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‘Rising Global Tide’ Of Anti-Gay Crackdowns; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Sandu, in the U.S. on a research project, talked to the Bay Area Reporter about homophobic attitudes in Romania and about the role played by American religious conservatives. (The Liberty Counsel took marriage-refusing county clerk Kim Davis on a tour of Romania to drum up support for a referendum putting a marriage ban in the constitution, an effort being promoted by the Orthodox Church.) “It’s the only cause in the world that American money and…

Demonized and Demonizing No More.

By Joanna Brooks

…c but that wasn’t at the forefront of his work—he was first and foremost a science communicator. The way he went about doing his work was compassionate and understanding towards people who didn’t agree with his ideas. He invited people into considering the questions he was posing rather than forcefully pushing his conclusions onto them. Inviting people in takes a lot of vulnerability, especially for atheists who are so often the object of vilifica…

RDBook: Is Nothing Secular? A Review of Jewel of Medina

By Gordon D. Newby

…fter being targeted by extremists. “Why,” many are asking, “can’t we write about, make movies about, or draw cartoons of religious figures such as Jesus, the Buddha, or Muhammad without raising the ire of these ‘overly sensitive’ religious groups? Have religious topics now become off limits for secular art?” Sherry Jones has since found a US press, Beaufort Books, willing to take the chance on publication, (the same press that published O.J. Simps…

Betrayed at the Polls, Evangelicals of Color at a Crossroads

By Deborah Jian Lee

…spiritual discussions have migrated. There she read some revelatory tweets about a friend’s Sunday school conversation about how the slaughtered lamb in the prodigal son parable represents the oppressed. “Someone else screws up and I’m the one who has to pay for it,” she recalls reading. It gave her a new perspective on the familiar passage and she thought, “Oh wow, I got more out of these three tweets than I did out of sitting in church for two h…

I Met God, She’s Black: An Exhibit Makes the Black Female Body a Temple

By Anita Little

…because you’re a part of her, she’s a part of you. In that sense, it’s not about hierarchy. It’s not about valuing one form or style or presence over another. It’s not about domination or submission to a ruling idea, it’s about inclusion. Because of that, it moves away from the black church, which is influenced by Western cultural views about religion. The space of black churches is still impacted by white male patriarchy. You can see that in the…

The Benedict Opt-Out: Why Christian Self-Isolation Won’t Work

By Kaya Oakes

…not embrace the Benedict Option en masse, what its premise of retreat says about the pessimistic mood in American Christianity right now is telling. Dreher has only commented briefly in his blogs on the Pew Survey’s data about the rapidly growing number of religiously unaffiliated younger adults, saying that “Christians don’t underestimate the difficulty of the road ahead,” and that they must “prepare.” But running throughout his and other’s growi…

Religion and Resistance at the New National Museum of African American History and Culture

By Anita Little

…ithin the black context, but how diverse it has always been. It’s not just about where you go on Sunday morning, it’s about the communities you chose to live in, how you educate your children and how you protest. Kwanzaa pin from 1960, Collection of the Smithsonian Leaping off of that question, in what way is black history and black present inseparable from black religion? A major question is: how do you separate out this story? For example, if we…

Multifaith Weight Loss: The Problem of Fat, the Promise of Peace

By Shaina Hammerman

…Muslim women (and in Detroit, Christian Arabs) if not to conduct dialogue about what divides them? Fetishes about food and bodies are projected onto fetishes about “difference.” Or perhaps the opposite is true: fetishes about ethno-religious differences are sought out under the guise of the more socially acceptable search for a better body. With a name like “Slim Peace,” it is clear that the group is as much about the prospect for uniting mortal…

For White Christians ‘Anti-Christian Bias’ Reflects ‘Anti-White Bias’ According to New Research

By Daniel Schultz

…and embrace pluralism,” he says. “Or you can be a Christian who says, it’s about defending the in-group. It’s about fending off threats.” That perception of threat, according to Pasek, is “very tied up with right-wing authoritarianism, and it’s highly associated with a social dominance group-based way of thinking.” Both Al-Kire and Pasek stress the importance of understanding religion not just as beliefs, but as identity. Al-Kire points out that s…

‘Catholic Feminist’ Isn’t an Oxymoron, and Other Tales From a Beleaguered Tradition

By Celia Wexler

…t I worried that I also had failed, because of my own complicated feelings about Catholicism. I felt a lot of guilt about her upbringing. At the same time, I was having my own crisis of faith. The papacy of Pope Benedict XVI in particular was trying. He had such a dour world view. He changed the prayers we say at Mass, and made them less personal and more remote. Even American priests did not like the new translation he approved. Benedict’s Vatica…