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

By Lisa Webster

…together they sometimes exaggerate. the worst qualities of human beings. But without a community, without help, without interrelationship, I don’t think most human beings can ever come to true spiritual development. You need a community of some kind or other. Very rarely, if ever, without the help of environment or community or culture, does someone appear who becomes a highly evolved person, in my opinion. What kind of community would be the que…

What Can a Real Life Haunting Tell Us About American Religion? [Updated]

By Daniel Wise

…t, whenever she tried to speak to this friend on the phone in the house about the haunting, the phone connection would be interrupted. As a busy woman with two kids, Maria doesn’t always have a lot of time to devote to spirituality, but when she does, she often relies on intuition. In the case of the haunting, she reports that her intuition pointed her toward the conclusion that it’s the land on which the house was built that’s haunted, rather tha…

Education, Texas-Style

By Lauri Lebo

…litical revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century. (They also cut out the word “Enlightenment.”) Of course, Jefferson, a deist who didn’t have much use for Christianity and who coined the term “separation of church and state,” creates a problem for those who argue the founding fathers wanted American to be a “Christian nation.” I’ve spoken to board member Don McLeroy quite a few times on the phone and he genuinely seems like someone wh…

Lying About Our Religion, And Other Problems With Polling

By Michael Schulson

…, or some other range? The term gets thrown around so much, and by such reputable institutions, that you can forget that it was invented in 1991 by a pair of marketing consultants, whose methods were, at best, sketchy. The persistence of these categories shouldn’t surprise anyone. Generalizations are appealing. They make good copy for journalists. “Polls that produced generalizations about the national population,” Wuthnow writes, “spoke to the na…

Rage or Courage?: YouTube Terrorism Take Two

By Bruce B. Lawrence

…rn way of life, and Western civilization, depends on untrammeled freedom. But what about hate speech? Is hate speech not a category that impinges on, and limits, the practice of free speech? Must Jews ‘tolerate’ neo-Nazis? Must Catholics tolerate one who suggests that the birth of Jesus was not immaculate, that he was instead conceived by ordinary human means, outside Jewish law and beyond the awareness or participation of Mary’s lawful husband? D…

Is There Hope for a Truly Progressive Evangelicalism? An Interview with Deborah Jian Lee

By Eric C. Miller

…majority of Christians are pro-LGBTQ. Anecdotally, since my book has come out a number of pastors and Christian leaders of major evangelical organizations have reached out to me because this movement has prompted them to become LGBTQ-affirming and they are grappling with how to live out their convictions in a community so divided on this subject. We’re on the brink of something big that could change everything. Of all the individuals considered in…

Yes, It Can Be Hard to Be an Atheist in America; Now We Have the Data

By Chrissy Stroop

…ing possible rejection is similar.” The use of the terminology of “coming out” outside of LGBTQ experience will likely remain contentious. But the hardships that many nonreligious Americans face for being nonreligious, while distinct from those faced by LGBTQ Americans, are still very real. Christian privilege and supremacism are pervasive in the United States, and much work remains to be done to render them more visible so that, along with white…

Is It OK To Use a Cellphone in Church? Pew Surveys the New Etiquette

By Michael Schulson

…ugh a pulp-and-glue book. It’s possible that some people are hypocrites about phone use in church (cf. Matthew 7:5). But it’s also possible that the question was just confusing. The problem here is that when Pew asks questions about how people use their cellphones, they’re entering vague territory, because there’s no agreed-upon definition of “use.” I’d wager hard cash that if you asked the exact same question about churches after priming people t…

Religious Hostility to Gay Nigerians; The Pope’s Visit To Africa; Ireland’s Religious Schools Can’t Discriminate Against Gays; Orthodox Church in Georgia Leads Anti-Gay Forces; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…hurch more welcoming to people who are gay, or divorced or cohabiting without being married. But that is wrong. How gays are treated is fundamental to the future of the universal church — and Pope Francis knows it. Vallely wrote that he recognized that the Pope is pursuing multiple objectives, but said the issue of homosexuality in the Africa is important to the future of the church for a number of reasons: It may well be that Pope Francis decided…

Are You There God? It’s Me, Donald: A President at Prayer

By Peter Laarman

…original Eye in the Sky. Back me up, it was over a billion people. Huge. But I’m confused about this other line: “the quality of our lives is not defined by our material success but by our spiritual success.” I don’t get it. “Spiritual success”? Sounds like a dumb deal. Ewww…I don’t have money, I have my feeeelings… What do you think, Lord? What if I say that some of the rich are “very, very miserable, unhappy people?” Will that fix it? It’s hors…