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Mormon Group Digging for Scriptural City of Zarahemla in Iowa is a Portrait of Religious Nationalism

By Hanna Seariac

…ch has taken to the cornfields of Montrose, Iowa in search of Zarahemla, a city frequently mentioned in the Book of Mormon. From the coverage one might reasonably conclude that a Latter-day Saint group is simply seeking to find corroboration for their scriptures—which is certainly the case—but lurking beneath the surface is something quite a bit darker. The HRG is one of several groups that believes in what’s known as the Heartland model; to them,…

What Good Is It for Union to Gain the World, But Forfeit Its Soul?

By Yazmine Nichols

…Jones was quoted using language reminiscent of Franklin: We’re a New York City institution. And we have a New York City-sized problem. But fortunately we also have a New York City-sized answer. God is calling us to have another 100 years, and the air rights are the answer to that call. Yes, indeed, a call is being answered. But which God has given the call? What’s happening at Union is a microcosm of a broader reality: poor people of color being…

What the Hail: Satanists Got Busy in 2018

By Joseph Laycock

…mong his five accomplishments, “Stopped so-called ‘Satanists’ from mocking City Hall traditions with a ‘prayer.’” TST demanded the city pay their court costs and sought an injunction ensuring prayer invocations are either halted or open to all religions. In Missouri, TST filed a new federal lawsuit on behalf of a pregnant woman named “Judy Doe.” Their federal case on behalf of Mary Doe (which was separate from their state case) had been thrown out…

“I Am Gay” Billboard Causes Stir in New York

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…But, Rev. Thompkins wasn’t alone: Daycare provider Pamela Spicer told the City Council […] that her clients read the billboards as she drives them to events in the city. She offers daycare to a 2-year-old, 4-year-old and 8-year-old. “When I’m driving them to the Schenectady Public Library and they say, ‘What does gay mean?’ how do I answer that question?” she said. “How do I expose them to such content?” My suggestion would be to tell the little…

New Report: Angels & Aliens in Texas Schools

By Mark A. Chancey

…des of Hanna-Barbera’s The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible. The number of Bible courses in Texas has gone up since 2007, when Texas passed a law encouraging schools to offer them. Texas is not alone in having such a statute; in recent years, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Arizona have passed similar laws, and Bible bills are currently making their way through the Wyoming and Arkansas legislatures. While these laws typically urge teac…

New Research Links Spiritual-Not-Religious to Mental Disorder

By Elizabeth Drescher

…c Musick (University of Texas, Austin) and Meredith Worthen (University of Oklahoma) suggests a number of cautions that might well be applied to studies like that offered by King and colleagues. In their review, Musick and Worthen found no direct causal relationship between religion and health, with service attendance alone showing a meaningful correlation that extends to measured benefits in mortality. Going to church seems to be a good thing hea…

The Quixotic Task of Debunking David Barton

By Paul Harvey

…futations of Barton’s bogus empiricism. I’ve considered these questions a number of times recently in observing historians struggling to deal with the popularity of figures such as David Barton, who bowdlerize history but get the kind of attention few actual historians receive for their work. To What Effect? These debates go back a long way. When I was in college at a Baptist denominational school in Oklahoma, the biology professor, a man about…

How Fitbit Helps a Conservative Evangelical College Monitor Students’ Bodies For Christ

By Jonathan Root

…t the “Aerobics Center,” students filled out a computer card with their ID number, activity number, and the time, intensity, and distance of their workout. The data derived from the cards helped to determine grades. One student who had been forced to enroll in the Pounds Off Program said, “I’m really sad for the school. It has so much potential, so many positive things about it, but you can’t treat people this way… They treat you like you’re not c…

Are Muslims Nuts?

By Haroon Moghul

…further why even when so few Muslims do resort to violent actions, a good number of their co-religionists are reluctant to entirely dismiss them. Indeed, many more Muslims protested peacefully against “The Innocence of Muslims” than did violently, even though their numbers together were still incredibly small. In his introduction to Sufism for Non-Sufis?, University of Southern California Professor Sherman Jackson notes that we cannot separate Is…

Do iPads Cause Religious Experiences?

By Andrew Aghapour

…scraper might include specific floors for various types of work, in an old city one can find butchers or doctors distributed quite randomly, depending on the history of the city. Burkhard Bilger, in a recent New Yorker profile of neuroscientist David Eagleman, describes this transition in our understanding of how the brain keeps time. During the mid-nineteenth century, the prevailing theory was that there was a single, integrated time-keeper somew…