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Exclusive: Columnist Jonathan Merritt on his Sudden Departure From Religion News Service

By Kaya Oakes

…ritt argued back that MacDonald was his client, and the conversation degenerated into argument. Half an hour later, MacDonald emailed Merritt a “numerated list of questions” about Merritt’s journalistic ethics—have you ever been paid by a publisher for coverage of a book, etc—which Merritt told him was upsetting. Merritt answered no to all the questions and sent MacDonald questions of his own for several days without receiving a reply. Then, on Th…

Swift-Boat Veterans of American Jewry Charge Anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall Street

By Jay Michaelson

…es ECI’s leadership – knows this to be the case. Which makes ECI’s video a cheap lie — yet another in a long litany of desperate efforts by the far right to convert the largely liberal American Jewish community to neo-conservatism, hawkish policies on Israel, and the belief that “Barack Hussein Obama” is a Muslim. That said, there actually are two interesting forms of antisemitism going on here. First is the antisemitism of ECI itself. To tug at…

Mitt Romney’s Prosperity Gospel

By Peter Laarman

…eathered nests who are preaching sacrifice might be in real trouble on the cheap grace front. Obama cannot and should not condemn those in the electorate who buy into Romney’s “there will be showers of blessing” message, but he probably does need to get his preacher voice on to remind folks that all covenant promises are conditional. That is, he should tell us in a religiously-resonant way that expecting God’s favor without loving mercy and doing…

For the Love of God, Bono, Please Stop Touring

By Ben Swihart

…pers that misspelled, mispronounced and misunderstood their names and celebrated when death came and stole their final laundry ticket” -excerpt from “Puerto Rican Obituary” by Pedro Pietri Then the lights went out and the stage lit up, and 60,000 white people finally started paying attention. My neighbors were two beers in when Bono shouted out to all of the women in his life, while reminding us that his-tory was just as much her-story. It was aro…

Why Crux‘s Knights of Columbus “Partnership” is Problematic

By Kaya Oakes

…had a lot of buzz. What it did not have was a lot of money. The Globe’s strategy was to hopefully attract what editor Brian McGrory described as “big-ticket, Catholic-based advertisers.” But those advertisers did not materialize. And while the site attracted a good-sized readership, without ad clicks it wasn’t generating cash for the Globe, which pulled the plug and gave Allen control of the site, while laying off O’Loughlin and Eagan in the proc…

Data-Mining The Denominations: The Southern Baptists in Four Charts

By Daniel Schultz

…ly clearing out the cobwebs and tidying up their membership rolls so their numbers more accurately reflect their active members. The problem is, membership isn’t alone in its decline—it’s joined by baptisms and weekly worship attendance. Whoops. If anything, the analysis quoted above minimizes the problem. To understand why, you need to know something about geography. In short, they call it the Southern Baptist Convention for a reason. The church…

NC’s Gay Marriage Ban: “It’s Going to Hurt the Church”

By Nicole Greenfield

…n North Carolina. Referring to Bakker’s theological “feel-good stance” as “cheap grace,” Rev. Mark Creech of the Christian Action League attributed Bakker’s preaching of a “toxic and counterfeit gay-affirming gospel” to being injured by the church as a child. “In some ways he’s right,” Bakker told me in response. “It’s called empathy.” He continued: “Every time someone accuses me of cheap grace, I go back and say no, it’s free grace. Grace is free…

Lying About Our Religion, And Other Problems With Polling

By Michael Schulson

…But what CNN really meant was “When asked by a complete stranger, over the phone, to define their spiritual lives in a single phrase, one-third of those adults who responded to this poll (response rate: one in ten), and who fall within an arbitrarily-defined generational frame, declined to tell the aforementioned complete stranger that they were affiliated with any specific religious group.” These are not equivalent statements. For some reason, th…

Refusing the Monsters on Maple Street: A First-Person Commentary from the Mass Hysteria at JFK

By Marion Grau

…r than leaving them exposed to terror or the fear of terror. Becoming frustrated at the lack of information from uniformed personnel, I went online and asked my friends on social media if they had heard what was going on. Answers came quickly and soon we knew that there were no confirmed shots and that it seemed to have been a false alarm. I shared what I learned with those standing around me or who didn’t have a phone, compared notes with others…

An Open Letter to CEO Jeff Smisek On United Airlines’ Blasphemous Safety Video

By Austin Dacey

…f I can be said to adhere to any confession, it is that primordial, preliterate one that has sprung forth everywhere ever since we beings were human: the covenant of sound. You and your associates have desecrated a work of transcendent beauty and blasphemed Music. I demand that you remove at once all remaining traces of “Rhapsody in Blue” from the safety videos now being shown on United and Continental flights. I fully appreciate that United Conti…