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When Is a “Religious War” Not Really a Religious War?

By Sarah Posner

Is Jerusalem seeing a “religious war?” A day after last Tuesday’s terrorist attack that killed four worshippers in a Jerusalem synagogue, Amos Harel wrote in Haaretz that the “attack reinforces the concern that the terror is taking on the trappings of a religious war (not that these trappings were totally absent from the conflict before). We hardly need to elaborate how dangerous this motif is.” “Palestinians believe that Israel is pushing for a…

Trump Is Out to Erase LGBT Americans from Public Life

By Sunnivie Brydum

…nation’s new top lawman. To add insult to (real, demonstrable) injury, on Tuesday the U.S. Census Bureau “inadvertently” included a question about LGBT identity in its proposed draft for the 2020 Census. Within hours of publishing the draft, the Census Bureau had scrubbed the category from its draft questionnaire, and issued a statement apologizing for the mistake, according to The Washington Blade. LGBT organizations have pushed back, with the N…

Alabama Senate Considers Giving Church Its Own Police Force; Irony Reportedly Dead

By Daniel Schultz

…in the U.S. A similar bill is also scheduled to be debated in the House on Tuesday. Briarwood is a member church of the conservative fundamentalist Presbyterian Church in America (which shouldn’t be confused with the much larger liberal mainline denomination, PCUSA); in fact, the PCA’s founding meeting was held at Briarwood. The Alabama Legislature passed a similar bill in 2015, but then-Gov. Robert Bentley refused to sign it, citing concerns “the…

Raw Power Is Just What The Religious Left Needs

By Daniel Schultz

…slate political positions into electoral results. What happened in Alabama Tuesday night wasn’t the result of superior morals, nor was it a victory for the #prophetic #resistance of the modern religious left. It was the exercise of pure, raw power. Obviously, chasing and sexually assaulting teenagers is an easy thing to run against. But as we saw, many voters discounted or simply ignored that issue. And though Moore was a truly lousy candidate, ev…

Dog Whistles and Holes in the Masterpiece Cakeshop Arguments?

By Patrick Hornbeck

If nothing else, Tuesday’s oral arguments in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case make clear that the ghosts of the pre-Obergefell world—indeed of the world before the Court’s 2003 decision against sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas—are still with us. Whispers of the past crept into one of the most revealing moments in yesterday’s argument, when Justice Elena Kagan asked Kristen Waggoner whether Jack Phillips, the baker, would be entitled to the same defe…

International reax to US Marriage Ruling; Official violence at Turkey’s Pride; Marriage Advances in Mexico Over Church Objections; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…dicted that 30,000 people would participate in the service, but the actual number appeared to number around 2,000. “Our prayers will open the sky and the homosexuals will fall, we will be blessed with victory,” said Lee Young-hoon, head of the leading organization in the anti-LGBT coalition. Mexico: Supreme Court embraces marriage, Church and some political officials resist As we have been reporting, the marriage equality movement has been movemen…

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

By Elizabeth Drescher

…an religiosity—about religion as it is lived in the United States today? A number of what I would see as problems in the Pew report suggest to me that our growing fixation with religion-by-the-numbers may be distracting us from richer, more nuanced understandings of American religious practice. Wanted: A Community that Doesn’t Share My Beliefs and Values Take the demographic category of “Nones” itself. The Pew report notes the difficulty with sur…

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

By Michael Schulson

…f the total revenue of American religious congregations. To get that final number, the Grims took one estimate of the total number of congregations in America (344,894) and multiplied it by another estimate of the average revenue of each ($242,910). Depending on how you look at it, $378 billion is a lot of money, or it’s not very much money at all. It’s more than the net worth of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffet, combined…

How to Choose a Tour Company for Your Hajj

By Amina Wadud

…nts than their quota allows. Most Muslim countries have a quota; a limited number of hajjis permitted from that country in any one year. This number is set by hajj authorities in Saudi Arabia, because, in all fairness, there has to be a cap on how many Muslims converge on the place. Right now, it stands at around 3 million! Countries with large populations of Muslims have many more applicants than their allotted number of pilgrims. This means you…

South Asian Religious Leaders Challenged to Take on Stigma and Discrimination: Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…o Nazis and Communists. Last week British official released figures on the number of same-sex couples who got married between March 29 – the first day marriage was legally available in England and Wales, and June 30. Of the 1,409 marriages, 56 percent were to female couples. According to Gay Star News, about 120,000 people are in civil partnerships, which they will be able to convert to marriages beginning in December. Costa Rica: Survey Shows Spl…