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The Bible is a Good Book, But God Didn’t Write It

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…he Word of God.” Mohler will find verification of his view in Spong’s new book Reclaiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World. Right there, on page 15, Spong writes: “I do not think for one moment that Bible is any literal sense the ‘Word of God.’” This book is Spong’s way of putting the Bible back in its right perspective—as a collection of “tribal” stories that sprang from “the experience of human beings seeking to make sense out of the life the…

Dispatches from the Borderlands: “They Came at Night, Trying to Kill Us!”

By Manuel A. Vásquez

…ewal in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. At least for that afternoon, this congregation became a safe space, a space of hope, in the midst of a harsh poverty in which African immigrants are at the margins of the margins of South African society. Lauren Landau, a member of our team who has been studying migration in South Africa for many years, believes that immigrants have become scapegoats for the failure of the post-apartheid democrati…

Religion Profs Critique PBS’ God Documentary, Call it Simplistic

By Matthew Avery Sutton

…people lacking PhDs? On blogs, religion and history listserves, and chat rooms around the country, academics have labeled the series “oversimplified,” “truly bizarre,” “simplistic,” “intolerable,” “uneventful,” “underwhelming.” Essentially they are calling the series not enough of an “intellectual endeavor.” Furthermore, according to the Ivory Tower critics (who certainly have a deep tolerance for boredom), producers should have worried even less…

Crowdsourced Catholicism: New iPhone App Lets Users Forgive Sins

By Vincent Gonzalez

…a confession: Cybering with a girl: I had graphic cybersex with a high school sophomore girl. We are not married. Jeshi, Archbishop of Massachusetts responded within a few hours: At least it was only over the internet. Stay off chatting for a while. Take a cold shower if you think you might do it again. Monkey, an untitled confessor from California also responded within the day: At least it wasnt real sex! Then you’d be confessing to the polic…

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

By Peter Laarman

…ng and hearing that there is 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…

Want a Slurpee with Your Birth Control?

By Patricia Miller

…hat right to access those and have them paid for, is that such a towering good that it would suffocate the rights of conscience?” It’s one of the bishops’ favorite arguments: that birth control is so cheap and so widely available that it isn’t even a question of whether the religious freedom of objecting organizations should be burdened by having to pay for it. The bishops have been claiming since 2012 that birth control is “ubiquitous and inexpen…

Can a Greek Monastery Be Ground Zero of Global Financial Meltdown?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…calls “financial-disaster tourism,” Lewis went to Greece in search of the root causes for the very particular, and particularly shocking, form the 2007-2008 economic meltdown took in Greece. The main lines of this story are well known by now: a glut of global credit not only invited but actually encouraged people to live beyond their means. Americans bought houses they could not afford; everyone who got out in time made fortunes in the stock mar…

Dispatches from the Borderlands: The Immigration Impasse

By Manuel A. Vásquez

…a full understanding of its historical and structural causes. While it is too early to assess the impact on these ordinances in reducing unauthorized immigration, one thing is clear: they have pushed what was an already vulnerable population further into the shadows. Because many families have mixed immigrant statuses (some members are undocumented, some legal residents, and some U.S.-born citizens), sole reliance on enforcement often ends up hurt…

In a Time of Irrational Fear and New Media: The Deadly ‘Dance Plague’ at 500

By Ed Simon

…nfirmed, superstitious ideas. Are you really so certain that Twitter, Facebook, or any of our modern equivalents of the printing press couldn’t be similarly disruptive to the psychic well-being of your fellow citizens? At a time when a disturbingly large number of people believe in the “QAnon” conspiracy; when “pizzagate” inspired a gunman to raid a pizzeria; where “flat-Earthers” have a growing fan-base; or where people ingest Tide Pods; can we r…

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

By Jonathan Malesic

…lems he thinks we have, and he would suddenly have nuclear weapons in his toolbox. Among Christian intellectuals, Reno’s pro-Trump nihilism is matched only by that of the writer Eric Metaxas. In an October 12 article in the Wall Street Journal, Metaxas writes in apocalyptic terms about a possible Hillary Clinton presidency, assigning her responsibility for things she has no control over, but still claims that “God will not hold us guiltless” if Ch…