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The Fourth of July Is Not America’s Birthday

By Peter Laarman

…e Roundhead” as a young lawyer. Much later, in 1786, Adams made a special pilgrimage to key English Civil War battlefields, referring to them as “holy ground.” Looking back at the American Revolution during that same period, Adams recalled that “if Parliament could tax us, they could establish the Church of England with all of its creeds, articles, tests, ceremonies, and titles, and prevent all other churches as conventicles and schism shops.” In…

The Catholic Apocalypse Cometh

By Patricia Miller

…ministration was “unfriendly to religion” more than doubled from 17 percent to 36 percent between 2009 and 2014. And it was white Catholics who were overwhelmingly in favor of Trump—60 percent versus 37 percent for Clinton, a stunning gap of 23 points. While Clinton did win Hispanic Catholics by a similar wide margin—67 to 26—there simply weren’t enough Hispanic Catholics to make up the difference. It appears the white Catholic apocalypse cometh f…

The Catholic-Evangelical (Non-)Coalition

By Patricia Miller

…was morally wrong, which was slightly higher than general opinion (49%), while three-quarters of white Evangelicals said it was wrong. Similarly, Smith found that by the early 1980s Catholics were “more liberal than Protestants on approving of premarital sex and of sex education.” On the newer issue of same-sex marriage, Catholic opinion has tended to be slightly more favorable than the population as a whole and way more favorable than Evangelical…

The World is (Always) About to End, No Zombies Required

By Kelly J. Murphy

…ngs I strived (successfully or not) to teach. After all, what happened to William Miller? Hal Lindsay? David Koresh? Harold Camping? Their followers? Each tried to read the books of the Bible—including Revelation—in order to predict a coming apocalyptic end. Each—some of them multiple times—were wrong about their predictions. Part of the reason that these endless predictions were wrong was because they weren’t asking the right kind of questions ab…

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

By Anthea Butler

…to be tested by the Tea Party’s mobilization, voter apathy, and a growing number of conservative African-American candidates. A record number of black Republicans ran in this midterm election (some had already lost their primaries), and two are heading to Congress. Tim Scott will be the first African-American Republican to represent South Carolina in Congress since Reconstruction. (He beat out Strom Thurmond’s son in the primaries.) Iraq war vete…

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

By Sarah Posner

…f Muslims and Muslim-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 spi…

‘Imagine Better’: Can Harry Potter Change the World?

By B. Howell Belser

…own hands, hijacking culture for their own purposes… fans are acquiring skills and building a grassroots infrastructure for sharing their perspectives on the world.” In particular, the HPA combines the reach of social networking, the innovation of digital media, and the power of imagination and storytelling to inspire young people to care about the world and to be engaged in its development. In her 2008 Harvard commencement speech, Rowling remind…

How to Make Nones and Lose Money: Study Shows Cost of Catholic Sex Abuse Scandals

By Kaya Oakes

…ious “made me vote with my feet” and leave the church for good. However, Emily still feels a sense of solidarity with Catholicism. “I don’t see myself in the church,” she adds, “but with people from the church.” Elizabeth told me that discovering a family member had been abused by a clergy member “marked me with a certain set of stories.” While she identifies as Christian, she does not attend any organized form of worship. Kyle, who was in seminar…

New Report: Angels & Aliens in Texas Schools

By Mark A. Chancey

…’s final examination summarized Genesis’ primordial history thusly: “Meanwhile God was fulfilling his promise to bring a savior by developing a godly line of people through Seth, from whom came Noah and his blessed son Shem.” Some courses adopted wholesale a Christian theology of supersession, which holds that Christians have replaced Jews as God’s people. Note the first-person language and Sunday School tone in a worksheet on the New Testament bo…

“Can You Tell Me Who The Villains Are?”: Rock and Religion, Irish-Style

By Lisa Bitel

…now! In 1996, Moran and Carton tackled the subject of abortion, which is still illegal in Ireland. They called their moving, genuinely feminist plea for legalization “Every Day.” It’s about young women taking the boat to England to seek operations: Far from small town eyes she floats Across the Irish Sea She’s the girl you know from down the road She’s your one from out the other side… She’s wondering what they’re thinking Do they know what’s goin…