Religion Dispatches
…llion atheists in the U.S., a full 26% of the country. The most charitable number I could find was from Gallup, putting the number of Americans in 2014 who say they don’t believe in God at 11%. To make things frustratingly worse, other atheists have been calling Silverman out for falsely inflating the number of atheists for more than four years. And last year, I specifically asked Silverman if he would stop reporting the stats on “nones” as being…
Read More…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…
Read More
…drive to share his beliefs, to convert others so that he may believe in himself, is equally characteristic of a religion that is, after all, built to proselytize. But in recent years, at least, the most familiar aspect of the life that Domen has carved out for himself is the strangest one: namely, the way in which his religious, sexual, and personal concerns are inseparable from his politics. “God wired me for government and church,” he tells me….
Read More
…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…
Read More
…me people commented positively, but they were in the minority. David’s groomsmen were also accused of being gay. One of them felt compelled to come out via social media after the pressure. David’s family was harassed by neighbors and local hooligans. He hadn’t told his family we were getting married. They were not even aware he was gay. David’s sister called to make sure we knew that she knew and she supported us. She relayed that his mom was not…
Read More
…people are by intensity, measured with the simple hack of subtracting the number of people Strongly Opposed to same-sex marriage from the number Strongly In Favor. Not surprisingly, since the Unitarian-Universalists only had 6 percent opposed, their position on the chart hardly budged at all. Other groups traveled a little more. Mainline Baptists, for example, strongly disapprove just a little more than they strongly approve. Evangelical Baptists…
Read More
…researchers share the unsurprising finding that “young adults engage in a number of religious practices less often than do older Americans.” What they may mean to say is traditional religious practices: weekly attendance at religious services, weekly scripture reading, daily prayer, and weekly meditation. (My guess is as good as yours on the greater expected frequency of prayer in the survey.) The Pew survey design is problematic—and this is wher…
Read More
…t buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name… his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” (Revelation 13:16-18) In the early twentieth century, this prophecy became linked to American fears of a powerful federal government. A 1943 letter to the editor of the Pampa Daily News was representative of this growing resentment coupling conspiracy with apocalypticism: We should count it dishonorable for…
Read More
…reciated aspect of the wider trend is something called “religification.” A number of Christian right legal agencies have produced manuals for churches and related institutions, to rewrite such things as job descriptions to extend the legal definition of “ministry” in order to seek exemption from labor standards and civil rights laws, and to inoculate themselves against discrimination lawsuits. Much of this is based on the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court r…
Read More
…perilous and unbelievably chaotic. No one really knows how to drive, it seems, and the water buffalo and cows are outnumbered in the streets only by the small and fast-moving motorized rickshaws. So when I was taking a four-hour taxi ride from Delhi to Agra I had to have something to distract my attention from the harrowing video game-like scene out the front window. A friend who was riding with me handed me a book called What Makes You Not a Budd…
Read More