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Don’t Blame Black Voters: The Obama Non-Effect

By Jonathan L. Walton

…nce of these demographics on the state electorate in relation to the small number of African Americans, it is inconceivable to argue that African Americans are to blame. The fault lines of a progressive coalition to resist Prop. 8 were seemingly regional and religious as opposed to racially determined. Do Black Folks Need an Elton John? Scapegoating black folks is descriptively flawed because it pits a racial group against a multiracial reality. B…

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

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…pages I’ll confine myself to Religulous.) This is the kind of thing a fair number of my students, raised in the Protestant-dominated United States (even Catholics and Jews have assimilated this definition), come to university thinking about religion; the two key components of which are “belief” and “God.” Religion is some cryptic interior, individual thing that exists in one’s own head, and is only understood in relation to a God. I don’t blame my…

My Lowest Point

By Amina Wadud

…e’d made plans to meet up in case we got separated and had exchanged phone numbers. In the middle of the tawaf, the call to prayer came. The guards stopped the tawaf. Some people complied and started to form lines. I found a spot between two women, each with their husbands, and sat down on the line. This seemed an ideal spot until a woman in black niqab squeezed in on my left just as we started the prayer. Okay then. Before we had completed silent…

Praying in Fear

By Shabana Mir

…stopped at a less crowded gate and sat down opposite a woman sitting in a phone booth. I made no eye contact with her. I sat down, wearing my black bubble jacket, and pulled my furry hood over my head (women and many men cover their heads in prayer). And then, what did you think I did, fall down in prostration in St. Louis airport? Bah, how foolhardy do you think I am? Every time I imagine doing such a thing, I imagine some little old lady’s eyes…

Gay Marriage Opponents Running on Empty

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…. At the first, about a dozen volunteers spent the night making almost 300 phone calls and collecting pledges of volunteer support and contributions from 50 new supporters. Add that to the five other locations holding similar phone banks or collecting post cards of support, and I’m sure we easily got our 300 today. In addition, Equality Maryland hosted an interfaith meeting to mobilize supportive faith leaders. It was so great to see such a wonder…

Education, Texas-Style

By Lauri Lebo

…nation.” I’ve spoken to board member Don McLeroy quite a few times on the phone and he genuinely seems like someone who wants to be understood and have people appreciate what he’s doing. (I’ve never met or spoken to Cynthia Dunbar, but she strikes me as someone who really doesn’t care what people think of her.) So, I feel like calling up McLeroy and saying, “You, sir, are a cheater!” Because from the perspective of the literal-minded (and fundame…

Should NASA Have Given $1.1 Million to a Theology Institute?

By Michael Schulson

…e walls tumbling down? When the Freedom From Religion Foundation puts your phone call on hold, you don’t hear muzak. Instead, the phone system plays a homegrown jingle featuring lines like “Everyone is tired of your piety / get off your knees and get to work” and “We’ve got to fight the battle of church and state / or the walls come tumbling down.” The receptionist told me that FFRF co-president Dan Barker, a former evangelical preacher and occasi…

A Tale of Religious Tolerance… On Reddit

By Joanna Piacenza

…pean_douchebag” wasn’t questioning which game the woman was playing on her phone, he was referencing the abundance of facial hair on the young woman’s face—a nod towards her Sikh beliefs of not altering her body image. Unaware that others around him might practice faiths besides his own, “european_douchebag” posted the picture under the Reddit tab “Funny,” hoping to get an elbow-in-the-side snickering reaction from the online community. But what h…

The Lady Vanishes: Trump’s Communications Team Tries to Topple a Monument

By Spencer Dew

…sion with his own person image, as in the recently released transcripts of phone calls with Mexico and Australia, is all too apparent as a dominant and guiding focus) or a problem with those picked to actually “communicate” on behalf of the White House (from a Press Secretary who hid “among” bushes and banned cameras from press conferences to a Director of Communications who, in the early and yet also late days of his short-lived job accused one u…

Lying About Our Religion, And Other Problems With Polling

By Michael Schulson

…icult work. It’s even harder because The Public doesn’t like to answer its phones. Some people are more difficult to reach than others, such that these representative samples may not be so representative. Wuthnow points out that response rates for surveys have been declining steadily over the decades. Today, even a high-quality Pew study is unlikely to get even 25% of its randomly selected households to respond. Some recent Pew reports have reache…