver intended to be inclusive with this prayer,…

Where Polls and Surveys Fall Short: A Conversation with Robert Wuthnow on “Inventing American Religion”

By Andrew Aghapour

…to be white respondents and somewhere around 12% or 13% are going to be African Americans. Pollsters, first of all, get results that mostly pertain to the white majority. Secondly, they often ask questions that reflect white majority trends and, thirdly, since the response rates are so bad, they may weight the data in a way that reflects the white majority better than the African-American minority. One of the consequences is that some of the poll…

Why Bill Maher Gets a “C” in My Introduction to Religion Class…

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…a new and vital dictionary that has had long lasting influences on the American populace. In the “Introduction” to his 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, the polyglot, erudite Webster examines the “Origin of Language,” beginning with a synopsis of how God gave a divine decree to Adam to name the animals. In other words, the origin of language begins with Adam. Moreover, Webster hoped his dictionary would be a “useful instrument for…

Hajj Journal: Door Number 89: The Door with No Name

By Amina Wadud

…d inside the mosque one day, I came across Bab raqm tis’wa thamanin, “door number 89,” literally. The door with no name. Facing the mosque at door number one, bab maalik ’abd-al-’Aziz, this door is off to the left. Looking at the mosque floor plan, this is where the building structure of the mosque is deepest. This is “the women’s section.” I noticed as I was walking through the first floor toward door number one, the kings’ door, on my way out af…

Cloverfield: Sin & Redemption, with Monsters

By Gabriel Mckee

…n short, it’s self-absorption: the characters in this film search for cell phone chargers while the world falls down around them. In one key scene (that appears in the trailer), the monster hurls the head of the Statue of Liberty, which crashes down a few feet from the POV camera. Within seconds, people have lined up in front of it to take pictures with their cell phones. They’re distanced from what’s happening around them, oblivious to what it re…

How Does an Atheist Come to Believe in God?: An Interview with Jacob Needleman

By Lisa Webster

…ills, I fished in my bag for the tiny microphone I planned to use with my iPhone, to record our conversation. “Is that what you’re using?” he asked, with great interest. He held up his own phone. “I just got one of these. Will this really work?” He sat next to me on the couch as I pointed him through the app store on his phone. “There it is,” I said, pointing to iTalk. “That’s what I’m using.” He tapped the screen, but the app that came up for dow…

Gay Marriage Opponents Running on Empty

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…and we even had a Catholic priest and some interfaith organizers. We had African American faith leaders from 4 different counties in the state along with Latinos and Anglos. This really is a big tent movement. The poll released last week from Public Religion Research Institute showing growing acceptance among people of faith for marriage equality in California along with national polls that have shown at least 65 percent of Americans support civil…

Sex, Violence, Art, and Religion

By Kent L. Brintnall

…in mind. I can name the people who were my imagined audience. I have their numbers in my cell phone. There are, of course, lots of other people I would invite to eavesdrop on this solipsistic soliloquy. I’d like Bataille scholars to read the book. I’d like people who’ve never heard of Bataille to read the book. I’d like feminist and queer theologians—and those scholars who study queer theory—to read it. And if a serious scholar of Bacon’s or Mappl…