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Elephant Orphans and Ecological Spiritualities: An Earth Day Reflection

By Jacob J. Erickson

…ysteries of these creatures. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. A large number of the “spiritual but not religious” crowd in the West are self-proclaimed ecologists or naturalists. A large number of atheists and agnostics are deeply passionate about ecological ethics, or how we might be more “in tune” with nature. Culturally, they become fascinated in the personalities of cats and cat videos, the companionship of dogs who offer a kind of faithf…

Pussy Riot Members Sentenced to 2 Years for Offending Russian Orthodox Church

By The Editors

…weep. We’ve forgotten how to cry. At our punk concerts we used to shout as best we could about the iniquities of the authorities and now we’ve been robbed of our voice. This whole trial refuses to hear us and I mean hear us, which involves understanding and, moreover, thinking. I think every individual wants to attain wisdom, to be a philosopher, not just people who happen to have studied philosophy. That’s nothing. Formal education is nothing in…

Hell, in Rob Bell’s Own Words: State of Belief Radio

By The Editors

…and I’ll do an event, and the level of electricity, of excitement, and the number of people who say: “I always had these questions, I always wondered about this, I always knew there was another way to understanding this…” It’s really… It blows me away. Every night, at one of these events, I just… Wow. What an amazing thing to be a part of. [WG]: Tell us, what has been your favorite comment from a reader, or, one or two of your favorite comments. […

None Means None (Not Atheist, Agnostic, Unbeliever…)

By Elizabeth Drescher

…sticism. Religion News Service regrets the inaccuracy.” Well, okay. Take a number if you’d like to complain about my own writerly inaccuracies. Still, the trouble with the piece goes beyond an inaccurate (though indisputably grabby) headline. Reporter Kimberly Winston is careful to point out that the Pew report authors have noted “that [the religiously unaffiliated] are by no means homogeneous.” She goes on to highlight Pew researchers’ noting of…

Can Mormon Glenn Beck Unite the Christian Right?

By Kathryn Joyce

…ched at the end of this summer, Kreeft’s larger point has resonated with a number of religious leaders. Echoing Pope John Paul II’s prediction that third millennium could be marked by a unified Christianity, Kreeft predicted: “The age of religious wars is ending; the age of religious war is beginning: A war of all religions against none.” Ultimately, the WCF doesn’t draw the numbers of other global alliances like the World Social Forum. In 2007, f…

Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

By Lisa Miller

…good and we have things in abundance. Heaven, then, is an extension of the best of this life. When ideas of heaven were first cohering, life for believers was not at all good. The Jews who first conceived of heaven as we know it today were under assault, literally, from their Greek rulers. Christians, at the beginning, were a marginal band, derided by the pagan majority. Islam was established in a uniquely inhospitable part of the world by people…

Newsweek’s Strange Faces of the Christian Right List

By Sarah Posner

…ren’t associated with the Christian right. Ten is a pretty small number to best represent a movement Newsweek describes as “changing and growing more diffuse, even as it remains a potent force in American politics.” While some of the picks seem obvious (Marjorie Dannenfelser of the anti-choice group Susan B. Anthony List, or Jim Daly, the new head of Focus on the Family, or Robert George mastermind of the Manhattan Declaration) legal scholar Melis…

To Get Through This Time We’ll Have to Shred the ‘Racial Contract’ and Choose Solidarity Over Sacrifice

By Christophe D Ringer

…ers to reopen the economy. Our ugly history of social Darwinism is perhaps best exemplified—or revealed—by the Tennessee protester who famously brandished a sign reading, “Sacrifice the weak, Re-open TN.” The now former chairperson of the planning commission in Antioch, California suggested letting the virus run its course to kill the weak, elderly and homeless in order to relieve health care and Social Security costs. These perspectives are not o…

Church=State in Putin’s Orthodox Empire?; Evangelical-Orthodox Anti-Gay Alliance; Malaysian Court Protects Transwomen; Catholicism (Still) Declining in Latin America; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…f on social media. According to Gulf News, “Lawmakers, wary of the growing number of gays in the country, have been pushing for a crackdown, including the adoption of tougher immigration measures against expatriate homosexuals and their prompt deportation.” Egypt: ‘The Plight of Homosexuals in Egypt’ We reported last week on the prison sentences given to eight men arrested after a video of an unofficial same-sex wedding went viral. This week journ…

Conservative Christians Insist the Toxic Theology Portrayed in the Duggar Family Doc is ‘Fringe’ — But is it Really All That Different?

By Caroline Matas

…is as Christianity does The ongoing influence of Gothard’s theology might best be illustrated in the figure of Alex Harris, the son of Gregg Harris, one of the key architects of the U.S. homeschooling movement in the 1980s and the brother of Joshua Harris, whose 1997 book I Kissed Dating Goodbye made waves in American evangelical purity culture. Alex Harris—a lawyer who has clerked for both Justice Anthony Kennedy and then-Judge Neil Gorsuch—twee…