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Let’s Get Lost: Mapping Religion in the 21st Century

By Spencer Dew

…activity, mosques and refugees” on his website, describing the data contained with only one word: “disturbing.” The first map (as compiled by Salatomatic, an Islamic guide to mosques) compiled the number of mosques per state, while the second, using U.S. Department of State data, charts the number of refugees arriving in each state (from October 2014-July 2015), and the third offers “a compilation of Islamic terror activity by state” pairing the…

Demonized and Demonizing No More.

By Joanna Brooks

…myself imagining what an atheist ethic of hospitality might look like. Or neighborliness. Yes. Neighborliness and hospitality are crucial components or concepts in Judeo-Christian religiosity, but they’re also humanist moral concepts. What is shifting that may be allowing a new, less defensive presentation of atheism to emerge? The atheist community still exists on the margins even in conversations about faith and values. The spaces where we are…

“As Orthodox As They Come”: A Backstage Conversation With Rob Bell

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…ramshackle group of people around the table. They put out some bread and wine. One of them says, “Okay, before we take the bread and wine, have the meal, does everybody have their rent paid? All of the single moms got the help they need?” And then your friend, at the end of the evening—as you’ve seen, these people from all across, take care of each other—your friend might say to you, “So who’s making a better world, Caesar or Jesus?” I just love i…

‘Heretics’ or ‘Atheists’? A Response

By Rachel Ozanne

…hen I recognized that I no longer agreed with several of the fundamental tenets of Christianity, I knew that I didn’t belong in my church community anymore—particularly because the church I grew up in emphasized strict adherence to its doctrine. In short, I became a nonbeliever because I took very seriously Christianity and its truth claims, not because I found them laughable. Given that many people currently understand the term atheist to mean, a…

What do the January 6 Commission, Covid Deaths and Gun Massacres All Have in Common? God’s Chosen

By John Stoehr

…political concept that God divided the world between the elected and the unelected, that is, between His chosen and everyone else deserving of eternal damnation. (They deserve what’s coming to them, in other words.) For the chosen, anything is possible. For God’s enemies, God’s law. All politics, all historical struggle over power and limited resources, can be seen through a lens in which everything begins with the chosen and ends with the chosen…

Competing Visions of Family & Freedom at UN; Methodists Try to Avoid Schism on Sexuality; Catholic Cardinal Denounces LGBT ‘Demonic Ideology’; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ts to accept their LGBT children. Laura Chubb at Gay Star News says it is one of a number of initiatives within the Asian community in North America “that seek to destigmatize LGBT issues and foster greater understanding between Asian parents and their LGBT children.” The campaign includes television ads on cable networks in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and Tagalog. The group’s director, Glenn Magpantay: For ge…

The Wrong Emperor: Why Ralph Reed’s New Pro-Trump Book Distorts the Bible to Cast the President as Tiberius

By Tony Keddie

…a beginning around 59 CE) leave no doubt that the emperor in question is none other than Nero (r. 54–68 CE). Later ancient Christian texts such as the Correspondence of Paul and Seneca, the Acts of Peter and Paul, and the Martyrdom of Paul all dramatize aspects of Paul’s encounter with Nero. Did Reed, one of the noisiest Bible-thumpers in Trump’s evangelical ensemble, mix up his emperors? Not a chance. Reed had obvious motives for presenting Paul’…

Elisabeth Elliot (1926-2015) and the Rise of Extreme Evangelicalism

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…y emerged at the center of the wave of these movements. As global capitalism began to make middle-class life more and more comfortable, something was needed shake people out of their settled religious ways. Human effort, to the point of imperilment of one’s own body, was required for someone to become a modern day saint. Elliot stirred many, as she told about the extreme measures the mission field required. Being a missionary—bringing the message…

By The Numbers: Jeb Opposes Francis on Climate Change at His Peril

By Daniel Schultz

…berals, of course, but they’re not going to vote for Jeb anyway. There is one number Bush might want to worry about, though: 85. That’s the percent of Hispanic Catholics who think climate change is a real problem: For a guy who’s been touting his potential to draw Spanish-speaking voters into the Republican fold, this is a sticky situation. Hispanic Catholics, as it turns out, actually care about the environment, and so does the first pope from La…

Episcopal Conference Lives Up to Episcopal Jokes

By Julie Ingersoll

…voted on had to do with something about priests’ retirement,” and he abstained on that one. This same friend told me a couple of years ago, at what seemed like the height of the battling, that it was all not such a big deal, that the number of dissidents was actually quite small and that he thought his church would be better off once they were gone. Indeed, according to Wikipedia there are over 7,000 Episcopal congregations in the US with over…