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How Should We Speak of Unspeakable Evil?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…This is not a banal story at all; it is unspeakable. And it is not a story best told in court, Arendt concluded. The United Nations created a new word—genocide—to try to capture what was clearly perceived to be a new kind of horror that had been unleashed on the world. It was not simply that the body counts in the course of two world wars had grown unimaginable, and it was not the fact of indiscriminate killing technology either. It was more the f…

How Are the “Nones” Raising Their Children?

By Christel Manning

…therefore the individual has a right to choose one, or a combination, that best suits him or her. This is why None parents will not necessarily raise their children to be non-religious. In contrast to churched parents who usually transmit their own religion to their children, None parents insist they want their children to choose for themselves. That means providing options, and parents go about this in many different ways. I describe the five mos…

How a Pioneer of Branding Invented Christian Fundamentalism

By Daniel Silliman

…y was he important? Henry Parsons Crowell was a purveyor of oatmeal. He is best known by business historians as the president and founder of Quaker Oats, one of the pioneers of the branding revolution. He used a combination of packaging, trademark and massive promotional campaigns and transformed oatmeal from a commodity into a trademarked product. Crowell took oatmeal that used to be sold out of large barrels in your general store, put it into a…

Christianity Today counsels “patience” on Uganda’s anti-gay law

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…nstead exercise “patience as Ugandan leaders sort out among themselves the best way to preserve their culture’s sexual mores.” Instead of strongly condemning this legislation, which President Barack Obama has called “odious,” CT tells us we need to understand the culture and give the Ugandans a fair hearing on their , reasoned arguments against gays and lesbians: For American Christian leaders, both silence and open condemnation end up violating i…

Undercover at Falwell’s Liberty University, Finding Common Ground

By Nathan Schneider

…enthusiasm, despite praying and proselytizing and Bible-thumping with the best of them, Roose didn’t give in all the way. He didn’t get “saved.” His interior monologue never got too comfortable with the endless homophobia that passes for ordinary conversation among Liberty students, though he also fell short of speaking out against it at the time. When he returned, he was still a happy, post-everything Brown student. But he was still praying, eve…

How to Choose a Tour Company for Your Hajj

By Amina Wadud

…tarted asking friends, and friends of friends. By far, I think this is the best thing to do if you are like me: totally disconnected with hajj and umrah travel possibilities. I was so glad I did, because I got what sounded like the best thing I could imagine to overcome all these unknowns: a hajj guide recommended highly by a friend with details that suited my personality. Things like: we went here first and there last, because it limits the lines…

It’s the Water! And Other Lowlights from Presidential Science Debate

By Michael Schulson

…change,’” the Trump campaign wrote. Then things got weirder. “Perhaps the best use of our limited financial resources should be in dealing with making sure that every person in the world has clean water,” Trump continued, talking about something that has little to do with climate change. “Perhaps we should focus on eliminating lingering diseases around the world like malaria. Perhaps we should focus on efforts to increase food production to keep…

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

By Andrew Aghapour

…didn’t believe the Gallup numbers were right, and [they thought that] the best way to combat those Gallup numbers was to ask Gallup to do another survey. And so in 1978, Christianity Today, a leading periodical for evangelicals, paid Gallup to do a big survey and in addition to just asking the born-again question, they asked questions about belief in the Bible, belief in Jesus, and intent on converting others. As a result, Gallup revised its esti…

Prosperity Gospel Is Not the Only Problem with Joel Osteen’s Harvey Response

By Brie Loskota and Peter Gudaitis

…is, Joel Osteen is not selling the preferential option for the poor. Your best life is not being flooded out of your house — ProfB (@AntheaButler) August 28, 2017 Whatever one’s opinion about Osteen, the Twitter storm above Lakewood Church perpetuated misconceptions about disaster response—namely, that all faith communities are naturally adept at it. Lakewood Church may be more typical than atypical, with organizational issues and theology gettin…

Double Helix: Improving U.S. Science with Ethics

By Arri Eisen

…ed facts: Research—good old scientific research—tells us that people learn best in a rich context related to their lives. America is by most measures one of the most religious countries on Earth; that is, one of our most important contexts is the ethical and spiritual. Hold on. What’s the implication? Bring spirituality, ethics, even religion into the science conversation—the classroom, the media, the internet?! God forbid. Granted, here’s where i…