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Holey Holey Holey: The Problem with a New Study Valuing Religion at $1.2 Trillion Per Year

By Michael Schulson

…Deseret News included Trijicon in the list because the company “inscribed coded biblical references on high-powered rifle sights used by the U.S. military.” That’s it. Other than the founder’s purported religious beliefs, its inclusion is arbitrary. Why not include Ebay, whose founder Pierre Omidyar is a Buddhist, or any of Sheldon Adelson’s businesses? Trying to draw a line between “business with religious roots” and “everything else in global c…

How to Make Nones and Lose Money: Study Shows Cost of Catholic Sex Abuse Scandals

By Kaya Oakes

…words, as Nones. The economists involved in this study focused on the zip code where a clergy sex scandal had occurred. They found a “large and statistically significant effect” on charitable contributions in those zip codes after a scandal, and not only to Catholic-based charitable organizations. The researchers theorize that perhaps once a person stops attending church, the social pressure to be charitable declines. Interestingly, however, thes…

Mexican Marriage Marches Show Struggle Between Church and Secular State; Pro-LGBT Mormon Group Grows After ‘Apostate’ Declaration; Botswana Gives Anti-Gay US Pastor the Boot; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…s would be arrested and prosecuted. Lokodo said the parade was designed to promote homosexuality to young people. “We are aware that there are inducements, including money, being offered to young people to promote the practice,” he said. Lawyer Nicholas Opiyo said he believed the minister was unaware that parade organizers had formally notified police of their intention to hold a public gathering. “In terms of the legal procedure, they ticked all…

California Tribes Denounce Catholic Church’s “Fraud” and “Blatant Fabrication” on Serra Sainthood

By Peter Montgomery

…a, an English professor at Washington and Lee University and author of Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, said that California Indians had responded “with on-line petitions, prayers, moderated debates, a mock trial, art installations, press conferences, a 650-mile walk through all 21 missions, social media, radio shows, letters to the Pope himself.” But Francis, she said, has not made a single public comment about Indians in California. “It is as if we…

Is Army’s New “Humanist” Designation Just Semantic Hooey?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…or service members with non-religious beliefs and practices. The new faith code is significant in a number of ways. First, for Bradley and Humanist service members, it means that their existential disposition and associated practices are designated in their military records with language not shaped primarily in opposition to traditional religious designations. “‘Atheist’ says only what I’m not,” Bradley explained. “‘Humanist is what I am. It is ho…

Justice v. Revenge: The Question Beneath the Question of Prison Reform

By Xarissa Holdaway

…our brains, which makes the admonition “an eye for an eye” in Hammurabi’s code sound less like savagery and more like a way to keep everybody in check. To punish more than the guilt deserves has been a legal problem, apparently, since at least 1792 B.C.E or so. The distinction between justice and vengeance matters, because vengeance costs an enormous amount to taxpayers, and, as reformers on both sides of the aisle argue, our own moral selves. Pe…

Are Evangelical Films Destined to Leave Secular Audiences Behind?

By Daniel Silliman

…nting a fourth installment. Other major studio efforts haven’t cracked the code for commercial success either: Darren Aronofsky’s Noah earned a respectable $100 million, but cost an estimated $125 million to make. Son of God did okay at the box office, grossing $26.5 million its opening weekend, bolstered by support from American megachurch pastors including Rick Warren and Bill Hybels. But ticket sales quickly faded. Independent studios have done…

“Freedom” vs. “Liberty”: Why Religious Conservatives Have Begun to Favor One Over the Other

By Stephanie Russell-Kraft

…y groups on the religious right have latched onto “religious liberty” as a code for this particular sensibility. To be sure, these groups also routinely appeal to religious freedom. But, as recent linguistic shifts have shown, the word liberty brings something extra to the table. “When people talk about religious freedom, they may be talking about the right of everybody to practice their religion, or the right to refuse service to people whose sex…

UPDATE: An Abrupt End to Quebec Separatist Plan to Ban “Ostentatious Signs” of Religion

By Jeremy Stolow

…f which do happen to wear (typically small) crucifixes—and thus the visual code aimed its sights more narrowly on undesirable religious minorities, while at the same time allowing the government to proclaim the even-handedness of its approach. But whatever the actual intentions of the government, the deployment of this category of the ‘permitted sign’ wonderfully epitomized a much larger and more longstanding liberal project to (re)construct mode…

The Secret History of Easter

By Joseph Laycock

…from Wikipedia). New Testament scholars have noted that since The DaVinci Code became a cultural phenomenon, there’s been a surge of conspiratorial claims about Jesus, the early church, and the influence of Pagan mystery religions. Authors such as Craig Evans and Bart Ehrman have written with bewilderment at the revival of “mythicist” theories of Jesus and “nineteenth-century philosophical hokum” that was long ago dismissed by serious scholars wh…