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False Saviors: Trump, Cruz, and the Gospel of the Quick Fix

By Marcia Pally

…08 recession to regulate the finance sector and prevent another crash. One Des Moines resident explained her politics this way: Cruz “wants to let us make choices, instead of the government being all powerful and making choices for us.” Enter Trump and Cruz, brandishing a compendium of American quick-fixes: you’ve been wronged economically and fear terrorist attack; you’re right to push back. Overweening government and the (identifiable, isolatabl…

Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate

By Anthea Butler

…as a Master’s student at Fuller working the switchboard part-time, and the number one phone call that came through went something like this: “Can you connect me to C. Peter Wagner’s Church Growth Institute? I’d like to buy some materials.” No one was happier than I was when he retired from Fuller and moved to Colorado Springs! I felt like I worked at a catalog call-in center. Seriously. I would never have expected to be talking about Wagner in con…

Episcopal Church Assault Data Reveals the Dark Side of Inclusive Christianity

By Charlotte Dalwood

…naction around sexual violence. See no evil, hear no evil… LGBTQ+ Episcopalians, and especially those who identify under the transgender and nonbinary umbrella, were far more likely than their cisgender and heterosexual counterparts to cite a fear that nothing would be done or that they’d be retaliated against as their top reasons not to report instances of sexual abuse to denominational authorities. Those fears are, unfortunately, well-founded. O…

Power Up: Turn Off the Cell Phone

By Daniel Schultz

…plugged-in lifestyle doesn’t really get at the heart of the issue. I think the Amish, of all people, have it right. It’s not so much about what you as an individual are doing or not doing, as the effect technology has on the community: Why not make life easier and just put [a phone] in the house? “What would that lead to?” another Amish man asked me. “We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a tel…

Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired

By Rachel Wagner

…imams online, call imams live on television shows, and even access imams via cell phones to receive new fatwas (religious rulings) for questions they may have. The recent proliferation of people claiming to have credentials to issue fatwas has created confusion and frustration among some Muslims (IOL Technology). Who should decide, if anyone, what authoritative texts should be accessible, and to whom—when anyone with an internet hookup and a lapt…

Nuns on the Bus: 2700 Miles, Nine States, and a Rock Star DC Welcome

By Mary E. Hunt

…ed ministries (again, nuns are lay people) across the country. Starting in Des Moines, Iowa, and ending in Northern Virginia before they crossed the bridge in their triumphant return to DC, the bus pilgrims visited all manner of projects. In Dubuque, they saw what several women’s religious communities are doing together to aid newly arrived Americans—immigrants. In Milwaukee, they ate at St. Ben’s meal program, meeting with people who are marginal…

An Atheist Hero is Something to Be

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…his film The Ledge at the national atheist convention held in my hometown, Des Moines, I queued up to meet him and tried not to feel sycophantic. Even though I had heard lots of atheist speakers by the time I spoke to Matthew Chapman, it was our brief conversation that stayed with me. If my mom takes the fun out of fundamentalism, Matthew Chapman puts the human into secular humanism. Later, we had a more extended conversation. ____________________…

The Circle Can Remain Unbroken, If Battered And Bloody

By Daniel Schultz

…s as a lightning rod. Or check out the controversy over atheist bus ads in Des Moines, a story Zvan herself cites. For goodness’ sake, what is so offensive about a factual statement like “You are not alone”? In any event, Rod Dreher takes the question from a different angle, wondering what keeps various sub-cultures from taking the sectarian route and cutting themselves off from wider society. Dreher excerpts a poorly-typed quote from James Davids…

Carson’s Lead Shows Evangelicals Care More About Politics Than Religion

By Sarah Posner

…ad is 36-17 percent among white evangelicals. And a new Bloomberg Politics-Des Moines Register poll released today also has Carson pulling ahead of Trump, by 28-19 percent. Again, Carson is the favorite of about a third of white evangelicals in that poll, who make up 42 percent of likely GOP caucus-goers in the state. The fascinating religion story here is evangelicals–some of whom looked with suspicion at Mitt Romney’s LDS faith in 2012–seem obli…

Wiccan Prayer in Iowa House Highlights Religious Freedom Problem

By Joseph Laycock

…a house boycotted her prayer by arriving late, and Rep. Rob Taylor (R-West Des Moines) actually turned his back to Maynard claiming it was a form of peaceful protest in response to a practice he perceived as spiritually evil. This incident occurred almost one year after the Town of Greece v. Galloway decision in which the Supreme Court ruled that “sectarian” prayers before government meetings are constitutional, so long as no one is coerced to par…