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Is Army’s New “Humanist” Designation Just Semantic Hooey?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…aplaincy for service members with non-religious beliefs and practices. The new faith code is significant in a number of ways. First, for Bradley and Humanist service members, it means that their existential disposition and associated practices are designated in their military records with language not shaped primarily in opposition to traditional religious designations. “‘Atheist’ says only what I’m not,” Bradley explained. “‘Humanist is what I am…

Religious Kids Are More Selfish: The Stickers Don’t Lie

By Michael Schulson

…sness, the metric for altruism, and the concept of world. Let’s take them one by one. Problem 1: “The Negative Association between Religiousness….” Scholars of religion are fond of explaining all the reasons that religion is really, really difficult to define. The more cynical among us might point out that, in a crowded job market, academics distinguish themselves by explaining why everyone else’s categories are wrong, meaning that religion schola…

Do iPads Cause Religious Experiences?

By Andrew Aghapour

…a neuroscientist of religion, but the managing director of Neurosense, a “next generation consumer research enterprise” that applies neuroscience to marketing. Riley’s documentary wasn’t the first to make such claims, and given the popularity of neuroscience it likely won’t be the last. However, as this new picture of the “old city” brain continues to replace the “skyscraper” brain of the twentieth century, something else has become increasingly…

Too Late for Apologies: Three Steps the U.S. Bishops Should Take to Prevent Another Sexual Abuse Scandal

By Grant Gallicho

…ux, France, and Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle. And did Pope Benedict XVI have to promote one of the two holdout bishops—Robert Vasa—to a larger diocese? Did he not realize the message that sends to U.S. Catholics, who are still struggling to understand why Cardinal Bernard Law remains on the Congregation for Bishops in Rome, helping to decide episcopal appointments worldwide? Cardinal Rigali also sits on that influential Vatican congr…

There’s Something Rotten in Ireland

By Haroon Moghul

…ry.) That the New York Times is reporting on the story indicates how much negative press has been generated; some of the postings are stunningly offensive—and the embassy might be better off looking more seriously into them. Certainly, they do not help the current Israeli government’s declining popularity in the eastern half of the West. More worryingly, the deliberate provocations seem to have emerged from the embassy’s public relations strategy…

And What of the Non-Jewish Jews?

By Shaul Magid

…ecently being “Jewish” was a liability and anti-semitism was palpable, the number of non-Jews today who identify as Jewish seems historically distinctive. We could, perhaps, point to the so-called “fearers of heaven,” an undocumented community of Hellenes in late antiquity who lived in large Jewish population centers, apparently lived partially as Jews, and had some status in the Jewish community. But today’s non-Jewish Jews aren’t identifying as…

False Saviors: Trump, Cruz, and the Gospel of the Quick Fix

By Marcia Pally

…etired Israeli Army Lieutenant Colonel just reminded me, “’Zap and we’re done’ never works. Causes more problems than you had to begin with. Politicians talk like that. Professionals never do because they have to deal with the interlocking complexities of the problem and the equally complex consequences of the solution.” Said another way, Trump and Cruz are false saviors. Quick fixes are not what saviors in the Abrahamic traditions teach. Even whe…

A Debate Rages in India Over Conversion, Secularism, and “Spiritual Violence”

By Murali Balaji

…articularly the Hindu activist groups who embrace the conflation of Indian-ness with Hindu-ness—the fear of a disappearing tradition is stoked primarily by demographics. Indian census numbers show that the percentage of those identifying as Hindus dipped below 80 percent for the first time. But while there is much talk about a rising Muslim population, the actual spikes have come among Christians, where the mass conversion of tribal groups and Dal…

Can the Catholic Church Survive Trump?

By Patricia Miller

…nservative anti-abortion, “religious liberty” agenda, now carries, albeit uneasily, the “banner of Catholic teaching”: In short, Catholic bishops who signed on for the Reagan deal—agreement on abortion in return for prudential disagreement on economics—were faced in 2016 with the Trump echo: implicit support for a candidate who didn’t just hold positions that Pope Francis had called inconsistent with fundamental teachings of Christianity, but for…

Are You There God? It’s Us, Googling

By Michael Schulson

…, those most ready to answer will also be those most dogmatic in their beliefs. Also on The Cubit: Is It OK To Use a Cellphone in Church?…