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What Coverage of a Fatal Orthodox Baptism Reveals About Western Media

By Katherine Kelaidis

…mportant marker of Eastern Christian identity—particularly as increasingly numbers of Eastern Christians became the simultaneous targets of Western crusaders and Islamic conquerors. In this context, rigid adherence to liturgical customs became a means by which to assert and preserve identity in the face of colonization and oppression. Conversely, adherence to Christian practices abandoned by the Christian West—if not in the Middle Ages then certai…

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…

My God, David Brooks

By John Modern

…t is almost invisible outside the academic world because the text is nearly 800 pages of dense, jargon-filled prose.” Rest assured, we do not need to read Taylor for ourselves because David Brooks can be trusted. His ongoing effort to distill for us the density of jargon is a choice well-honed. The result: a column that we have chosen to read (again, wisely) and, moreover, a readerly choice that becomes a sign to others and ourselves that we are a…

Air Kissing the Mezuzah: Religion and Science Collide in Fight Against Virus

By Shalom Goldman

…seven million people. (According to the World Health Organization more than 800 people around the world have died from this flu.) Flying over Israel and taking one’s prayers a little closer to the heavens might seem like a recent rabbinic innovation, but it is not. Actually, there were a number of precedents for such prayer flights; one as early as 1942, when the Jews of British Mandatory Palestine feared that the Nazis would break through the Bri…

The C Word

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

As a Christian it has never truly occurred to me to think about where the “best” place might be for me to work, but a new survey on the “Best Christian Places to Work in the US and Canada” has me thinking. Certainly, as a person of faith who is concerned about the environment, I don’t think I’d pursue a job at a nuclear plant or at a company clear-cutting forests. But, overall, I consider just about any place of employment a great place to be whi…

Play to Extinction: Religious Groups Unite Against Predatory Gambling

By Frederick Clarkson

…s were legal in two states in 1985 (Nevada and New Jersey). Today there are 800,000 machines in 40 states. The new generation of electronic “slots” do not even use coins. You purchase and swipe an electronic card like you do at the ATM. The addictive nature of the electronic slots and their role as the main revenue stream of the gambling industry is not widely understood. Industry data show that 70-80% of the revenue of casinos come from these mac…

Religious Right Targets Obama Picks, Daschle and Holder

By Bill Berkowitz

…that legalized abortion.” He “voted for federal funding of abortions on a number of occasions,” including 2003, when “he voted for an amendment that would repeal President Reagan’s ‘Mexico City Policy’ and allow funding for abortions—and abortion counseling—abroad.” In 1999, “he voted to kill an amendment that would prohibit taxpayer dollars to fund abortions covered by federal health insurance plans… [and] in 1997, [he] voted for an amendment th…

Are School Districts Getting the Message on Government-Sponsored Prayer?

By Lauri Lebo

There’s an old joke in newsrooms that goes if you can find three examples of something, it’s automatically worthy of a trend story. And so, according to the rule, it’s too early to call this a trend. Still, it is interesting that two news stories came out yesterday about school districts ending government-endorsed religious observances because they recognize that they would probably lose a costly First Amendment battle. Could it be that in the wa…

Mormon Bloggernacle is No Choir

By Krista Kapralos

…said Courtney Kendrick, whose C Jane Enjoy It blog is ranked among the top 800 blogs on Technorati. By comparison, Times and Seasons is ranked at about 31,000, and By Common Consent is ranked at about 25,000. Mormon Mommy Wars is ranked at about 40,000. Kendrick has blogged in the past for Segullah, a blog that is included on the list at the Mormon Archipelago, an online portal that aggregates blogs in the Bloggernacle, but she now prefers to wri…

Normalization is Control: Telling Stories to Survive

By Mariam Durrani

…for myself, my family, and colleagues. So I’ve been trying to draft a short 800-word article for Religion Dispatches, as my attempt to make sense of this current moment, not because I chose this as an anthropological project, but here I am. Here I am listening to Trump’s transition team drop words like Muslim registry or that there is a precedent for internment camps in American history. The news that the KKK has been dropping their newsletter off…