Religion Dispatches
…Bush speechwriter and fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, noted at the National Review: I fully realize that Robertson long ago ceased being a serious figure in the eyes of many people. Still, he remains a person of some influence, an individual who ran for president, whose words still garner attention, and whose views reflect a strand of thought within Christendom. Of course, conservatives see the PR disaster in not dista…
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There are two big takeaways in the Pew Research Center’s new Religious Landscape Survey, its first since 2007: the decline in the number of Americans identifying as Christians (down eight percent in seven years, to 70.6 percent), and the rise in the number of Americans identifying as atheist, agnostic, and otherwise religiously unaffiliated (up six points in seven years, to 22.8 percent). Greg Smith, Associate Director of Research at the Pew Rese…
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…nopoulos. Without his familiar identifier as lead counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), he was introduced as a member of Donald Trump’s legal team. In case you’ve forgotten, ACLJ was part of the rise of Christian public interest law firms, beginning in the 1980s.* These groups pursued the religious right’s culture wars agenda in the courts focusing initially on battles over First Amendment religion clauses, abortion rights, a…
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…ses those who are marginally interested in religion, rarely if ever attend services, yet claim that it has some relevance in their lives. Some Nones attend religious services on occasion, are generally open to the idea of the supernatural and believe in God or a higher power, but do not identify themselves as religious or with any particular religious tradition. As one young woman told me when I asked her whether religion had any relevance in her…
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…hless papers, which he publishes, as described by the Southern Poverty Law Center, “in pay-to-publish journals with legitimate-sounding names”—in short, “hate literature masquerading as legitimate science.” The SPLC has designated the Family Research Institute, originally known as the Institute for the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality, a hate group. Like Scott Lively, Cameron is on the far loony end of the anti-LGBT “spectrum,” if you will, h…
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…nts as unfair impediments to churches participating in the nation’s social-service fabric. Bush and his surrogates contended their efforts were attempts simply to “level the playing field”—their favorite catchphrase—for religious groups that just wanted to help their communities like any other service organization that qualified for government funding. Religious conservatives (along with a handful of moderate and progressive Catholics and evangeli…
Read More…nville for their annual convention, themed, “One Body,” which began with a service led by presiding bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori calling for unity. In recent years the convention has been tense with debates over the future of the diocese and even the Church itself. But this year, “nothing much happened,” according to a friend of mine who was a delegate. “The most contentious issue voted on had to do with something about priests’ retirement,” a…
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…elines, clergy employed by houses of worship are ineligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which is available to persons working in the public sector. Curiously, this isn’t on the radar of “religious freedom” activists. Education debt for clergy jeopardizes the vibrancy of many faith communities and the professional and theological priorities of clergy as parish demographics age into new forms of fixed income and weekly attendanc…
Read More…lls, as a full human being: someone who gave his time generously to church service but had trouble remembering names; he couldn’t tell a joke, but he did attempt a Michael Jackson-style moonwalk. On issues of gender, Romney made some mistakes, but also took steps to improve his relationship with Boston’s strong Mormon feminist community. In watching Romney make two runs at the presidency, I’ve seen many similarities between him and the Mormon me…
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…cooperate in spiritually equipping and activating believers for effective service in every sphere of life, including the marketplace, political, education, media, arts, family and church… Their objective is to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. The signatories don’t acknowledge, let alone explain, why they’re distancing themselves from their own history and the very church offices that define their movement. But they do offer a few clues—less…
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