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

By Andrew Aghapour

…s pretty much it. Evangelical leaders themselves didn’t believe the Gallup numbers were right, and [they thought that] the best way to combat those Gallup numbers was to ask Gallup to do another survey. And so in 1978, Christianity Today, a leading periodical for evangelicals, paid Gallup to do a big survey and in addition to just asking the born-again question, they asked questions about belief in the Bible, belief in Jesus, and intent on convert…

End-Times Watcher Sees Satan in an Energy Drink

By William R. Black

…anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred and sixty-six.” The author of Revelation meant that 666 was a person’s name turned into a number via the Jewish numerological practice of gematria. Since every Hebrew letter was also a number, the letters of a name could be added up to produce that person’s number. Here’s an example of gematria using an alphabet we’re more famil…

UPDATED: Religion Has Been Framed; Covering the Aga Khan’s Visit

By Hussein Rashid

…d find, although local coverage was fairly good, such as this piece from a Houston Chronicle blog. Aslamshoyeva’s piece focused on the meaning of the Aga Khan as both religious leader and philanthropist (CNN article, AKDN Web site). It was a moving piece on nature of hope and belief. Aslan’s post focuses mostly on the charitable work of the Aga Khan and asks the key question that immediately came to my mind when I started looking for coverage of t…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…sion talking about the LGBT people being less than human. For example, the number two person in the state broadcasting company – actually now he’s the number one person – hosted a show devoted to the question of whether it was enough to protect our children to ban homosexual propaganda or whether more needed to be done. He argued that more needed to be done. He said and we need to outlaw blood and sperm donations by them. And if they die in car ac…

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…

Texas’ Anti-LGBT Adoption Bill Is Unconstitutional and Unnecessary, Say Texas Law Professors

By Sunnivie Brydum

…titutions, including the University of Texas, Texas A&M, the University of Houston and Southern Methodist University. While it’s not unheard of for law professors to weigh in on pending state legislation, it’s uncommon for legal scholars to voluntarily step into such a controversial topic in state politics. In the nine-page memo (posted in full below), the professors meticulously lay out the reasons why House Bill 3859 , formally titled the “Freed…

Layoffs on the Religious Right

By Bill Berkowitz

…nted out that Hunter, along with Dallas Pentecostal megapastor T.D. Jakes, Houston Methodist minister (and George Bush favorite) Kirbyjon Caldwell and Otis Moss II, the retired pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland, participated in a telephone prayer session with Obama several hours before he was declared the winner. Hunter, who came to the media’s attention in 2006 when an arrangement for him to take over as head of the Chris…

Ten Religion Stories That Went (Mostly) Missing in 2015

By Peter Laarman

…of Chicago? 6. Toilets. “You can’t go in there!” riles up the righteous in Houston. But, on the other hand, hundreds of congregations are doing small group study on what “trans” means, and many of the faithful merely shrug at the idea of queer Scoutmasters, for God’s sake. Sexual difference seems to be much less frightening to ever larger swathes of American religious. 7. Religion and real estate. It’s not just Union Seminary that’s in a pickle ov…

Special Hell: Progressive Catholics Reckon With the Rise of Trump

By Patricia Miller

…itically. One source of dismay for some Catholics is that so many of their number broke decisively toward Trump and were critical to his victory in the Rust Belt swing states. “The Catholic vote went for Trump and many Catholics joined the non-voting defectors. That’s a scandal that calls into question the moral standing and integrity of most—not all—Catholics today,” Marquette University moral theologian Dan Maguire told RD. To many, Catholic sup…

Size Matters According to New Study

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ler brains” (Beliefnet) “Born-again Christians have smaller brains” (Houston Chronicle) In fact, that’s a somewhat selective list of stories on the findings of a highly selective study. Involving less than three hundred people, the study looked at the brain volume of a group of people it divvied up according to religious affiliation (Protestant, Catholic, “born again” and unaffiliated). (Un)born again Protestants apparently won the brain vo…