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

By Chrissy Stroop

…the most natural thing in the world. As someone who grew up in central Indiana and Colorado Springs, where I was sent to evangelical schools, his attitude both bemused and concerned me. The disconnect just serves to illustrate that how one answers this question may vary wildly depending on where one sits—in some cases quite literally. According to a new report from American Atheists* called Reality Check: Being Nonreligious in America, those livin…

How To Talk To “Nones” and Influence People: Rob Bell’s Transrational Experience

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…white space. Short sentences that force you to stop. And think. And start again. What would Rob Bell do to fill up eight hours in person? The message of the book is simple: look around at your life, decide if it’s what you want, then devote all your energy to living the best life you can. Don’t stop yourself from doing something you want to do. Just do it. Even if that thing is being an assistant regional manager of an insurance company—he actual…

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

By Eric C. Miller

…y, I encountered a range of racism, from subtle discrimination to violence against my body. When I came to faith at a Chinese immigrant church in my teens, I received the gospel as a healing salve to my wounds. It was through this community and Jesus’ words that I became restored. I was so moved by how Jesus subverted the status quo by lifting the lowly to high places, by healing the broken and by calling his people to serve the least of these. An…

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

…d: “They often don’t dare to leave their rooms.” Junior justice minister Klaas Dijkhoff, said that he did not support the idea of separating gay refugees because it is “stigmatising”. Reports suggest that other gay refugees, including in Rotterdam, will also be rehoused this weekend, and that others in Amsterdam were re-homed earlier this year. Russia: St. Petersburg activists defy propaganda law The Guardian’s Sasha Raspopina reported last week o…

The Problem with Pew’s Science & Religion Poll

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…fs and practices of evangelical Protestants, Jesuits, secular Jews, or Theravada Buddhists—or even some imagined mashup of all global faiths. Science is fuzzy, too. It refers to a wide range of disciplines (e.g. astronomy, botany, psychiatry) and occurs in a variety of settings (laboratories, forests, high school auditoriums). In the popular imagination, it’s practiced by everyone from white-coated nerds to egomaniacal monsters. We founded the Cub…

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

By Daniel Wise

…n in the kitchen. At first she suspected the cats. Then, at some point Maria and her husband installed a video camera to monitor the room overnight. One morning, they walked out into the kitchen to find all the cabinets wide open—even the upper cabinets that were well out of reach of the cats. The door leading to the garage was also wide open letting the cats out into the garage. When they checked the footage they found that the camera had stopped…

Lying About Our Religion, And Other Problems With Polling

By Michael Schulson

…y it, so I will: a lot of religion polling is bullshit. This isn’t just an academic squabble. Polling firms like Pew and Gallup offer the principal lens through which journalists, pundits, religious leaders, and politicians observe the spiritual state of the union. Polls and surveys shape debates about policy and public morality. They help define key groups—evangelicals, for example, or the nones—that crop up again and again in the media. Inventin…

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

By Michael Schulson

…than a year for anyone to complain. The potential issue here is obvious: NASA is a government agency. The Center of Theological Inquiry is, well, a center of theological inquiry—an institution that seemingly has a religious, and specifically Christian, orientation. At least in theory, the government is barred from sponsoring religious activities. And doing theology about extraterrestrials does sound kind of religion-y. Earlier this month, the Fre…

Rage or Courage?: YouTube Terrorism Take Two

By Bruce B. Lawrence

…s author: HOW I SURVIVED IT HOW WE CAN END IT That survivor, of course, is Aayan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee who fled to Holland, before landing in the United States. Her husband is the British historian Niall Ferguson (an Oxford-Harvard professor of empire). There are many differences between the two articles and between the two authors. Ghosh is a professional journalist with a commitment to neutral reportage, while Ali is a professiona…

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

By Michael Schulson

…they take on a more explicit ethical dimension? When should we enforce them? Part of the problem is that while there’s a lot of cultural criticism about internet and cellphone use, and also reams of hard data, there’s not as much ethnographic work. There’s not that much in-depth, person-to-person reporting, either. Survey questions are good to have. But sometimes you have to dig deeper….