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Does Record Number of Religious “Nones” Mean Decline of Religiosity?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…an religiosity—about religion as it is lived in the United States today? A number of what I would see as problems in the Pew report suggest to me that our growing fixation with religion-by-the-numbers may be distracting us from richer, more nuanced understandings of American religious practice. Wanted: A Community that Doesn’t Share My Beliefs and Values Take the demographic category of “Nones” itself. The Pew report notes the difficulty with sur…

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

By Michael Schulson

…f the total revenue of American religious congregations. To get that final number, the Grims took one estimate of the total number of congregations in America (344,894) and multiplied it by another estimate of the average revenue of each ($242,910). Depending on how you look at it, $378 billion is a lot of money, or it’s not very much money at all. It’s more than the net worth of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffet, combined…

Why Atheists Should Fight For Establishment of State Religion

By Shanny Luft

…: they have more preachers; they have more active preachers, and they have cheaper preachers than can be found in any part of Europe.” What explained European Christianity’s weakness to compete? The answer, de Tocqueville reasoned, was that “the church cannot share the temporal power of the state without being the object of a portion of that animosity which the latter excites.” In other words, when religion and government become entangled, the pub…

Come Hell or High Water: How the Melodrama of Disaster Leaves Us Vulnerable

By Noah Berlatsky

When an event like the flooding in Louisiana takes place, destroying homes and disrupting and ending lives, media coverage shifts to a sober note. But the images of destruction and film reels of heroic rescuers suggest another, disconcerting dimension to catastrophe: disaster is a form of entertainment. It focuses attention, concentrates minds, and stimulates emotions. This is true in fiction, from The War of the Worlds to The Walking Dead. It’s…

Searching for Moral High Ground While Houston Drowns: A Perspective on the Lakewood Church Controversy

By Joshua L. Lazard

…I will never forget watching the news at my aunt’s house in south central Louisiana, after I had evacuated, as Coast Guard helicopters were rescuing people from their rooftops and dropping them off at the Superdome—the shelter of last resort. In short, the Superdome was not prepared to handle evacuees when it came to the basics of food, water and shelter. There was no food, not enough water, and the roof of the structure peeled off in the high wi…

Christian Nationalism Hurts the Children It Claims to Protect — As Author Lillian Smith Understood 80 Years Ago

By Matthew Teutsch and Emma Williams

…ty,” “inclusion,” and even “social justice” from teaching standards, while Louisiana, Rep. Clay Higgins proposes that public libraries be replaced with church-owned alternatives claiming that libraries have become “liberal grooming centers.” Some legislators embrace the term Christian nationalism in describing their positions. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, at a TPUSA event in 2022 proclaimed, “We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christ…

True Detective’s Occult Conspiracy

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…n Michel gives us a reading list of the Gothic novels the show draws from; Louisianan Adrian Young writes in Slate about True Detective’s setting as a cultural landscape; while Emily Nussbaum’s smart feminist critique in last week’s New Yorker notes what’s not there, namely three-dimensional female characters. My own humble contribution to this critical bumper crop has to do with the word “occult,” the detectives’ preferred adjective to describe t…

Exactly 30 Years Before Illinois AG’s Devastating Sexual Abuse Report, a Plan for Prevention was Implemented, Then Scrapped

By David Clohessy

…earliest localized clergy sex abuse scandals—like the one in the Lafayette Louisiana Diocese, for example—predated both the Internet and the formation of support groups like SNAP. All this happened in the time before some alleged predators sued their accusers, the journalists, and even the diocese who suspended them. (This is more common than many church members and observers would expect.) Sadly, I suspect that the aggressive PR tactics and hardb…

Tony Perkins will Fit Right in at Religious Freedom Commission

By Caroline Matas

…d increasing political clout since Perkins took the helm in 2003. A former Louisiana state senator himself, Perkins has worked to ingratiate himself with holders of the nation’s highest office since the Reagan years. Perkins made a reported 14 visits to the White House during George W. Bush’s first term and was an integral lobbyist in favor of a bill that would have imposed jail time on doctors and other adults that helped abortion-seekers under 1…

What Was Your Sign?, Pro-War MLK, & Benched for a Headscarf

By Michael J. Altman

…, would approve of the U.S. war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Locals in Louisiana are arming themselves and coming up with a “security plan” to protect their churches, synagogues, and mosques. An event titled “The Ground Zero Mosque: The Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks” will be held at the Conservative Political Action Conference next month. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf will no longer be the fund raising face or spokesperson for the Park51 Islamic ce…