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The Lady Vanishes: Trump’s Communications Team Tries to Topple a Monument

By Spencer Dew

…sta’s reading of Lady Liberty as partisan, Miller switches the register of language used, from that of religious discourse—in which the statue has an eternal meaning, “has always” meant this, Acosta pleads, citing “what the country has always thought of”) to a drily historical material reading where there is no eternal, united, ideal of America, just differing opinions, shifting policies. Acosta’s question introduced American civil religion to the…

A Tale of Religious Tolerance… On Reddit

By Joanna Piacenza

…pean_douchebag” wasn’t questioning which game the woman was playing on her phone, he was referencing the abundance of facial hair on the young woman’s face—a nod towards her Sikh beliefs of not altering her body image. Unaware that others around him might practice faiths besides his own, “european_douchebag” posted the picture under the Reddit tab “Funny,” hoping to get an elbow-in-the-side snickering reaction from the online community. But what h…

Mormons Prepare to March in LGBT Pride Parades Nationwide

By Joanna Brooks

…en taught my whole life?” For example, my eighteen-year-old son received a phone call from the bishop for an interview to set him on the road to preparing for his missionary service. So we are in the hall, and I’m telling him, “You need to call the bishop.” My son looks at me and says, “Mom, I can’t do this.” We talked over many things he was concerned about. One of them was that he has an openly gay teacher who, he told me, “is one of the most sp…

Education, Texas-Style

By Lauri Lebo

…nation.” I’ve spoken to board member Don McLeroy quite a few times on the phone and he genuinely seems like someone who wants to be understood and have people appreciate what he’s doing. (I’ve never met or spoken to Cynthia Dunbar, but she strikes me as someone who really doesn’t care what people think of her.) So, I feel like calling up McLeroy and saying, “You, sir, are a cheater!” Because from the perspective of the literal-minded (and fundame…

Gay Marriage Opponents Running on Empty

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…I have hand-counted 29 non-NOM staffers attending the rally—about the same number that have attended every other event on this tour.” They were outnumbered by those who came in support of marriage equality. … about 95 marriage equality supporters marched in to the event to counter-protest NOM on a sidewalk across from the event. Impressive. Once again, NOM has been embarrassed on this tour, drawing significantly fewer supporters to their event tha…

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

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…ell credited philosopher Ken Wilber. “You know that gift of people who put language to something you’ve always experienced but never had words for?” Bell knew this concept would be very difficult for many people: “The mind is very good at parts vs. wholes, but there are things in the world that the mind doesn’t know what to do with, and then it kind of loops in on itself.” This kind of “doubling down” on rationality is happening all over our socie…

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…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…Against Humanists, Atheists, and the Nonreligious,” which was released on December 10, Human Rights Day. The IHEU report observes that while relatively few countries around the world criminalize irreligion as such, many impose arbitrary burdens on secular manifestations of conscience that are not experienced by others. These include laws and policies regulating: • apostasy and religious conversion; • blasphemy and religious criticism; • compulso…

Cross-Burning Hearing Ends, Trial Set to Begin

By Lauri Lebo

…, has the most comprehensive accounts of the debacle, which first began in December 2007 when Zachary Dennis came home from school with a burn mark on his arm in the shape of a cross. His parents visited the school, looking for answers. When they felt they didn’t get them, they filed suit against both the Mt. Vernon School District and Freshwater. The district settled with the Dennis family last summer, although the suit against Freshwater awaits….