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Response to Daniel Philpott: the Politics of Religious Freedom

By Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

…sted in promoting religious freedom). It is, rather, an inescapably context-bound, polyvalent concept unfolding within divergent histories in differing political orders. This realization has led us to pose a number of crucial questions to those engaged in the promotion of religious freedom as a stable and singular human right. These questions, explored in detail in the PoRF volume and our other publications, and underlying my own public interventi…

Conservative Republican Muslim Condemns Fox Report on Congressional Staffers as “Anti-Muslim Bigotry”

By Sarah Posner

…Americans getting involved in public policy. They compile that into a guilt-by-association Powerpoint and then shop it to reporters.” These individuals include, said Khan, Frank Gaffney, who issues baseless warnings to members of Congress about “creeping shari’ah;” Paul Sperry, co-author of the book Muslim Mafia, which claimed that the Council on American Islamic Relations had infiltrated Capitol Hill by placing interns as spies; Kenneth Timmerman…

Religious Leaders Need ‘Empty the Pews’ Which Chronicles the Darker Side of the ‘Nones’ Phenomenon

By Kaya Oakes

…ited world view. These often begin with the person remembering the breaking-point moment, then explain how the individual was brought up in a family with strict religious beliefs, followed by a description of the person’s post-faith life. This is certainly not to say that these stories aren’t important or moving, it’s simply to point out that those looking for patterns in the stories of Nones or post-religious adults might look closely at why such…

Post-Election, “Is The Black Church Dead?” Redux

By Anthea Butler

…lack genocide,” and gay marriage. If the 2010 election is a preliminary tea-leaf-reading to 2012, then President Obama has a lot to think about in terms of re-mobilizing the strong African- American voter base that he enjoyed in 2008. Part of that base — the old guard “black church” coalition — is not as strong as it could be. Republicans have learned to mobilize their “affinity groups” but black churches do not have the same strong community and…

Magic in the Air: How Intellectuals Invented the Myth of a Mythless Society

By Jason Josephson Storm

…more cognitive dissonance rather than less.” What’s the most important take-home message for readers? The story of disenchantment we have told ourselves is a myth. We tend to the think of the “West” as disenchanted. But the majority of people in Europe and America believe in magic or spirits today, and it appears that they did so at the high point of so-called “modernity.” And contrary to what you might think, higher education levels do not direct…

Trump the Totem: Like Other Fascist Leaders, Trump has Turned from Man to Symbol — And That’s the Danger

By Robert P. Jones

…ce (CPAC), clad in a coat and tie paired with American flag shorts and flip-flops, holding the US Constitution in one hand and a magic wand in the other. At the individual level, a plethora of hats, t-shirts, bumper stickers, digital art (often featuring Jesus and Trump), tattoos, and, of course, Trump’s “God Bless the USA”-branded Bible flooded into public spaces. This explosion of symbolic material was the result of the energy unleashed by the B…

Death Without Religion

By Gordon Haber

…es too much of the profit motive. “The transplant industry is a $20-billion-per-year business,” he reminds us. Well, so is weight loss and self-storage. Teresi does raise some troubling points about the “lowly status of the organ donor.” The District of Columbia, for example, allows doctors to “pre-harvest” organs without donor cards or family consent. Thus tourists who have the misfortune of dying in D.C. can end up as spare parts. Ultimately, th…

RD10Q: The Fight Against Feminism

By Kathryn Joyce

…ive of the pharmacists’ movement, though, I came across a surprisingly well-organized coalition of evangelical anti-contraception groups, some of whom were arguing that Christians should leave their family size and spacing in the hands of God. As I began to read a number of books that shaped the community and conviction, particularly early movement texts like Mary Pride’s The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality, and Rick and Jan Hess’ Full…

New Poll: Evangelicals Backing Trump

By Daniel Schultz

…up even higher totals. In some ways, you could see 2016 as the Evangelicals-vs.-Nones election. The two groups will approach rough parity as Sanders voters get behind Clinton, however grudgingly. Because the Nones are somewhat more evenly distributed across the nation than evangelicals, a stalemate favors Clinton. It does Trump no good to ring up a super-majority in Mississippi when Clinton can flip North Carolina, for example. My colleague Neil J…

Blood and Politics — Christian White Nationalism in the Age of Obama

By Bill Berkowitz

…ombination of factors. First, through the slow accretion of organizing week-in, week-out events: Klan rallies, Bible camps, survivalist and gun shows, White-power music concerts, etc., many of which are described in my book. Second, when David Duke won a majority of White votes while running in two Louisiana statewide elections in 1990 and 1991, he uncovered a middle-American constituency that supported at least a portion of his national socialist…