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Lying About Our Religion, And Other Problems With Polling

By Michael Schulson

…ime, polling firms do a lot to manufacture the appearance of certainty. In particular, they choose to report statistics as single numbers (for example, Pew recently found that 24% of Jehovah’s Witnesses describe themselves as born-again) rather than as margin-of-error ranges, normalized around a mean (had it taken that margin into account up-front, the Pew study would have reported that 16.8%-31.2% of Jehovah’s Witnesses believe they’re born again…

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

By Michael Schulson

…t yourself, trust me: people in the pews are constantly whipping out their phones in order to look up Bible passages, take notes during sermons, and, perhaps, do other things. Bible apps like YouVersion, which claims close to 200 million downloads, are now a common way to find, say, Matthew 7:5 quickly, instead of having to rifle through a pulp-and-glue book. It’s possible that some people are hypocrites about phone use in church (cf. Matthew 7:5)…

Godly Game or Godless Satire? Countering Biblical Ignorance with Heretical Humor

By Betsy Shirley

…Jewish festival-carnival of Purim, and the Hindu ritual of Holi, in which participants throw colored paint at each other, Bado-Fralick and Norris point out that religion and play are often inseparable. Throughout this long history, religious games and toys are “evidence of the ways in which religious institutions and practioners use cultural trends to breathe new life back into their traditions.” Via phone, Norris explained that one of the ways p…

Will Catholic Voters Support LGBT Rights in Washington State?

By Joanna Brooks

…it on the west side of the state, where the decision will be made. We are participating in a Catholic-to-Catholic phone bank that Washington United for Marriage has set up on Wednesday nights and we assist with the larger phone bank at the Jewish synagogue downtown. A great deal of our work is communicating with Catholics on our email list and Facebook. As a Catholic, how does your faith shape your views on marriage for LGBT people? My faith blos…

A Tale of Religious Tolerance… On Reddit

By Joanna Piacenza

…us values, most bit back. Reddit peers verbally tore “european_douchebag” apart, castigating him for not only taking a creepy smartphone picture of an innocent young woman, but for taunting her based on her physical appearance—a physical appearance that, in her mind (the only one that matters) is divinely inspired. Of course the woman’s appearance only seems odd to some because of our own culturally mutated and narrow-minded gender norms. The virt…

Rage or Courage?: YouTube Terrorism Take Two

By Bruce B. Lawrence

…ed by ordinary human means, outside Jewish law and beyond the awareness or participation of Mary’s lawful husband? Does it matter if Hitler is proclaimed a god, and Jesus a bastard? The self-appointed custodian of limitless freedom of speech would say: No. Take the poison with the perfume. It may hurt, but restricting it or any form of insult is worse. It undermines the basis of a democratic, inclusive worldview; it cuts to the core of Western ci…

Global LGBT Recap: Nigeria Jails Gays, Russian Orthodox Spox Calls for Criminalization Referendum

By Peter Montgomery

…showed no patience for such rigid thinking and has during his still-young papacy adopted a rhetoric aimed at building a more inclusive church. But that language of inclusion of historically shunned individuals — such as homosexuals — has created discontent among the church’s more doctrinaire members. Kozlowska says the campaign also serves as “something of a diversionary tactic” from the church’s failture to confront the child sexual abuse scanda…

Holey Holey Holey: The Problem with a New Study Valuing Religion at $1.2 Trillion Per Year

By Michael Schulson

…Do these numbers tell us anything useful? For one thing, a big economic impact number might jibe with the goals of the elder Grim’s Religious Freedom and Business Foundation. But more generally, as the Grims see it, their study’s intended message seems to be something along the lines of Hey, religion does good things! “A lot of the messages [about religion] that come through focus—rightly—on some of the problems related to religion, such as clerg…

Does Record Number of Religious “Nones” Mean Decline of Religiosity?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…m the mysterious, often hidden, mechanisms propelling us through time and space. Judging by the media excitement over the latest poll illustrating continued growth in the number of people who answer “none” when asked with what religion they are affiliated, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life seems to have pulled a similar trick for those interested in how religion is changing in America. “‘Nones’ On the Rise,” released on October 9 by Pew in…

How to Choose a Tour Company for Your Hajj

By Amina Wadud

…maybe I will go again—but if I do, I would know better what to avoid in terms of choosing a company. Right now, I cannot seem to get them to answer my next question regarding the visa application so I can go ahead and send it to them with my immunization records. But now, I’m taking it as part of the process: part of the uncertainty of life in general and of making hajj for the first time. It was strange though that when I got that call yesterday…