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Swimming Against the Tide: Religious (Non) Affiliation Might Not Mean What You Think It Means

By Timothy King

…llowing such a line of reasoning might mean we are seeing an uptick in the number of American’s who will report a life-changing Christian experience while simultaneously being less likely to identify with any particular Christian institution. This raises questions about the complicated relationship between Americans and their willingness to affiliate with large institutions (religious and otherwise) in general. The rate of decline in affiliation f…

Beck’s “Dream”—Our Nightmare

By Julie Ingersoll

…hat some forms of slavery are permitted by biblical law. While criticizing American slavery as violating a number of biblical requirements, however, he did not view it as inherently immoral. By promoting McDowell, and by extension Rushdoony, Barton promotes a “biblical worldview” in which slavery is in some circumstances acceptable. This worldview (like his discussion of the three-fifths rule, which minimizes the rule’s dehumanization of slaves) d…

Don’t Blame Secularism: Reading Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion

By Jeffrey Feldman

…of politics, but simply to refocus on the much broader question: Why have Americans in general—Muslim-Americans and scholars of Islam aside—remained ignorant for so long of a world religion with such vast social and political relevance in contemporary American life? The answer is not ‘secularism.’ In thinking about that question, I find myself returning to memories of my school days in the 1970s, and to the image of those colorful world maps that…

Win For ‘Natural Family’ Crowd at UN Human Rights Council…

By Peter Montgomery

…t documents the behind-the-scenes work ADF is doing at the Organization of American States and its Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The push into Latin America follows earlier expansion of its presence in Europe. Today, ADF is one of the largest conservative legal organizations in the United States, with a budget dwarfing those of sister groups like the Becket Fund and Liberty Counsel. Indeed, one might argue that it is chiefly responsib…

Gun Ownership as Sin—A Strategic, Secular Proposal for Gun Reform

By Ira Chernus

…borne that name. Guns have always symbolized “the frontier.” And for vast numbers of Americans, the cultural idea and ideal of the frontier have symbolized what they think their nation is all about. Out on the frontier, the classic story goes, a man simply must have a gun and the freedom to use it. He couldn’t survive without it. He needs it to get food for his family and to defend them in times of danger. But as long as potential enemies out the…

What Do We Mean By ‘Judeo-Christian’?

By Shalom Goldman

…ational Conference of Christians and Jews who, concerned about the rise of American nativism and xenophobia during the Depression, sought to foster a more open and inclusive sense of American religious identity. Prominent protestant clergy who were members of the NCCJ’s National Council eschewed efforts to convert Jews—a somewhat radical stance that, along with a determination to change entrenched attitudes towards non-Protestants, alienated many…

Creationism and Evolution are Competing ‘Myths’

By Kelly E. Hayes

…ations to refute such claims seem to have had little effect on many middle Americans—not surprisingly the exact demographic targeted by AiG. The Ark Encounter’s planned home in northern Kentucky will situate it, like the Creation Museum, within a day’s drive of two-thirds of all Americans, some 40% of whom, according to the latest Gallup poll, affirm the creationist view that God created humans sometime in the past 10,000 years. Opponents have fra…

Public Shrines to Treason: Charlottesville and the Cult of Confederate Memorialization

By Spencer Dew

…Unite the Right” called attention to this, that dueling visions of America—American history and expectations for and patterns of an American future—are more than just differences of opinion, they are radically divergent worldviews, with separate systems of values, conceptions of humanity, and even understandings of the good. The problem of the proliferation of Confederate civil religion has always been what to do with a citizen who glorified seces…

A Reporter’s Guide to the New Apostolic Reformation

By Frederick Clarkson and André Gagné

…ght The Christian Right, which has been an increasingly powerful factor in American politics for decades, has benefited from a strangely persistent culture of denialism. We needn’t review the number of times that reporters, scholars, and religious leaders declared that the Christian Right was dead, dying, or significantly diminished. That it’s still here and stronger than ever is sufficient reason for all of us to try to get it right. Chief Justic…

Did You Read About Conservative Judaism’s Anti-Black Antisemitic Smearing of Hebrew Israelites? Neither Did I

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…nagogues, American Christianity is like a specter haunting the practice of American Judaism. So just as American Christianity has liberalized, so has American Judaism. But what does that mean for Jewish law? Here is a brief list of the “changes” that Conservative Judaism has made to halacha: Driving on the sabbath Mixed gender worship Ordaining women Recognition of same sex marriages and ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy These examples display the varia…