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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…

Burning Down the Temple: Religion and Irony in Black Rock City

By Sarah M. Pike

…d this sale to a long list of complaints: rules and more rules, opaque finances, increasing law enforcement presence, and more “spectators” in RV comfort palaces running noisy generators. Burners are a suspicious lot and many of them believe the Borg has caved in to the very values of corporate America that it seeks to challenge. Before entering the city I was reminded about why there is so much criticism of the organizers. Hundreds of us waited a…

What a Turn-of-the-Century Anti-Abortion and Contraception Crusader Reveals About GOP Efforts to Ban Abortion Pills by Mail

By Steven K. Green

…eived the objectionable material. So, too, legislators in red states can prohibit certain items once they’ve been received in their states and then may seek extradition of suppliers or secure warrants for their arrests if they ever set foot in their states. Regardless of how successful that may be, the specter of prosecution or its uncertainties is certain to have a chilling effect. Throughout his career, Comstock relished his fame as a moral crus…

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…

Pentecostal Prayer Gangs: New Film Documents Religion in a Brazilian Prison

By Nick Street

…kicked out of church, and the gang would respond to the betrayal with violence. You had no prior experience as a filmmaker. How did the film come together? A friend of mine from New York who was a freelance photographer was willing to come to Rio, work for well below his usually daily rate and sleep on the floor of my apartment in order to help with the project. At that point I had built trust with the inmates over about seven months, and I knew w…

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

By Austin Dacey

…ng of something even more hideous. The melody disappeared entirely to make way for the announcer’s voiceover—“Please make sure your phone and all electronics are switched off and stowed”—as a single chord hovered to a simple four-beat pulse in the fashion of light pop radio. Gone were the jaunty, urbane syncopations that will forever mark the arrival of the jazz idiom—and with it the bluesy sinews of the American soul—to the hallowed halls of West…

Invited by Allah

By Amina Wadud

…er bags, but how she and her husband still managed to get there, because “once Allah invites you, then no one and nothing will keep you away.” So I tried to be optimistic. It didn’t help that my daughter accused me of the contrary. Or rather, she asked: aren’t you ever optimistic? I told her about waiting for the visa and how NOT being optimistic was driving me crazy. She said, “Trust in God and don’t worry.” She said, “You can’t have both: either…

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

By Marion Grau

…en Homeland Security began to impose “threat levels” that legitimized the increase in surveillance and control after 9/11, we’ve become used to (and yet also entirely unprepared for) moments of fear and terror. Being frequently put on notice for potential terrorist activity now feels normal, but under the surface of normality hides a heightened sense of insecurity, of fraying bonds of trust. I was at Gate 4 in JFK’s Terminal 1 when a wave of peopl…

More Mixed Signals from Pope Francis; Church of England Wrestles with Rifts; Faith Groups Lobby Pro & Con on Irish Referendum; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Church: Pope slams gender theory; pro-LGBT pilgrims get VIP tix to see Francis Francis-watchers continue to get mixed signals. In our “stories to watch” for 2015, we included the Catholic Church’s targeting “gender ideology” as a way of challenging LGBT equality. National Catholic Reporter notes that in “Pope Francis: This Economy Kills,” released in Italy last week, Francis criticized “gender theory” and compared it to genetic manipulation and n…

Snake-Handlers, False Messiahs, and a Few Great Souls: 14 Who Died in 2014

By Daniel Silliman

…shrug off”their “old deathist ways”and accept immortality into their DNA. John-Roger Hinkins The “way-shower”of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA), John-Roger Hinkins died at 80. Raised Mormon, Hinkins was a high school teacher in Southern California when he discovered “soul consciousness.”He founded MSIA—pronounced “messiah”—in 1971, teaching one could achieve a totally positive state of being with the help of the Mystical Traveler…