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“Americans Hate Muslims, Too” (And Other Impediments to U.S. Advocacy for Religious Freedom Abroad)

By Chad Bauman

…o that of its Muslim minority. In the decades since India’s independence in 1947, thousands of Muslims have died in incidents of mob violence. More than 7,000 died in the 1980s alone, according to reliable estimates. Major anti-Muslim riots occur about every decade, and dozens are killed annually in smaller or medium-scale anti-Muslims riots. To the extent, then, that Americans are perceived to care more about the plight of Christians than Muslims…

Dispatches From the Beltway: Horton Hears Progressive Religion

By Robert P. Jones

…it is worth noting that the once-formidable Christian Coalition, founded in 1989, has virtually imploded. By 2006, its $26 million budget had shrunk to $1 million, and it was $2 million in debt; and its state chapters have been steadily folding or disassociating because the group has become so associated with a narrow, divisive agenda—an agenda of which Americans, including evangelical Americans, have grown weary. Second, progressive religious voi…

Cross-Burning Hearing Ends, Trial Set to Begin

By Lauri Lebo

…racy, and one of Freshwater’s most active supporters, told me in a January phone interview, “That is not the arm of Zachary Dennis, or if it is, it was not a mark left by John Freshwater.” When asked to clarify, Daubenmire at first denied he was accusing the Dennis family of lying. Then he accused them of being in it for money. Then he wanted to know if I was a Christian. In short, Freshwater and his supporters have done everything but accept pers…

Sometimes Salvation Looks Like Rage: An Open Letter to “Non-denominational” Churches

By Yazmine Nichols

…ts cease, and the friendships end (scriptures such as Matthew 5:30; Matthew 18:15-17; and 1 Corinthians 5:1-13 are usually cited as reasons for “radical” acts of amputation). But how are we defining what is radical? Are we only radical when it comes to sexual sin? Are we radical in our love for the poor? Throughout the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, God commands the people to take care of the neighbor. The neighbor is the prostitute, the wido…

What Liberals Want: A Response to Susan Thistlethwaite

By Frances Kissling

…. And so Thistlethwaite holds forth in “On Faith” but does not pick up the phone and call Peter. And Peter in turn rails against Wallis who in turn ignores everyone he does not think is more powerful than he (there I just did it; I was nasty). Thistlethwaite suggests that the differences are actually about strategy. Liberals demand complete agreement on all issues to work with others on one issue. Progressives want to reach out to moderates and ev…

The Real Mormon Moment

By Joanna Brooks

…courts for more than a decade. We used the internet to regroup and grow in numbers. The Church even developed its own web-based resources to acknowledge and address its own controversies—historic and contemporary. This, we thought, was a good sign. A sign that might not need to fear losing our membership, our place, in a cherished tradition, just for having and voicing questions, doubts, and differences. We told ourselves to not to be afraid. And…

Pro- and Anti-Muslim Sentiment in Gainesville

By Julie Ingersoll

…ity is promoting a series of events that began on September 8. On September 11, the Gainesville Muslim Initiative will sponsor a free meal and a blood drive in the center of town and then an evening program featuring a variety of religious and community leaders. Muslim leaders are asking their followers to ignore what they are calling the “Dove Outreach not-a-church” and its “not-a-pastor,” whether he goes forward with his plan to burn Qur’ans or…

Are All Religious Experiences Reducible to 16 Desires?

By Andrew Aghapour

…over with the reduced list, repeating the process until we came up with the 16 desires. From that 16, we can generate almost any goal. Your model offers some new conceptual resources, particularly for thinking about how people’s “strong” and “weak” strivings inform how they participate in religion. The 16 desires are shared by everybody. We all want the same things from life. We would all rather understand than be confused. We would all rather be…

Secularist Activists Are Being Murdered in Bangladesh: An Ongoing Crisis Causes Many to Flee

By Michael De Dora

…duced books by young freethinkers; by late 2015, they had published roughly 1,000 books. “The slogan of my organization was ‘To Inspire,’” Tutul told me in an email. “Shuddhashar played an important role of trying to develop Bangladesh as a secular country culturally and socially.” Tutul had received death threats and informed the police of these threats. “I did [go to police] but instead of helping they told me that Bangladesh is not a perfect pl…

Recovering From Rejection: The Second Coming of Ted Haggard

By Wendy Norris

…the Earth.” The cracker barrel-styled reading of Acts—and of I Corinthians 13 at the prayer meeting the week before where 150 people reportedly swarmed his house—are emblematic of Pastor Ted’s uncanny, Zelig-like talent for reflecting the emerging Christian Right zeitgeist of the moment. In the mid-1980s, the so-called Charismatic and Pentecostal “shift in gravity” from the Deep South westward had much less to do with a random vision to build a c…