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Six Overlooked Gems from the Future of World Religions Report

By Timothy King

…3.2 million new adherents and “folk religions” (these tend to be small in number and tied to a particular people group or tribe) are likely to see gains of 2.6 million during the same time period. Such numbers are miniscule compared to the projected 61.5 million expected to switch into the “unaffiliated” category by 2050, nevertheless the 197% projected growth rate should turn more than a few heads. Something is causing people to be attracted to…

Sharing Many of the Same Flaws as its Subject ‘The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill’ Podcast Puts Blame Anywhere But Where It Belongs

By Jessica Johnson

…ys Mark was the first Internet age megachurch celebrity pastor and leading number one podcasts, number one sermon downloads, those kinds of things. So what that did is, elevated Mark to the stratosphere so quickly, whereas you might think…typically they may take 20-30 years of faithful ministry, but the Internet just propelled things with such rapidity, and the Internet only sees how you speak, that’s all the Internet is, it’s all about verbal art…

Note for Today

By Amina Wadud

…an come out of this, but then it might also be a bit like taking a fitness class, or going skydiving. These may be relationships of convenience and only for the moments. I’m sure what we will be experiencing will be phenomenal enough to share. Choosing a Tour Company I’ve already said this, but I repeat: there has to be a better way to choose. Later I will comment on how the logistics on the ground are managed as a way to suggest how someone comin…

Why Taxing the Rich is the Godly Thing

By Peter Laarman

…up for any but the very wealthiest—that cuts affecting working and middle-class families will be extended. As for the “job killer” rhetoric of Sen. Hatch and the rest, the president could actually have some fun poking holes in the fantastical idea that handing rich and powerful people still more money means they will dutifully make productive, job-creating investments in the domestic economy. There has never been a shred of evidence to support…

Doubt v. Predator: A Vatican II Parable

By Gabriel Mckee

…r James to hang a picture of a pope on the blackboard so she can watch her class reflected in the glass. Sister James doesn’t have a picture of Paul VI, or even John XXIII, so instead she puts up a picture of a dour Pius XII. Sister Aloysius draws her power—the eyes in the back of her head—from the pontiff of an earlier era, the last pope before Vatican II. The film excises an explicit reference to the Council made in the play, but it’s still clea…

House GOP Hires Lawyer to Prevent Federal Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…fore Thea Spyer died. Edie Windsor complained that DOMA makes her a second class citizen and criticized Boehner for seeking to keep her one: “I am very disappointed that the House of Representatives has decided to intervene in my case in order to try to prevent me from obtaining a refund of the $363,000 in estate taxes that I should never have had to pay in the first place.” The Human Rights Campaign agreed: “Not only are House Republican leaders…

Hajj Journal: Door Number 89: The Door with No Name

By Amina Wadud

…d inside the mosque one day, I came across Bab raqm tis’wa thamanin, “door number 89,” literally. The door with no name. Facing the mosque at door number one, bab maalik ’abd-al-’Aziz, this door is off to the left. Looking at the mosque floor plan, this is where the building structure of the mosque is deepest. This is “the women’s section.” I noticed as I was walking through the first floor toward door number one, the kings’ door, on my way out af…

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

By Daniel Wise

…ouse. She reported that, 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…

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

By Michael Schulson

…, speculating, and damn, those kids are all doing x, y, and z on their cellphones, and it’s an outrage! Pew’s study of cellphone etiquette gives us one way to begin digging into a much larger set of questions: which norms do we, and should we, place around the use of digital tools? When are these opinions just personal preferences, and when do they take on a more explicit ethical dimension? When should we enforce them? Part of the problem is that…

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

By Chrissy Stroop

…saulted over their unbelief, although for African-American respondents the number is 2.5%. Meanwhile, 12% of respondents experienced threats of violence, and 2.5% experienced vandalism (14.2% and 3.2%, respectively, for Latinx respondents). None of these facts make the experience of “coming out” as nonreligious the same as coming out as LGBTQ, but they do nonetheless show that disclosing one’s nonreligious identity can be fraught and risky dependi…