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Reporting from Paris: A Prayer for Polluters

By Donna Schaper

…e a caucus proposed a stop fracking resolution. We spent hours on national phone calls debating when fracking should be stopped. We finally proposed 2030 as the last fracking date. It was a compromise after many “brackets,” what COP21 calls the matters that are kept in that famous parking lot where we put the things we don’t know how to decide. The Synod amended our so-called radical proposal and unanimously passed 2017 as the final date. We were…

A Portrait of Islamophobia?

By Mariam Durrani

…en fruit bowl, a few artificial flowers, half a bottle of Sprite, and some phone chargers. The two smaller images feature the cluttered interior of a walk-in closet with a bunch of clothes and a faint family portrait on the wireframe shelf, and something that will be familiar to anyone with a newborn child: a rocking seat next to a pink and yellow baby mat. With the caption “A Home Revealed,” the audience is left to make sense of these household p…

Oprah, Terrorist Cells, and the Meaning of Life: An Interview with Paul Froese

By Andrew Aghapour

…r of the Baylor Religion Surveys. The Cubit recently reached out to him by phone to discuss purpose, religion in modernity, and the brilliance of Tony Robbins. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. In your book you argue that modernity has brought about a kind of existential confusion, and you discovered this in an interesting way: by comparing levels of happiness and purposefulness to per-capita GDP. Could you tell us more abou…

Why It’s Heresy to Read the Bible Literally: An Interview with John Shelby Spong

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ntroversial. I don’t like being controversial. I get abused a lot in mail, phone calls and that sort of thing. I don’t enjoy that. But, if you are controversial in the public arena, the people who have given up on Christianity say, “My God, there must be something more to this story than I realized.” So, being controversial is my doorway to the generation of my own children. “The primary issue in the Christian church today is to get away from orig…

“Americans Hate Muslims, Too” (And Other Impediments to U.S. Advocacy for Religious Freedom Abroad)

By Chad Bauman

…aside and quietly told us that he had detected our American accents on the phone, and had given us the room instead of others because “Americans hate Muslims, too.” Still today, when I travel in India, Hindus presupposing my agreement frequently make off-handed and derogatory comments about their Muslim neighbors. For those concerned about the effectiveness of the United States’ advocacy for religious freedom around the world, the perception that…

United Methodists Elect 1st Gay Bishop; Canadian Anglicans OK Same-Sex Marriage

By Peter Montgomery

…translation by Google] Juan Alberto Vazquez writes in Milenio.com that the number of cities in Mexico holding pride celebrations is booming, but that visibility and progress go hand-in-hand with continuing resistance, bullying, homophobia, and violence. Bosnia and Herzogovina: Anti-discrimination law protects LGBT and intersex people The House of People of the Parliamentary Assembly adopted amendments to the country’s anti-discrimination, includin…

‘The Quiet Damage’ Details the Heartbreaking Effect of QAnon on Five American Families — But Critical Questions Linger

By Susannah Crockford

…f this book. It’s based on “hundreds of hours” of interviews in person, by phone, and online over three years. The pacing is fine, and by chapter 10 it becomes truly heartbreaking. Reading about people ruining their lives and the lives of their loved ones, over and again, is not a light read. In that sense it resembles an addiction memoir. This resemblance is made explicit in the afterword in which Cook argues that underneath the disinformation cr…

Accused of Anti-Semitism, Trump Aide Makes Ancestry Appeal

By Michael Schulson

…Jewish heritage of my wife of 38 years,” he wrote in an email. Later in a phone interview, he said his wife was not a practicing Jew but “ethnically Jewish” because her maternal grandmother was a Jew. Of course, it is possible to express [insert flavor of bigotry here] even if you have friends, relatives, partners, or a spouse who identify as part of [group that is the target of that bigotry]. It’s a close cousin to the “some of my best friends a…

Book Bannings Are Bad Enough, But Where Those Involved Are Considered Demonic, the Stakes Could Get Much Higher

By Frederick Clarkson

…one recent example, Patriot Mobile—a NAR 7 Mountains Dominionism-inspired phone company in Texas—bankrolled the campaigns of 11 candidates for school board in the suburbs of Ft. Worth in May 2022. They all won, and they subsequently took control of four school boards. In one school district (but probably not the last) 40 books were soon pulled from the shelves for “review.” It remains to be seen whether book burnings will become more a part of th…

Culture Wars Masquerading as Social Science: New Survey Illustrates Evangelicals’ Election Year Anxieties

By Chrissy Stroop

…may not yield as reliable of estimates as probability samples taken over a phone or another method. That is, we tend to be somewhat skeptical of population estimates produced by such data.” Asked what they thought the purpose of the 2020 State of Theology Survey might be, and whether it might be geared toward driving evangelicals to the polls, Whitehead replied, “I do think there is a particular narrative that they are trying to push with this res…