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Gay Marriage Opponents Running on Empty

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…om 50 new supporters. Add that to the five other locations holding similar phone banks or collecting post cards of support, and I’m sure we easily got our 300 today. In addition, Equality Maryland hosted an interfaith meeting to mobilize supportive faith leaders. It was so great to see such a wonderfully diverse group of religious folks. We had Unitarian’s and Episcopalians and Presbyterians and Baptists, and we even had a Catholic priest and some…

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…

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

By Spencer Dew

…il religion. Ronald Reagan called her “everybody’s gal.” In wartimes she’s carried a sword, placed an urgent phone call for financial help, and even scolded her citizenry. As a mascot for our country, she’s been given the face of a skull on the streets of Tehran and been beheaded by Trump in a famous Der Spiegel cover from earlier this year. In the religious and cultural imagination of America, she’s been denounced as a demonic idol, revered as a…

Lying About Our Religion, And Other Problems With Polling

By Michael Schulson

…out the emergence of evangelicals as a political body in the wake of Jimmy Carter’s nomination to the Democratic presidential ticket in 1976. After Carter described himself as an evangelical, polling firms rushed to map the extent and influence of this group. In doing so, they actually helped define it (and possibly overinflate it). Evangelical leaders trying to help build political muscle for their flocks—especially Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertso…

Is It OK To Use a Cellphone in Church? Pew Surveys the New Etiquette

By Michael Schulson

…3,000 adults about their cellphone behavior (stuff like “How often do you carry your cellphone with you?”), and about their feelings toward the behavior of their fellow citizens (for example, “How often do you encounter people using their cellphone in a loud or annoying manner in public?”). For those of us who enjoy thinking about religion, custom, technology, and culture, the report offers two insights–one about religious services, and one about…

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

By Andrew Aghapour

…quently), evangelicals were more politically active whether they voted for Carter or not. The fact that Carter was an evangelical gave evangelicals the sense that, “Oh, maybe we do count, and maybe we should get out and vote.” There was some of that but as far as journalistic reports were concerned, the year of the evangelical was mostly driven by the way the polls were asking the questions. Today’s most controversial polling trend is the rise of…

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…

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…

A Rationalist’s Ghost Story

By Gary Jansen

…worked in the industry I wanted to be respectful about that. There were a number of frightening episodes that my wife experienced that I didn’t have time to flesh out as well as I would have wanted so I dropped them. There was also a rather scary moment in my basement near a long, dark crawl space that I decided to cut because I didn’t have time to do it justice. Maybe someday I’ll do an extended version of the book. What are some of the biggest…

Will Pope’s African Tour Change Attitudes on Divorce and LGBTQ Among African Catholics?

By Kaya Oakes

…rch short on vocations and deeply divided on social issues to do both. The number of Catholics in Africa has gone through a startling increase in recent decades. Since 1980, the number of African Catholics has grown by 238%, in contrast to Europe, where it has grown by only 6%. Some of this may be attributable to higher fertility rates in African countries, but it also reflects the church’s success in missionary efforts. And where there are a decr…