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

By Peter Laarman

…ge, as Pecksniff’s interlocutors don’t quite know what to do with this almost fantastical level of bullsh*t. Dickens clearly loathes his fictional creation but also appears at times to admire Pecksniff’s immense skill in self-justification and self-congratulation. Dickens makes the most of Pecksniff by giving him a number of interior monologues, as here when Pecksniff is rationalizing his decision to pimp out his younger daughter at a rather cheap…

Crowdsourced Catholicism: New iPhone App Lets Users Forgive Sins

By Vincent Gonzalez

…ing his evidence. Another was thrown out of a strip club for saying “God must hate strippers” to a dancer who confided that she had a disabled son. Here and there, Penance hurts. Between the cheap jokes and bourgeois self-loathing are murmurs worth hearing, if only as microfiction. Likewise, the app’s agnosticism facilitates a lucid tableau of spontaneous popular theology. Of the 24 confessions, only one references God as an active third party, tw…

Religion Profs Critique PBS’ God Documentary, Call it Simplistic

By Matthew Avery Sutton

…is certainly something Americans in the age of Glenn Beck and the Texas history standards controversy could benefit from. While scholars are quick to criticize the limitations of the documentary genre, I am not sure that producing a series like this is, at its root, really that much different from what we do in our work. I, for example, begin each of my lectures with a PowerPoint slide that lists the three main themes I will cover that day. When…

Want a Slurpee with Your Birth Control?

By Patricia Miller

…rt case as inspiring examples of American religious conviction and told guest host Norah O’Donnell that cutting contraception out of insurance policies wasn’t a problem: Is the ability to buy contraceptives, that are now widely available—my Lord, all you have to do is walk into a 7-11 or any shop on any street in America and have access to them—is that right to access those and have them paid for, is that such a towering good that it would suffoca…

National Association of Evangelicals Supports Immigration Reform, But Elsewhere Discord Reigns

By Donna Schaper

…tholic parish, CIS Fellow James R. Edwards Jr., and CIS Senior Policy Analyst Stephen Steinlight. Each presented a paper explicating scriptural and other religious teachings as they bear on immigration—from Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish viewpoints, respectively. The theme of all three papers was that leaders of all the mainstream religious groups are misinterpreting scripture and religious traditions when they issue policy statements that urge…

Turn on the News: Some Abortion Opponents May Opt For a New Vaccine, But Behind Their Skepticism it’s Often a Different Story — of Disinformation, Conspiratorial Thinking, and White Nationalism

By Daniel Schultz

…tion, and that “more” might be helping to feed the energy of some of the most disturbing actors in contemporary politics. All of this is definitely worth drawing out. More generally, I think there’s an ongoing need for journalists to take conspiratorial mindsets seriously when reporting on religion. That’s not a criticism of Jenkins—hardly any reporters engage this difficult terrain. Conspiracy thinking and faith aren’t necessarily identical, or e…

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

By Kriti Sharma

…y Hollywood movie seems to involve a hero swooping in to save the day against vast and uncertain odds. More importantly, every movie creates a situation where all problems, however daunting or complex, meet at a single point. The Death Star is formidable and impossibly well-defended, but a single laser directed at its vulnerable heart will bring the whole complex down. Scale a problem down, make it smaller and smaller and smaller, and you finally…

Israel’s Immigration Debate: “Where is the Jewish Spirit?”

By Mati Wagner

…Jewish state must address both sets of concerns. It has an obligation to foster a strong Jewish identity and it must also show empathy to the plight of the stranger. Most of the children up for scrutiny (839, to be precise) would be allowed to stay, along with their families. The rest would be deported after being given the right of appeal, which many are attempting to do right now. A Xenophobic Israel? Tasked as it is with realizing the self-dete…

Dispatches from the Election: Around the Moon, Safely

By Glenn W. Smith

…as seen from the moon and stammered, “There she is, floating in space.” In stark contrast, today’s talking heads achieve neither awe nor humility. There are exceptions, but most are captured and made insecure by a cruel and irresponsible corporate media bazaar that demands fealty to its barons and their political allies. They are carnival barkers who won’t shut up. For those too young to remember that first manned mission to the Moon, those 30-plu…

Playing Hooky: Will Boycott of Catholic Church Spur Reform?

By Nathan Schneider

…We need it, and it is us. If we Catholics want to help make our church better reflect the hope and faith within us, the first step is to show up….