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Churches Can No Longer Hide the Truth: Daniel Dennett on the New Transparency

By Andrew Aghapour

…sed empiricism, and as a leading New Atheist he calls for naturalistic explanations of religion. Dennett is also the co-author (along with Linda LaScola) of the recently expanded and updated Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Faith Behind, which documents the stories of preachers and rabbis who themselves came to see…the facts. Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Faith Behind Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola Pitchstone Publishing, May 2015 Caught in the P…

When Being “Christian” Means Supporting Trump: An Argument For Hiding Your Faith

By Jonathan Malesic

…e.” But that is just what R.R. Reno, editor of the conservative Christian magazine First Things, said in explaining his support for Donald Trump’s candidacy for president. As Reno explained on the First Things podcast from October 7, regardless of Trump’s profound flaws, “I do think it’s important to support someone who is at least willing to admit that we have really serious problems in our country.” If that were all Trump were willing to do, the…

Springtime for Ross Douthat?

By Daniel Schultz

…r example. –the eds]. Also, I should point out that Douthat’s first three paragraphs go off without him tripping over his own shoelaces. The fourth paragraph is where he begins to fumble. It’s not just that the columnist relies on an old and now discredited theory about liberalism being the source of the decline in mainline Protestantism. It’s not just that he ignores evidence that church decline affects conservative denominations too. It’s not ev…

Despising the Holidays: When Christians Led the ‘War on Christmas’

By Ed Simon

…been abolished) and identified its extra-biblical elements as dangerously pagan. In England there was fierce resistance to this attempt to regulate Christmas, where, as scholars like Eamon Duffy have demonstrated, the Reformation was hardly as seamless or as popular as triumphalist Protestant historiography has often portrayed it. During the thirteen years that Christmas was replaced with a day of fasting by Parliamentary order there was fierce re…

There’s No Business Like the Bible Business: 200 Years of the ABS

By Paul Harvey

…ory of the American Bible Society. Many readers, myself included, might be aware of the critical importance of the ABS in the nineteenth century, but probably thought it had trailed off into insignificance sometime in the twentieth. That’s far from the case. A major accomplishment of Fea’s work is to trace that entire history, and to do so not as an apologist but as a professional historian. The fact that Fea was first contacted to write this in D…

The Problem with Christian Gentlemen: A Short Goodbye to Ted Cruz, the “Mr. Pecksniff” of Presidential Politics

By Peter Laarman

…considerable mourning among the ranks of the good Christian soldiers of Iowa and elsewhere that Ted’s path was “foreclosed” (his word, and an interesting choice) by the Trump juggernaut. These contemners of The Donald’s open sinning had staked their hopes on someone they took to be the very mirror and model of Christian virtue. Personally, I always felt that Senator Cruz had a good whiff of Mr. Pecksniff about him—Seth Pecksniff being Dickens’ mos…

After Orlando: Love Wins, But When?

By Daniel Schultz

…oated to Orlando from distant points as though it were their own personal Samarra. It seems a twisted necessity of God to require their souls so abruptly in a place of joy and refuge, a cruel grace that more than a few died with friends and partners. The Lord will no doubt have some questions for me on the day of judgment, but I will have some for him as well. How could you let this happen to first graders, a prayer circle, social workers, dancers…

Holding Out for a Hero: New ID Book Aims to Save You From Despair of Evolution

By Kriti Sharma

…ization that promotes intelligent design theory—a great deal hangs in the balance. Axe believes that evolutionary science leads many bright young people to abandon what he calls their “innate design intuition” in favor of a mistaken worldview that “robs life of all hope and meaning.” What evolutionary biology causes people to forget, Axe writes, is that “we owe our existence to the personal God who understands our existence.” Undeniable: How Biolo…

Can I Get Some Birth Control Pills With That Slushie?: Unpacking the Contraceptive Mandate Rollback

By Sunnivie Brydum

…activists, and even one outspoken nun were quick to blast the rule as a blatant attack on women’s rights and the ability to control their reproductive health. And the 125-page draft rule is certainly an assault on the bodily autonomy of any American who happens to have a uterus. But the rambling draft rule—which is still listed as pending on OBM’s website and which seems to have wholly skipped the requisite public comment period—is part of a larg…

The Moral Bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Asceticism

By Vlad Chituc

In The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, the Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo offers simple advice: go through all of your possessions, one by one, and ask yourself, “Does this bring me joy?” If the answer is “no,” then get rid of it. The advice has certainly resonated—the book has sold more than two million copies, and it spent months on the New York Times bestseller list. By my friends’ telling, it’s practically required reading for an…