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Waiting for Lightning to Strike: A Wobbly Agnostic among the Atheists

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…t?” he asked. Arguably the most gifted speaker, Jamila Bey, explains why African Americans are not represented in our midst, both at the conference and in the atheist community at large. The black church is a sanctuary—it’s rejecting a thug culture. It’s fun. She sings, “This little light of mine,” and claps. “It’s a place of music, food, and fashion.” Black women who leave the church are socially ostracized. But she explains black men are not in…

The Sacred and the Dead: The Trouble with Sugar Magnolia

By Kaya Oakes

…gh years of conversations, we made it, song by song, through the entire American Beauty album. Steve passed away in June of this year. That was 15 years after our “Ripple” conversation, and today, there are hundreds of Dead songs on my phone and dozens of live recordings in playlists, even a nod when I see a Deadhead sticker on a car. I am a relapsed Catholic, and thanks to my friend, I am also a repentant Deadhead. Dear Jesus, let me confess: I e…

More Mixed Signals from Pope Francis; Church of England Wrestles with Rifts; Faith Groups Lobby Pro & Con on Irish Referendum; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…to consider the global Anglican Communion – which includes some anti-gay African Churches. The document notes: “Balancing the Church of England’s responsibilities to the people of the parishes and local communities it serves, and its historical position within the global Anglican Communion, introduces complex and morally challenging tensions – and the issue of sexuality has become a focal point on which future relationships across the whole Commun…

Wichita, the Sequel: A Clinic Reopens at Ground Zero in America’s Fight over Abortion

By Kathryn Joyce

…abortion clinics, particularly Dr. Tiller’s, and were arrested in massive numbers. One local activist told me that nearly 25 anti-abortion groups had been birthed during the Summer of Mercy, some of which are still active. The protests so shaped the city that, 22 years later, both sides recall the fight vividly. Faced with what was initially meant to be a week of protests, Wichita officials requested that the clinic close, and Dr. Tiller complied…

Death in the Desert: Riding With the Samaritans

By Lauri Lebo

…“the push-pull factor.” Lack of job opportunities in Mexico and Central America pushes migrants from their homes. They are pulled to the U.S. because of demand for cheap labor. One of the major pushes came in the ’90s with the passage of NAFTA, which opened the door to many agri-businesses to move farms down to Mexico, putting small farmers out of business. And while the number of undocumented border crossers is down, Brother David says, it will b…

Who’s to Blame for BP?

By David True

…those of us whose lifestyles are dependent upon a ‘religious’ devotion to cheap oil. The deepest irony of all is that BP, along with the other oil companies, has come to function as a god. The truth, buried beneath all the oil and punditry, is that our devotion to this false god has led to the suffering of innocents, in the oceans and beaches, in the marshes and ecosystems, and in our communities. We have been slow, too slow by far, to realize th…

Does War Make Sense? Science and Religion on the Battlefield

By Nathan Schneider

…very difficult to extract should the politicians ever want to. Already outnumbering the regular soldiers deployed in Iraq, this highly adaptable force blurs the lines between business and warfare, military and civilian. Contractors have taken part in human trafficking, accounting fraud, and murderous outbursts that usually escape prosecution. In place of religious fundamentalism, their way of warfare follows another kind of science: that of Ameri…

Modernity’s Fraternity: What Dan Brown Gets Right

By Samuel Biagetti

…nce, even to the point of fallacy. At one point Langdon is rescued by an African-American man who is a thirty-third degree Mason of the Scottish Rite and a lodge brother of Peter Solomon, which is highly unlikely. American Freemasonry, including the Scottish Rite, has always been unofficially segregated. In the 1780s, Prince Hall, a black Bostonian, was initiated by some Irish soldiers. The white lodges in Boston refused to accept him, so he forme…

The Economy is Racism: Ending Race-Based Economic Violence is the Real Challenge of This Moment

By Peter Laarman

…cing the coerced labor and/or bottomless misery experienced routinely by African Americans and by the fear that African Americans might actually gain ground, as Carol Anderson brilliantly documents. This nexus becomes blindingly obvious at certain junctures (e.g. 1863’s explosion of anti-Black violence from Irish workers who saw both enslaved people and free people of color as their economic competitors). But the nexus is always there. Not for not…

Updated: My Work on Confederate Monuments Leaves This Christian Ethicist Distrustful of Calls for Reconciliation and Healing

By Ryan Andrew Newson

…cause of “healing.” That is, Confederate monuments stood as trophies of a cheap reconciliation where white people of “both sides” of the war could celebrate each other’s mutual valor. Perhaps they would never agree on who was in the wrong, but for the good of the nation, (white) Americans should put their feelings of ill-will behind them. This act of “reunion” was often symbolically performed by veterans meeting on a battlefield and shaking hands…