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‘Murder Among the Mormons,’ Latest True Crime Doc From Netflix, Highlights Issues of Faith, Skepticism, and Authenticity

By Benjamin E. Park

…ve of 1983, the anti-Mormon film The God Makers debuted before 4,000 Christians in Southern California, and quickly screened across the rest of the nation. In the political sphere, the church’s staunch opposition to the ERA resulted in tremendous backlash from progressive communities; their excommunication of Sonia Johnson, a public proponent of the amendment, received national attention. Mormonism faced new pressure from all sides. The Hofmann st…

Religion vs. Science: America’s Perilous Fight

By Edward J. Larson

…teaching of evolution in public schools—as they have in Kansas, Pennsylvania, and a number of other sites—or when the government imposes religiously inspired limits on stem-cell research or other scientific activities, conflict can ensue. To be sure, most evolutionary biologists either ignore religion or find it compatible with their science, but a few of them—ardent in their scientism and evangelical regarding its social implications—turn their…

Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…n in Arkansas. In following the Ray story over the past few months, I am amazed at the number of non-Indian sweat lodge experts the media has been able to locate. Few Indians if any have been interviewed; and even decidedly liberal MSNBC featured Court TV anchor Ashleigh Banfield as their expert on the sweat lodge. Banfield’s expertise, admitted on air, was one sweat experience with her stepbrother or brother-in-law (she wasn’t sure how he was rel…

The Messiah is Not Coming

By Peter Laarman

…nsated work for working poverty or worse, and concomitant big jumps in the number of people losing health care coverage. The thing is—and labor market specialists all concur—these blows are no longer cyclical phenomena that will be reversed once “the economy” really starts humming. “The economy,” in the way that mainstream economists gauge it, and the economic well-being of everyday people has parted company for good. Political life: Here the rapi…

Conservative Evangelical Eric Metaxas, Doing Twitter Theology, Claims ‘Jesus Was White’

By Eric Vanden Eykel

…another user pointed out that “Jesus likely looked like modern day Palestinians-not Scandinavian,” Metaxas responded: “So it’s about how you look? About the actual color of your skin? So most Jews today are ‘white’ & have ‘white privilege’ but some don’t? Who decides? Are Stephen Spielberg & Woody Allen not white? My point is that these identities only seem to apply when woke people say they do.” Metaxas, making very little sense here, is clearly…

It’s The Apocalypse, Stupid: Understanding Christian Opposition to Obamacare, Civil Rights, New Deal and More

By Daniel Silliman

…on a verse in Psalms that talks about a great leader coming out of Abyssinia or Ethiopia. There was a sense in which Jesus’s return was the coming of a black liberator. White fundamentalists and evangelicals were very clear that they didn’t want anything to do with African Americans for most of the twentieth century. They didn’t see African Americans as able to contribute to their movement. The racial assumptions were built into who evangelicals…

Obama’s Gay Marriage Support Shocks Black Church

By Anthea Butler

…pport from African Americans in and outside of the church for same-sex marriage. Media outlets portrayed the recent North Carolina vote on Amendment 1 as monolithic, though many in the African-American church community opposed it. Take Rev. William Barber, head of the North Carolina NAACP, who preached a powerful message against Amendment 1, equating Americans’ use of the Bible to oppose same-sex marriage today with the defense of slavery and mili…

Growing Up Gay in 666: Fred Phelps in Retrospect

By Scott Blaine Swenson

…d to justify his inner rage, mask his inner fear, and by picking controversial social issues, justify his violence,” Schlingensiepen says. As for teens in Topeka coming to terms with their sexuality in the shadow of Phelps, Schlingensiepen says, “All teens are essentially insecure, afraid of not being accepted by peers. Phelps represents nothing more than that generalized fear.” Coming to terms with that fact for myself, realizing that my childish…

Religious Leaders On Anti-Muslim Frenzy: “Silence Is Not An Option”

By Sarah Posner

…television] but these are people who have no expertise, no academic credentials, no true institutional representation.” Mattson — singling out television — said the media ignores available resources that could provide accurate depictions of Islam, and “there needs to be more of a partnership between the people who have the accurate information and those who are lifting up who is an expert on Islam in the general media.” That, of course, holds out…

Elaine Howard Ecklund Wants to Dispel Myths Surrounding Religious Resistance to Science

By Sammy Feldblum

…’re talking to and what you mean by science. We surveyed evangelical Christians and mainline Christians like Episcopals and Presbyterians. We also surveyed members of non-Christian religions—Jews, Muslims, and Hindus—and members of historically black Christian denominations. And Latinos, and all range of Catholics. In the more conservative faith traditions—evangelicals and Orthodox Jews, for example—there is this sense that if science appears to b…