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The Great Cremation Debate

By David Marchese

…r in the United States. According to the Cremation Association of North America, the cremation rate rose from approximately fifteen percent of all deaths in 1985 to about a third as of 2006. And while solid numbers for Jewish cremation are lacking, anecdotal evidence suggests that the practice is firmly entrenched. A suburban Philadelphia cemetery owner estimates that cremations now total five percent of his business. The same percentage—this time…

Thank You Breitbart, For The Islam

By Haroon Moghul

…l approaches to the same problems. Allow me to explain. Many Muslims are African-American. A rising proportion are Mexican. Where do the boundaries between these groups lie? If “Muslim” is separate from African-American, does that mean Islam trumps (sic) blackness? What happens with Eastern European Muslims—who are, by any reasonable definition, white and (obviously) European? Are their “culture and politics” more like white, Christian, Italian-Am…

Closed-Door Conference in Poland Shows How US Conservative Christian Networks Export ‘Conversion Therapy’

By Antonia Gross and Rina Nikolaeva

…oyd Godfrey, a former Sex Addiction Therapist (he lost his license after a number of sexual harassment suits were filed) who likes to compare Homosexuality to Alcoholism (or, as he did some years ago, to Cannibalism); Carolyn Pela, a marriage therapist from Arizona, who lectured the audience in Warsaw on “break[ing] down the walls” of “same-sex attraction”; and Christopher Rosik, who claimed that the peer-reviewed, acknowledged science that reject…

Is LGBT-Muslim Clash Aiding Rise of Right in Europe?

By Peter Montgomery

…ecently vowed to deport foreigners who “campaign for homosexuality.” Pan Africa ILGA strongly denounced the arrests as part of a pattern of arbitrariness and abuse of power in Tanzania and other African countries. Indonesia: Government rejects most UN recommendations; ban on unmarried sex could snare tourists Human Rights Watch criticized the Indonesian government for accepting two vague pro-human-rights recommendations made by the UN Human Rights…

From Pastor to Harvard’s ‘Godless Church’ Planter

By Becky Garrison

…With a staff of six full-time and five part-time chaplains—including an African-American Southern Baptist and two fellows from the Netherlands—the HCH is far larger number than most college chaplaincies, with women constituting over half of the staff. Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein, executive director of HCH and author of the bestselling book Good Without God, says MacBain is the perfect person to lead this innovative new project to grow “Godless…

Presidential Debate: We Are All Socialists Now

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…bit, and you had to be paying attention to hear it. He said that priority number one in the face of the current crisis was achieving America’s energy independence. Offshore drilling was the cornerstone of that policy, “buying us time,” in his view, to develop alternative energy sources. That seemed to stray rather far from the question, to my ear. But the single new proposal we heard this evening was rolled out here, in the first five minutes, as…

The Religious Mourning of ‘Saint’ Kobe Bryant Continues

By Terry Shoemaker

…year’s All-Star game, one team wore Kobe’s number 24, while the other wore number 2, Gianna’s uniform number. The MVP award, given this year to Los Angeles Clippers’ star forward Kawhi Leonard, was renamed permanently for Kobe Bryant. Pregame and half-time shows centered on Kobe, his family, and his impact on the sport of basketball and society. The collective grief and bereavement displayed by fans and players alike not only demonstrate the power…

New Poll Finds “Growing Appetite” for Mixing Religion and Politics

By Sarah Posner

…of voters are interested in hearing them talk about their faith. While the number of Americans who believe it is important for members of Congress to have strong religious beliefs has remained steady since 2010—about 6-in-10, with even more significant majorities among Protestants and Catholics—this poll shows a growing number of Americans who want to hear candidates talk about their religion. On the Republican side, candidates could view this fin…

The Benedict Opt-Out: Why Christian Self-Isolation Won’t Work

By Kaya Oakes

…to help maintain faith in difficult circumstances, but, like an increasing number of younger Americans, she often finds friendship and spiritual kinship among “those who aren’t Catholic or even religious in any way.” The homeschooling parents I spoke to had a range of reasons for choosing to educate their own children. Most cited a poor quality of education in their local public schools, but others echoed some of Dreher’s ideas about withdrawal as…

Are Muslims Nuts?

By Haroon Moghul

…ns for incompatibilities or inherent opposition. I know a fair number of African Americans, Hispanics, and Muslims who once voted Republican. They no longer do—not because they disagree with the Republican Party, but because they feel it has no room for them. It seems opposed to their presence in America. A good number in the Muslim-majority world feel the same way about the place of Islam in the world: there is no room for it. It isn’t that these…