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

By Betsy Shirley

…or Good Christians, released earlier this year, offers a scriptural twist: most of the material from its 300-card deck has been lifted directly from the Bible, with chapter and verse to prove it. The results fall somewhere between playful irreverence and flat-out blasphemy. For example, if the card “A woman must quietly receive ________ with full submission” is played, it could be paired with response cards that include “Crotch-less pants (2 Samue…

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

By Daniel Wise

…house. Growing up in a Latina household in south Texas, Maria was told ghost stories like those of the legendary La Llorona, the ghostly weeping woman, and she enjoys what she describes as “Catholic horror movies,” such as The Conjuring in which Catholic heroes fight off demons. Maria drew from these word-of-mouth tales and the media she consumes to conclude that these otherwise unexplainable phenomena were a haunting caused by ghosts. Maria isn’…

Conservative Rep Grills Oklahoma Personhood Sponsors

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…-Americans into legal rights-bearing persons. But meanwhile, those who are most invested in getting a personhood bill passed won’t be pleased with any exception or compromise. They’re hoping personhood legislation will get them a court challenge that results in Roe v. Wade being overturned. So conservative legislators are caught in the middle, and the voters themselves are… well… making phone calls and holding marches, because what else is there t…

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

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…abbath” from email. And you, too, will learn how to be here. Rob Bell, for most of us, will be best known as the guy who declared hell doesn’t exist—and caught hell for it from his fellow evangelicals. The author of Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (and many, many other books), he is the former founder and pastor of the Mars Hill Bible megachurch in Grandville, Michigan, from which platform he resig…

Where Polls and Surveys Fall Short: A Conversation with Robert Wuthnow on “Inventing American Religion”

By Andrew Aghapour

…ief in God, there wasn’t much response—the limited response there was came mostly from church leaders, who were skeptical. What does it mean to say that 95% of the public believe in God? That doesn’t tell us much of anything, and so it took a long time for Gallup and his competitors to sell the idea that polling about anything, including religion, was of interest or importance. It wasn’t until the 1950s, during the Cold War period—with the idea th…

End-Times Watcher Sees Satan in an Energy Drink

By William R. Black

…made anti-Christian. “Bottoms up,” she says, mimicking the motion. Weick’s most striking piece of evidence is the large, stylized letter M, which she claims is not one letter but the Hebrew letter Vav repeated three times. In Hebrew, letters have numerical values. The first letter, Alef, is also the number one; the second letter, Bet, is also the number two; etc. Vav, the sixth letter in the Hebrew alphabet and has the numerical value of six. Ther…

Marriage Vote ‘Transforms’ Not-So-Catholic Ireland; Activist to Malaysian PM – ‘Love Is Not Terrorism’; LGBTs Find Growing Acceptance in Colombia, Not At World Meeting of Families; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…gnor. Ireland: Marriage equality vote ‘transforms’ gay Ireland, no longer ‘most Catholic country in world’ Conor Humphries at Reuters writes that Ireland’s referendum in favor of marriage equality “is having a profound effect on the country’s gay community even though a legal challenge has delayed the first weddings.” Gay couples holding hands has become a common sight in Dublin and gay politicians have become celebrities after Ireland became the…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…ison in 2012. More from the AP story: “I accuse the state,” said Nkom, the most prominent of a small group of lawyers in Cameroon willing to defend suspects charged with violating Cameroon’s anti-gay law. “If there had not been criminalization of homosexuality, he would not have gone to prison and his life would not be over. His life was finished as soon as he went to prison.” Cameroonian officials have been unapologetic about their enforcement of…

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

By Amina Wadud

…uster, they may eke out a space behind some men. But the rudeness of the removal is so disturbing, I just do not want that encounter. But I do want to pray where I can see the Ka’abah. That is only possible from the first floor, and if you are right by the railing on the upper floors. So, I have missed this opportunity after that first day, when we did our tawaf, followed by two rakaat at the maqam Ibrahim. As I circled around inside the mosque on…

RDBook: Apocalypse Without God

By Nathan Schneider

…released a book of photographs of animal skeletons in the desert. Taylor’s most recent book, After God, gathers these pieces together into a wide-ranging manifesto. He insists that the major social, ecological, and technological trends of today’s world are not in some way “outside” religion, but are integrally connected with the history of religious thought. The solutions to our crises, he suggests, will be another chapter in that history. The boo…