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Thoreau’s Ferocious Critique of Philanthropy Does Not Make Him “Selfish”

By Alda Balthrop-Lewis

…which he doesn’t find any better. Thoreau’s diagnosis of our philanthropic spirit was that we give because it soothes our own pain. “I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail.” Philanthropy is driven, on this view, by the relief it offers the giver as a kind of penance. Contemporary social scientific work on charity supports Thoreau’s c…

Death in the Desert: Riding With the Samaritans

By Lauri Lebo

…s, Jews, Mennonites, and Quakers. The first sanctuary was here in Tucson in 1985 at the Southside Presbyterian Church by the Rev. John Fife, who hung signs outside the church: “This is a Sanctuary for the Oppressed of Central America,” and “Immigration: do not profane the Sanctuary of God.” The church gave shelter to thousands fleeing the Central American death squads. In 1986, Fife was one of eight activists convicted on alien-smuggling charges a…

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

By Andrew Aghapour

…d and fifty of those are going 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 consequ…

Aliens To Arrive in Alabama Today!

By Ben Brazil

…reacher William Miller proclaimed that Jesus would return between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. When Christ did not appear, Miller and uncovered a mistake in his reasoning and offered a revised date: October 22, 1844. It became known as The Great Disappointment. Such are the risks of prophesying a specific date. Since their emergence in the 1950s, UFO-religions have also shown an apocalyptic bent, a tendency fueled by the threat of nuclear a…

A Valentine for the World…and for the Church I Left

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…hey still cared for me. And I can’t tell you how many times I remember the phone call she made and the letter he sent. To the rest of you, those I potlucked with, laughed with, held your hands, loved your babies, went to your weddings, your sickbeds, your moments of crisis: Where are you? Why have you let me go to what you believe to be perdition? Are you just too busy? Did I never matter that much? Have I fooled myself believing we were bonded fo…

The Abandoned Orphanage: Hillary Clinton’s Mother Teresa Moment

By Jeff Sharlet and Kathryn Joyce

…ving into Clinton’s religious history, we studied her relationships with a number of spiritual mentors, including Tikkun’s Michael Lerner, who was soon replaced by “sacred psychologist” Jean Houston, who famously helped the First Lady get in touch with the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt. Later, after Mother Teresa died, Clinton invoked the spirit of the nun as her guiding light so religiously that one might be excused for wondering whether she meant i…

Waiting for Lightning to Strike: A Wobbly Agnostic among the Atheists

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…sun was only one of many tied to the stake and burned. The Crusades. Until 1961, atheists weren’t allowed to serve on a US jury. Women are dying of AIDS in Africa because condoms make baby Jesus sad. In Utah, 45% of homeless teenagers are Mormons. Female genital mutilation. A famous comic book artist she knows was told that he wouldn’t be able to draw in heaven. “I’ve touched on 1/100 of the things about religion that piss me off,” Christina sa…

None Means None (Not Atheist, Agnostic, Unbeliever…)

By Elizabeth Drescher

…epeating: 68% of the Unaffiliated in general believe in God or a Universal Spirit Among those who self-identify as Atheist/Agnostic, 38% say they believe in God or a Universal Spirit Among those who self-identified as “Nothing in Particular”—the majority of Nones (71%) in general—some 81% say they believe in God or a Universal Spirit Survey says: Nones are by and large not unbelievers. Not atheists. Not secular humanists. Not anti-religious. Given…

Awakening, Counter-Awakening, and the End of Church

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…nd are willing to take the risk, freeing themselves up and exploring their spirituality in different ways.’ I think eventually a large number of those people will re-affiliate in some way, shape, or form—but when they do, the actual institutions of religion will be very different because of the demands those people make on new kinds of churches. I look at that whole arc of people who are leaving church because of the failure of the institution, an…

The Brutality of the American Eden

By Paul Harvey

…Revolutionary era, evangelical Christianity was at a relative low point. In 1780, few could have predicted the explosion of democratic Christianity that would so deeply imprint American culture by the 1830s, replacing Thomas Jefferson’s dream of a secular rationalist Republic with something more akin to a Methodist millennium. A more critical examination might have also told the story, from the underside of that millennium, that while American ide…