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The Next Big Religion Issue: Immigration

By Daniel Schultz

Judging by the number of items on the subject carried by Faith in Public Life’s news reel, immigration is the next item on the progressive faith agenda. Personally, I’d rather we kept an eye on financial reform as it shapes up in Congress, but nobody asks me. All the the churches are excited about immigration: you can’t go over to Sojourners without stumbling across at least one immigration-related story. Leaders of the Disciples of Christ and th…

“As Orthodox As They Come”: A Backstage Conversation With Rob Bell

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…re so fantastic—brought the idea that the whole thing is static. I think a number of people picked up over the past three hundred years that space is empty, we move things around in space, and there are levers and pulleys and buttons. I think for a number of people, atheism is simply the rejection of somebody sitting on a cloud somewhere with a beard who might intervene from time to time. I think quantum physics, the little I know, it just intuiti…

Episcopal Conference Lives Up to Episcopal Jokes

By Julie Ingersoll

…the height of the battling, that it was all not such a big deal, that the number of dissidents was actually quite small and that he thought his church would be better off once they were gone. Indeed, according to Wikipedia there are over 7,000 Episcopal congregations in the US with over 2 million members, though the significance of that number is unclear since, as the priest in the church where I was baptized once teased me: “when you’re baptiz…

Distant Churches and the Isolated Poor: Lessons from Katrina, Ten Years Later

By R. Drew Smith

…borhoods, sometimes experiencing significant attrition in their membership numbers and finances, and sometimes choosing to relocate altogether. Even institutionally resourceful congregations that remain in high-poverty neighborhoods have increasingly faced great difficulties in their efforts to connect culturally, interpersonally, and programmatically to their immediate neighborhoods. In a 2003 study of interactions between churches and impoverish…

Can The Religious Left Be Effective Again? Longer Answer: Quizás

By Daniel Schultz

…gh participation rates are increasing among these types of churches, they represent a small percentage of all churches. Fulton explains that a lot of this increase is due to the debates over immigration reform; but even factoring that in, Hispanic churches are becoming more politically active. The number of congregations might be few, but they may also be larger communities, representing a substantial number of people. In any case, the trend will…

The Suppression of Sin in Evangelical Abolitionism: The Wilberforce Problem

By Jonathan D. Fitzgerald

…56 percent of which are women and girls. A smaller, but still considerable number are victims of sex trafficking—essentially, forced prostitution. With increasing frequency, reports of sex trafficking rings in major U.S. cities appear in the media. In major hubs like Houston and New York City, stories about charges and convictions of homegrown trafficking cells shed light on just how widespread domestic trafficking is. Just this week, the website…

Is Abortion No Longer Significant for Evangelicals — or Has it Just Become Like Water?

By Bradley Onishi

…%). When Coney Barrett was nominated in September of 2020, Trump’s polling numbers among white evangelicals had dipped to a low of 55% in August 2020. However, once her nomination was made public that number rose to the normal average of 71%. Coney Barrett’s record on reproductive rights was a central issue in her confirmation hearings, as Anna North points out at Vox: Barrett, a Catholic and member of the religious group People of Praise, has als…

Was Ghana Anti-Gay Scare Just Politics?

By Warren Throckmorton

…ed “to get rid of these people in the society.” Some observers believe the number of sexual minorities may have been inflated in order to whip up opposition to homosexuality which could advance the standing of conservative politicians. Graham Knight, a British blogger living in Ghana, recently wrote that the claim of 8,000 sexual minorities has little support in fact. Knight concluded, in a blog post titled Did Ghana register 8000 homosexuals? The…

A Twisted Love Story: How American Evangelicals Helped Make Putin’s Russia and How Russia Became the Darling of the American Right

By Katherine Kelaidis

…ese Americans with no historical ties to Orthodoxy, became a majority in a number of Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States and brought with them their cultural baggage—most importantly the Culture Wars. The changes were obvious and immediate, both in traditional Orthodox countries and in the diaspora. Of course, Orthodoxy has never been gay-affirming (despite John Boswell’s eloquent but unsubstantiated claims) and abortion had been cause for…

How a Ruling for Masterpiece Cakeshop Could Embolden White Nationalists

By Sunnivie Brydum

…or even federal—protections aimed at combatting discrimination against any number of marginalized populations. “The cultural and political prominence of religious freedom as an American ideal draws people to it,” Wenger said. “The reason people appeal to it for all sorts of purposes is because it’s so culturally, politically, and legally powerful.” Indeed, as Wenger’s book documents in deep historical detail, the bedrock American principle has alr…