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

By Daniel Schultz

…ly 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 attendance. Whoops. If anything, the analysis quoted above minimizes the problem. To understand why, you need to know something about geography. In short, they call it the Southern Baptist Convention for a reason. The church…

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

…r movement? The Black Lives Matter movement as I have experienced it has a number of queer black women on the ground doing the work. It also has trans women and trans men on the ground doing the work. They are part of the leadership. As you know the Black Lives Matter movement is a “leaderful” movement, and that is to say that not one or two persons are in charge of any action but that the movement itself very beautifully recognizes and utilizes t…

The Problem with AMC’s Sci-Fi Hit Humans

By Andrew Aghapour

…ater quality near you, which makes sense since swans are well designed for floating along lakes. Visit Japan’s first robot-staffed hotel, and you’ll interact with a number of theroids, including a robotic dinosaur. If the dinosaur accidentally hurts you, and you’re elderly, you might be taken care of by a bear. This cuddle bot is a patch of interactive fur, in case that’s your thing. Of course animals aren’t always the best shape for tasks, either…

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

By Katherine Don

…he topic of abortion until she realized she was part of a community with a number of conservative religious midwives and doulas who do not believe that abortion should be legal. “I realized the silence on abortion wasn’t about agreement, but dissention,” Pérez says. That Prentice and Pérez both use the word “choice” when discussing childbirth care can be confusing, until one realizes that, in this context, choice refers to a woman’s right to safe…

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

…. Terrible,” he said at a rally in Beaumont. It was noted that the 250,000 number was seemingly pulled from thin air, a ghastly specter of invasion at a scale larger than most of our cities. There were later comments about poisonous Skittles made by one of his idiotic children. *** Consider the travel ban clearly targeting Muslim-majority countries (and notably several majority black countries), the pardoning of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the ongoing…

Cafeteria Cockroaches and Synagogue-State Relations in Israel

By Shalom Goldman

…d the nation’s largest kosher plant, Agriprocessors, Inc. was forced to reevaluate its values and standards in order to retain its kosher certification. In the raid hundreds of undocumented illegal workers were arrested and cruel animal-handling practices were exposed. As a direct result, “ethically kosher” certification is now offered by Conservative and Modern Orthodox Jews, a certification that includes awareness of fair labor practices and avo…

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

By The Editors

…l to all those who, free themselves, speak out in our support. There are a vast number, I know. I know that a huge number of Orthodox people are standing up for us. They are praying for us outside the courtroom, for the members of Pussy Riot who are incarcerated. We’ve seen the little booklets Orthodox people are handing out with prayers for those in prison. This shows that there isn’t a unified social group of Orthodox believers as the prosecutio…

Will Pope’s African Tour Change Attitudes on Divorce and LGBTQ Among African Catholics?

By Kaya Oakes

…attributable to higher fertility rates in African countries, but it also reflects the church’s success in missionary efforts. And where there are a decreasing number of vocations to the priesthood in Europe, where vocations have declined by 23%, African vocations have increased by 131%. In African countries where birth rates are much higher than they are in Europe and North America, family issues often come to the forefront of Catholic lives. The…