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Six Overlooked Gems from the Future of World Religions Report

By Timothy King

…surpass Christianity as the world’s largest religion. Children praying in Malawi, Africa. Photo via Colin Carmichael/Flickr. 1. Don’t Go West Young Man, Go South The percentage of Christians living in sub-Saharan Africa is set to grow from 24% in 2010 to 38% in 2050. For the math-challenged among us, that means two out of every five Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa—a whopping 115% growth rate. However that number becomes a b…

Record Number of Stealth Creationism Bills Introduced in 2011

By Lauri Lebo

…NTELLIGENT DESIGN. An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member’s or student’s conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.” What makes this bill such a precious gem is that it relies on creatio…

Why David Brooks Doesn’t Get the Outrage Over AIG

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…columnist David Brooks offered an interesting observation on the legacy of Alan Greenspan. I was highly critical of it at the time, though in general Brooks is a moderate and thoughtful Republican who is remarkably innocent of the ideological blinders of the extreme wing of his Party; and, for this very reason he’s an important person with whom those on the Left should be in dialogue. Brooks began by observing that what most modern economists shar…

Busy Days For ‘eBay of Prophecy’

By Bill Berkowitz

Religious Right’s ‘Obama Watch’ Before President-elect Obama and the first family have moved into the White House, unpacked even so much as an overnight bag, suitcase, trunk, or toy chest, the braying from the religious right began. While Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink.com regularly features updates on Obama’s activities—or associated rumors about the President-elect’s possible moves—Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition has initiated a p…

“Paleo” is More Than a Fad Diet: Boyd Eaton’s Plan to Return to Eden

By Michael Schulson

…influence. And while it’s easy to mock Paleo as the retrograde fantasy of Patagonia-jacketed professionals who buy fifty-dollar grass-fed steaks and imagine themselves loping across a Paleolithic savannah as they strain through a CrossFit workout, the lifestyle does capture a certain discontent with modernity. So when I saw Eaton speak at a nutrition conference this past November, I expected him to talk a lot about the past. Instead, Eaton, a radi…

UNESCO on Religion, Culture and SOGI in Asia; Orthodox Family Sues to Stop Cremation of Israeli Trans Woman; Struggles of Iraqi Queer Activists; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…p the cremation so that they could bury Peleg as a man. From Ilan Lior in Haaretz: Attorney Yitzhak Dahan, representing the mother, said the will has no validity. “The moral obligation to honor the will is the family prerogative and there is no legal validity to other instructions.” He referred to Peleg as a male and said that the family, brothers, sisters and children want him to be buried according to Jewish law. “Cremation is contrary to Jewish…

The Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Humans

By Amina Wadud

…dy had printed out, has been changed. Instead of arriving in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia at around 9:30 p.m., I arrive around 7:00 p.m. The travel agent said this change was required from the Saudi end; thus my flight into Jeddah from Paris had to be changed. But in order to make this two-hour adjustment, I lost my direct flight to Paris. The difference is, instead of leaving in the evening on Sunday, my departure time is 8:45 a.m. Not such a big deal or…

Lo and Behold, the Sacredness of the Internet

By Martyn Smith

…the room that was the net’s place of origin, Kleinrock looks into the camera and tells us: “We are now entering a sacred location…a holy place.” Looking at a notebook that casually records the first internet connection on October 29, 1969, Kleinrock makes a comparison to the guy on Columbus’s ship who first spotted land and then made a note in the ship’s log, adding, “that document and this document have the same equivalent importance.” This is no…

Catholic Leaders Offer Criticism, Support to Boxer Pacquiao After Anti-Gay Comments…

By Peter Montgomery

…cials Continue Anti-LGBT Campaigns Indonesia has been making a regular appearance in this recap, with a wave of homophobic rhetoric from religious and political officials. That wave continued this week, as Lester Feder and Rin Hindryati report at BuzzFeed. Last Friday, the former Information and Communications Minister Tifatul Semberling, currently a member of Parliament from the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party, tweeted that the Prophet Mohammed…

Ministries of Presence: A Report from Nepal

By Cathleen Falsani

…ernational Airport six days (nearly to the minute) after the first of two cataclysmic earthquakes wrecked havoc on the tiny Himalayan nation of Nepal. Joining me aboard the flight from Singapore were a few other journalists from the United States and Europe, a team from the China Lingshan International Rescue in their distinctive fire engine red uniforms, and several dozen surgeons from South Africa who had come to Nepal with Gift of the Giver org…