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How the COVID-19 Pandemic May Permanently Change Our ‘Good Death’ Narrative

By Cody J. Sanders

…pandemic that will rupture our every notion of the Good Death. There are a number of practitioners who will inform this collective imagination in the coming days: imams, rabbis, pastors, and priests, hospital chaplains and funeral directors, home funeral guides and death midwives. But―and this needs emphasis―families also hold wisdom that should become central to the deathcare and funerary practice we institute in the coming days. Change in practi…

A Rationalist’s Ghost Story

By Gary Jansen

…that happened over a twelve month period in my family’s life (as well as a number of flashbacks from when I was a young boy). In addition, there were a number of things I didn’t get the chance to explore for a very practical reason: I had a deadline. Working in publishing I’m very conscious about how important deadlines are. Writers need to make those deadlines and because I worked in the industry I wanted to be respectful about that. There were a…

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

By Elizabeth Drescher

…sts that most Nones see moral efforts to “concentrate on the fate of this world” as primarily secular undertakings, however much it is surely possible to do so without a religiously informed worldview. At the end of the day, that is, it is no less inappropriate for atheists (or, one atheist, though another one takes the same route through the Pew data here) to suggest that all of the religiously unaffiliated are fellow unbelievers than it is for a…

Data-Mining The Denominations: The Southern Baptists in Four Charts

By Daniel Schultz

…se members. In 2013, the SBC claimed 15,735,640 members, and in 2014, that number fell by 236,467 to 15,499,173—that’s a 1.5 percent decline. However, on this stat alone, the claim could be made that churches are simply clearing out the cobwebs and tidying up their membership rolls so their numbers more accurately reflect their active members. The problem is, membership isn’t alone in its decline—it’s joined by baptisms and weekly worship attendan…

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…

To Be Queer, Gifted, and Black: A Conversation with Theologian Pamela Lightsey

By Nyasha Junior

…that love and inspire you to do the work against social injustice in our world. What new projects are you working on? That’s a good question. I often lay in bed thinking about the research I want to continue to do. In my womanist research, I’m still trying to pull out what it means to be black and LGBTQ in the world today. I’m really curious as to how faith impacts the LGBTQ community to do social justice work. How does your faith influence your…

The Problem with AMC’s Sci-Fi Hit Humans

By Andrew Aghapour

…animals aren’t always the best shape for tasks, either. Hotels around the world are buying room service robots that happen to resemble floating trashcans. In our own world we’re also seeing white-collar jobs outsourced to intelligent machines. Instead of being shaped like humans, however, ours are shaped like computers. In Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford details a number of white-collar careers that have been threatened, or outright replaced, by c…

Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, and Pro-Home Birth

By Katherine Don

…professor of medical anthropology at Oregon State University. The growing number of women seeking a secular midwife has created a gap in care, however. In some areas the preponderance of Christian midwifery, in tandem with restrictive laws, can make it difficult for secular women to locate a well-matched midwife. Anna Waterland-Dykstra, a nurse and director of community options at the Spearfish Family Planning clinic of the South Dakota Departmen…

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…

Trump’s Pathological Devotion to Border Walls Isn’t Political, It’s Theological

By Alana Massey

…ave only carried so many bullets with him. Americans knew how to watch the number of reported casualties go up, but we lost our collective minds when we watched the number of confirmed active shooters in Paris go up. The images coming out of Paris in the immediate term were of a city devoured by chaos and fear rather than the stillness of carnage, more terrifying for their uncertainty. There was a brief lull in the digital noise when an official g…