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As Gaza Burns, Jews Disagree, Protest & Pray

By Sam Kestenbaum

…ssiles Hamas has fired (2,270)—some reaching as far north as Jerusalem—the number of Hamas’ smuggling tunnels uncovered (31), the number of Israeli soldiers killed in action (29). These numbers will likely change every hour. In the weeks leading up to the Israeli invasion of Gaza and now as increasingly grisly accounts and bloody images emerge of Palestinian homes and hospitals blown apart, American Jews are conflicted—alternately protesting again…

Dutch Treat: Betsy DeVos and the Christian Schools Movement

By Peter Laarman

…are winning in state after state. In the past six years, we’ve doubled the number of private school choice programs to 50, the number of private school choice states to 25, plus Washington, D.C., and doubled the number of students currently benefiting from private school choice to 400,000. All told, together, we’ve helped more than a million kids in private school choice programs, and we’re just getting started. “Just getting started”: we should n…

New Poll Reveals Jews May Be Open to Change in Israel Policy

By Benjamin Weiner

…d up if Israel’s “most favored nation” status is truly challenged by an American administration? Despite some American Jewish alienation from Israeli policy, backing for a bold new direction in the peace process is not entirely solid, a fact reflected in the same survey. 40% of respondents continue to support West Bank settlements, which, no matter how J Street chooses to spin it, is not an insignificant number. 75% supported the IDF operation in…

What’s in a Name? Religious Nones and the American Religious Landscape

By Richard Flory

…tention is that there has been a significant and sustained increase in the number of people who are choosing not to identify with any religion. As reported by the Pew Research Center, in 2007, 16 percent of American adults reported no religious preference or affiliation; by 2014 this statistic had increased to almost 23 percent. And younger adults are more likely to say that they have no religion than their parents or grandparents’ generations. Ma…

Pope’s US Visit Provokes Intense Attention; New Vatican Book on Man-Woman Complementarity & New Int’l Report on Christian Role Models for LGBT Equality; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…child sex abuse by allies The New York Times reported last weekend that American military personnel and civilians serving in Afghanistan have been required to look the other way as prominent Afghan allies participated in the rape of young boys, part of a broader practice of looking the other way regarding corruption and misdeeds in order not to undercut the fight against the Taliban. Pervasive sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Af…

Workers Once Forced the Social Gospel Into Churches—Can It Happen Again?

By Eric C. Miller

…way from a repeat of their late-nineteenth-century insurgency. There are a number of historical explanations for this. Certainly the Cold War baptism of “free enterprise” as a distinctively Christian way of doing business worked to erode social Christianity’s hold at the grassroots. The surging prosperity gospel of our own times has done further damage. All this being said, there are some favorable trends. The resources available to working people…

Rome Has Spoken and Rome Is Finished: The Vatican’s Sexual Abuse Summit ‘Failed Miserably’

By Mary E. Hunt

…ed minors and some covered it up. What’s so mysterious about that? A large number of minors have been sexually abused by a large number of clerics. Period. Full stop. It’s simply the beginning of a hideous story that includes the abuse of seminarians, nuns and other women, children of priests, and more, all of whom merit summits of their own. Francis’ discussion of power fell flat. He claimed that the sexual abuse of minors is an abuse of power. H…

RD News Round-Up—Oct.14, 2008

By Bill Berkowitz

…wder keg here as we get towards that day, given that Senator Obama is an African American and given that there might be some backlash if he actually loses,” Corbin explained. Corbin is thinking about the strife caused by the Rodney King verdict: “I think a lot of people are looking to an Obama presidency to affirm the notion that somehow Americans aren’t racist and, if for some reason Senator Obama loses, then it’s just, ‘Oh well, it’s said and do…

How Not To Defend Atheism

By Vlad Chituc

…ntry. The most charitable number I could find was from Gallup, putting the number of Americans in 2014 who say they don’t believe in God at 11%. To make things frustratingly worse, other atheists have been calling Silverman out for falsely inflating the number of atheists for more than four years. And last year, I specifically asked Silverman if he would stop reporting the stats on “nones” as being representative of atheism, and he told me he woul…

Religion Round-Up: What’s Going on in Religion Around the World

By Diane Winston

…are, according to Pew, surprisingly high. Moreover, they represent a large number of people, “nearly equal the estimated number of religiously affiliated adults in the United States” Accordingly, the 1-plus % of the Chinese population that identifies itself as Muslim equals some 20.3 million people—a population almost as large as Saudi Arabia’s. (More to the point, as one of China’s ethnic minorities, Muslims are not bound to the one-child per fam…