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

By Jonathan L. Walton

…majority of African Americans to support the same-sex marriage ban. But to lay the blame of Prop. 8 at the door of the black community is analytically, descriptively, and politically flawed. Regional and Religious, not Racial This blame game is analytically flawed, as the underlying assumptions are premised on a skewed racial causality. The so-called “Obama Effect” contends that black people showed up en masse to vote for Barack Obama, and in turn…

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

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…nitions on the list range from those given by religious leaders like the Dalai Lama and Lao-Tzu, Christian thinkers from C.S. Lewis to Paul Tillich, critics of religion like Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, politicians from Abraham Lincoln and Kofi Annan to Jesse Ventura, and pop singers, including Sting and Al Green. One of my favorites comes from the defunct TV-show Ed, in which a character called “Reverend Ike” says, “Religion is like a big flashli…

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

By Michael Schulson

…A seems to think these are serious concerns. “Astrobiology is expected to play a large part in future politics, economic life, and the human self-understanding provided by various disciplines including, but not limited to: theology, philosophy, and the arts,” NASA explained, somewhat cryptically, in a statement to RD. (The agency did not make any officials available for interview, and Mary Voytek, who runs the Astrobiology Program, did not respond…

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

…visited, have laws against homosexuality. In Uganda a measure signed into law last year by its president compelled citizens to report suspected homosexual activity to the police. Increased levels of violence against the gay community ensued. For Francis such attitudes are an additional problem inside the Catholic Church, where they are a brake on the changes the pope wants to bring to the unruly institution he governs. It is a deeply entrenched p…

Gay Marriage Opponents Running on Empty

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…s 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 wonderfully diverse group of religious folks. We had Unitarian’s and Episcopalians and Presbyterians and Baptists, and we even had a Catholic priest and…

Cloverfield: Sin & Redemption, with Monsters

By Gabriel Mckee

…at, somehow, we deserve it. The kaiju bring punishment; the human drama explains the sin. Godzilla wouldn’t attack Tokyo if humankind didn’t awaken him with nuclear weapons. Mothra wouldn’t attack California if greedy capitalists didn’t kidnap his miniature priestesses. The monsters symbolically destroy our human world, and we cheer because we think it’s all our fault. We deserve it, this says—a theology of sin and divine retribution. The kaiju-as…

Mormons Prepare to March in LGBT Pride Parades Nationwide

By Joanna Brooks

…eers to interact with the crowd as a buffer in case it was needed. Dustin Lance Black is the Salt Lake City pride parade marshall. He was really excited and supportive of our very simple message and he asked that we be moved to the head of the parade. But I also want to be very careful. We are guests at this parade, and I don’t want to steal other peoples’ thunder. For so many years, the Salt Lake City Pride folks have built this into an institu…

A Tale of Religious Tolerance… On Reddit

By Joanna Piacenza

…is.” No, “european_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 communi…

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

By Spencer Dew

…). This is doubly dangerous ground. First, American history has so spectacularly clashed with American ideals (see: slavery). Second, by dismissing Acosta’s reading of Lady Liberty as partisan, Miller switches the register of language used, from that of religious discourse—in which the statue has an eternal meaning, “has always” meant this, Acosta pleads, citing “what the country has always thought of”) to a drily historical material reading where…

Lying About Our Religion, And Other Problems With Polling

By Michael Schulson

…to a fairly narrow critique of these polls’ limitations. The questions at play, here, are much larger. What kinds of conclusions can we reasonably draw about that shifty behemoth, the American Public? And what responsibility does the media have when making generalizations about identity and belief? Polls address a problem that would have been unfamiliar to our democratic forebears. In a democracy with hundreds of millions of people, how do you kno…