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Old Politics, New Bedfellows: The Olson/Boies Challenge to Prop. 8

By Jesse Lava

…is to be blind to one of the great political narratives of our era; and, crucially, to ignore the high level of organizing and firepower that progressives will need to defeat conservatism today. To be sure, there are cleavages within the conservative movement. Some cultural conservatives are willing to support contraception and comprehensive sex-ed in the name of reducing the need for abortion. Some hawks who supported the Iraq war nevertheless o…

Christian Nationalism Was the Loser of Tuesday’s Debate

By Chrissy Stroop

…wer and influence of religion in both domestic politics and geopolitics in today’s world, politicians’ failure to mention religion may be harmful. And no, I don’t mean they should say “God bless America” or other such Christian nationalist claptrap, the absence of which was refreshing in last night’s otherwise circus-like debate. I’ll come back to what I do mean. Today’s authoritarian GOP is the party of white Christians and those who are willing…

A History of the Unaffiliated: How the “Spiritual Not Religious” Gospel Has Spread

By Matthew S. Hedstrom

…litanism. Books allow readers entry into previously unimaginable religious worlds. Since trade presses entered the religion game with vigor, the lines of denomination and tradition have mattered less and less. The political and moral imperatives of World War II provided the greatest stimulus to such interfaith reading, and before long even the Protestant-Catholic-Jew formulation of the era could not contain American readers. What matters to the un…

Opportunity Knocks in Pew Results

By Rachel Barenblat

…ness and diversity of our tradition. Faced with the revelation that 73% of today’s American Jews regard remembering the Shoah as a lynchpin of their Judaism, I see educational and spiritual opportunity knocking. That three in every minyan don’t identify with a particular denomination intrigues me. Given today’s three transdenominational seminaries (ALEPH, AJR, and Hebrew College) I suspect that percentage may grow in years to come. For me that’s a…

Mike Huckabee, meet Amy Schumer. And, for that matter, Tony Orlando.

By Sarah Posner

…out; Tony Orlando is still in. At Huckabee’s campaign announcement speech today in Hope, Arkansas, Orlando, now 71, performed “Yellow Ribbon,” as well as a song he composed for Huckabee, a hackneyed ode to why he loves America, “our home town.” Huckabee is widely seen as the evangelical’s candidate–not an just an evangelical candidate, but the candidate who speaks to and for evangelicals. But not all evangelicals agree, and it’s in part because o…

The Traitor Chaplain Who Gave Government Prayer to America — A 4th of July Corrective

By Andrew L. Seidel

…ous. We’ll be dragged back to a time when conservative White Christian men ruled. When they ruled over women. When they ruled with violence. The history itself is never fully told. But even if it were, this “history and tradition” legal argument makes little sense. The Constitutional Convention (1787) took place thirteen years after Duché prayed (1774) and the delegates at that convention rejected a prayer that was proposed halfway through the pro…

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Lurid Picture of Nigeria’s Muslims in Newsweek

By Patrick J. Ryan, S.J.

…d by their roots in traditional African faith. According to a recent Pew Forum study, Christians even hold a slight majority with 50.8% of the population. Both Muslims and Christians in Nigeria today are prone to varieties of secularism; in particular the rapacious capitalism that finds its base in Nigeria’s petroleum economy. The divide between the rich and the poor can be evidenced in every part of the country, whether Christian or Muslim, rura…

New Book on Trump and Evangelicals Gets it Mostly Right

By Greg Carey

…forth the obvious reasons one might expect evangelicals to reject Donald Trump. Trump’s faults extend beyond personal moral failings and “virtually no evidence of a Spirit-filled life.” Other Republican candidates shared conservative policy values, and with greater consistency than Trump, and possessed far more compelling spiritual bona fides. Yet before Trump defeated Hilary Clinton, he defeated those conservative Christian candidates. White eva…

Swimming Against the Tide: Religious (Non) Affiliation Might Not Mean What You Think It Means

By Timothy King

…ntifications mean something about how those people act and think about the world and others. This does not mean the “rise of the nones” as detailed in this report is insignificant. Far from it. Such changes in declared identification have huge implications for society today. And yet the import and meaning of these changes are likely more nuanced than how they often are portrayed. A mouse pad decorated with a school of ancient “ichthus” Christian s…

Same-Sex Marriage May Lead to Polygamy, But So What?

By William E. Smith

…ess to divorce and suffrage. While the stakes are not exactly the same for today’s debates over polygamy, there’s quite a bit of rhetorical and political continuity between the nineteenth-century anti-polygamy cause and today’s. Claims that same-sex marriage and polygamy are social experiments that will adversely affect children serve to limit women’s (and other people’s) options. Sheff discovered, for instance, that triads with one woman and two…