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Refusing Religion, Claiming the Future: A Roundtable Discussion on “The Nones Are Alright”

By Peter Laarman

…merican millennials. First, there was an interesting article that came out last year which indicated that African-American millennials believe the black church is increasingly obsolete. This piece identified the black church as being “out of step on scientific developments” and charged that some black millennials “feel Christianity leaves no room for authenticity.” Certainly the scandal and hypocrisy-plagued version of the black church that younge…

Under Water: Waiting for the Flood (of Awareness) in Louisiana

By Drew Konow

…the floods in Louisiana are, in large part, hard-working poor and working-class people. So hard-working, in fact, that many took it upon themselves to rescue friends and strangers from the rising waters, to open their homes to those made homeless, and to volunteer at shelters and places of worship. Some may say that Mother Nature does not discriminate. That may be true, but it’s also true that people of means have a much greater capacity to withst…

Trump, Islamophobia, and the Philly Pig’s Head Incident

By David Krueger

…ific terrorist attacks in Paris, Al-Aqsa mosque in Philadelphia received a phone message stating, “I hope you people are happy about what you did in Paris. I’d like to state for the record that Allah is a piece of pork shit.” A few weeks later, in the early morning hours of December 7, the mosque manager unlocked the front doors for the early morning fajr prayer. As he was about to enter, he noticed the severed head of a pig lying next to the door…

Reporting from Paris: A Prayer for Polluters

By Donna Schaper

…e a caucus proposed a stop fracking resolution. We spent hours on national phone calls debating when fracking should be stopped. We finally proposed 2030 as the last fracking date. It was a compromise after many “brackets,” what COP21 calls the matters that are kept in that famous parking lot where we put the things we don’t know how to decide. The Synod amended our so-called radical proposal and unanimously passed 2017 as the final date. We were…

A Portrait of Islamophobia?

By Mariam Durrani

…ts, tourists and other visitors—from entering the country as a response to last week’s California shootings. He went on to defend this egregious statement on Good Morning America by comparing his plan as similar to FDR’s internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. This statement and the crowds of Trump supporters cheering for him have finally struck a chord in the US public sphere. The other candidates have called him out with House Spea…

Oprah, Terrorist Cells, and the Meaning of Life: An Interview with Paul Froese

By Andrew Aghapour

…l world have so many things that others don’t—refrigerators, televisions, iPhones—and that’s completely true, but what that misses is that those don’t provide meaning for you. Ironically, those things might communicate to people that the world is moving on without them. How does religion, as an “overarching system of meaning,” help the disenfranchised? I think that when somebody has a strong moral system of meaning, it’s easier to cope with setbac…

Are All Religious Experiences Reducible to 16 Desires?

By Andrew Aghapour

…ddressing of everything. My own take on your book is that you multiply the number of psychological motivations we can associate with religion, and so you’re offering a much better, more useful set of motivations than the previous theorists of religion whom you’ve mentioned. Where I’m hesitant is that you claim you’ve found a set of psychological universals, and here’s my reason: we know that culture affects biology, that there’s a give-and-take be…

Why It’s Heresy to Read the Bible Literally: An Interview with John Shelby Spong

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…I write a weekly column and I get enormous mail and you can’t believe the number of mails I get from people living in little towns and there’s no church they can or want to go to so I am their church. I am the one point of contact outside of that community that makes them know they’re not crazy, because everybody else thinks they must be a Communist if they don’t go to church. I get letters from people who say they after they read one of my earli…

The Only Religion Question Reporters and Debate Moderators Should Ask Presidential Candidates (Kim Davis Edition)

By Sarah Posner

…for shying away from hot-button religious culture war battles, “visited by phone” with Rowan County, Kentucky court clerk Kim Davis yesterday, according to a statement issued by his campaign. “I let her know how proud I am of her for not abandoning her religious convictions and standing strong for religious liberty,” the former pastor, Arkansas governor, and now two-time presidential candidate said in a statement. Arguing that “the Supreme Court c…

United Methodists Elect 1st Gay Bishop; Canadian Anglicans OK Same-Sex Marriage

By Peter Montgomery

…translation by Google] Juan Alberto Vazquez writes in Milenio.com that the number of cities in Mexico holding pride celebrations is booming, but that visibility and progress go hand-in-hand with continuing resistance, bullying, homophobia, and violence. Bosnia and Herzogovina: Anti-discrimination law protects LGBT and intersex people The House of People of the Parliamentary Assembly adopted amendments to the country’s anti-discrimination, includin…