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The Evolution of Religion, According to Darwin

By Elizabeth Drescher

…s turn away from religion. In another well-known vignette, from his famous trip around the world—the voyage that many commentators see as the beginning of the end of his faith—Darwin tells a group of young women in Chile who are confused by his Anglican practice that he is “a sort of Christian.” You argue that rather than signaling an evolving loss of faith, such episodes hint at “a growing awareness that evolution was not just about physical form…

NOM’s Brian Brown Went to Russia to Push Anti-Gay Laws

By Peter Montgomery

…ligious feelings.” Brown and NOM have not said anything publicly about his trip, even though he has otherwise bragged about his support for anti-gay activism overseas. NOM and declined to comment for the RWW story. But RWW unearthed coverage from inside Russia. Among the things Brown said in an interview: Right now you’re having the fight about adoption, but the adoption issue is indivisible from the marriage issue. If you don’t defend your value…

The Irony of the American Studies Israel Boycott

By Jon Pahl

…er (although I’m not at present). Furthermore, I am about to take my first trip to Israel, at the invitation of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. To prepare for my trip, I’ve been reading up on what’s happening in what I grew up understanding as “the holy land,” and writing reviews of what I’ve read in light of my broader work on religion, violence, and peacebuilding. The U.S.-based academics who supported this resolution clearly inte…

Barbara Ehrenreich’s ‘Wild God’ is Not Here to Help

By Angela Bonavoglia

…a weekend with a boy who has rejected her at the start of a California ski trip, and she is miserable. They decide not to go back to LA after their trip, but to take a detour into Death Valley, spending the night in their van in an area called Lone Pine. As a teenager, she tells us, Ehrenreich had experienced frequent episodes of what she called “dissociation.” At those times, she would lose her grip on reality, on the present moment, the present…

Taking (Public School) Teachers to Church, and the Mosque, and the Temple…

By Lisa Webster

…hen we ask them this very question, their answers were diverse. The “field trip” method of taking students to visit a house of worship was controversial for these teachers. A few of them have already been doing this, and some of them are wanting to try. They discerned that the challenge is to insure that everyone – the students, the chaperones, the hosts – understand that this is a visit for academic study, period. There can be no proselytization….

The Sisterhood Episode 2: Crying and Twerking

By Jo Piazza

…t degrees.” Both Francesca and Stacey have their breakdowns during a field trip to visit the elderly women the sisters care for in a local nursing home. Francesca, whose own grandmother has Parkinson’s disease, simply doesn’t show up to volunteer with the patients. She can’t stomach it. Stacy begins crying as soon as she sits to pray the rosary with a dying woman in hospice. No reality show would be complete without a nemesis (just ask Scott Disic…

Pope Francis, Breeding Bunnies and Ideological Colonization

By Patricia Miller

…er nonsense when he starts talking about women and sex? His just-concluded trip to the Philippines was a virtual festival of such comments, some planned and some obviously off-the-cuff–and some even directly contradictory–but most just downright confounding. In one of the impromptu inflight press conferences for which he has become famous, Francis told reporters in one breath that “[s]ome think that … in order to be good Catholics we have to be li…

What NOT to Expect from the Pope’s US Visit

By Anthea Butler

…o have a straightforward message of kindness. Much is riding on this papal trip for both religious conservatives and liberals alike, all of whom are hoping that the Pope will prove them right about their assessments of his leadership. Mapping all of these hopes, desires, and derision onto the Pope this week may prove to be a slippery task. While Pope Francis has been clear about following the teachings of the church, it is less clear what his impa…

Greek Abbot Arrested for Role in Financial Scandal

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…em far more interesting, and suspicious. Prime Minister Papandreiou made a trip to Mount Athos himself in October, shortly before his fatal referendum call, in order to have a private meeting with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. Meanwhile, Father Ephraim was preparing for a trip to Russia, nominally to take one of the treasures of the Vathopedi Monastery, the Saint Mary Belt, on a tour of that reemergingly Orthodox country…

Islam, Meet Maureen Dowd

By Haroon Moghul

…what these mosques actually signify. This fun fact dawned on her after her trip, while watching an IMAX movie; shouldn’t she have at least picked up a book on Islam before demanding the religion conform to her sensibilities? If power is blind, entitlement is deaf. Dowd is frustrated by her trip to Saudi Arabia—but it’s not clear why she expects that because Saudi Arabia is “the cradle of Islam,” that it would provide the best introduction to Islam…