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By the Way: Religious Right Losing its Grip?

By Randall Balmer

…a has staked out the rather sensible position that the way to diminish the number of abortions is not to legislate against the practice, which almost certainly will create a huge backlash and arguably represents an infringement of liberties. The way to diminish the incidence of abortion, he counters, is to diminish demand through sex education and the availability of contraceptives. The only way truly to bring about meaningful reform on this issue…

The Sacred and the Dead: Truckin’ as a New American Pilgrimage

By Varun Soni

…laboration with the Office of Religious Life at the University of Southern California This new body of scholarly literature and pop cultural production reveals the Grateful Dead as a uniquely American phenomenon with an extraordinary American legacy. Indeed, as the de facto leaders of the largest counter-cultural movement in American history, the Grateful Dead have shaped and defined the idea of America for millions of people. In so many ways, the…

More than Half of Mississippi GOP Primary Voters Believe the President is Muslim

By Sarah Posner

…Romney’s Republican adversaries who claim he’s weak in the South, I don’t think this poll helps their argument much. Obviously we’d know more about Republican voter attitudes, and particularly their enthusiasm come November if Romney is the nominee, if we knew more about their views of his Mormonism. But even without that information, you could conclude that, if about a third of evangelicals are fine with voting for Romney in the primary, where on…

PRRI’s Robert P. Jones Discusses Authoritarianism, Christian Nationalism, and What the 2024 Election is Really About

By Daniel Schultz

…the authoritarian impulse. Part of that’s because of patriarchal and often hierarchical structures inside of Christianity itself. There’s styles, pastoral leadership models, church hierarchies, that all lend themselves to an authoritarian culture. But the other temptation is that if you get the authoritarian leader who represents your interest, you can guarantee certain ends. Then the means cease to matter. But that’s not democracy. The challenge…

The Episcopal Church ‘Takes a Flying Leap’ into Controversies Old and New

By Elizabeth Drescher

…e’ and the presiding minister does not pronounce the couple as ‘married.’ While this seems like splitting hairs, it does reflect the current —though I would say tenuous—position of the Episcopal Church that ‘marriage’ is still reserved to describe the covenant between a man and a woman.” The same-gender blessing liturgy, then, represents the furthering of a discussion of the theology of marriage that Johnson believes “will contribute to a broader…

Forget Right or Wrong

By Elizabeth Drescher

…s significant data that invites at least an expansion of the categories within which we understand “religious practice”—from the more traditional practices noted in the Pew study, to organized and ad-hoc alternatives like Burning Man, to wholly idiosyncratic practices such as completing paint-by-number paintings of The Last Supper. Feeding the Poor, Housing the Homeless A 7-year study with nearly 15,000 undergraduates at 136 colleges and universit…

5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Overthink the New Pew Data’s Impact on Politics

By Sarah Posner

…y nondenominational congregations.” Sixty-two million Americans fall into this demographic, two million more than in 2007, according to the Pew Survey. The Pew report notes, though, that researchers sought to identify evangelicals still another way (other than denominationally). They asked, “Would you describe yourself as a born-again or evangelical Christian, or not?” Thirty-five percent of all U.S. adults said yes to that question. That figure i…

Creeping Shari’ah… Ahem, Excuse Me… Biblical Law

By Julie Ingersoll

…he 4300 inmates already held within faith based programs by increasing the number of programs from four to six. While inmates in these facilitates choose the faith based programs over other options, it’s not, as proponents like to argue, fair to say that they choose to be there. Opponents of the plans argue that inmates in faith based programs enjoy a number of perks and better facilities than other inmates. But whatever the case, Scott’s plan wou…

Muslims in America, Fifty Years Later: New Poll Shows Pride and Optimism In the Face of Bias

By Edward E. Curtis IV

…the rest of the Muslim world. The majority of Muslim Americans are Sunni, while 16% identify as Shi‘a, 14% say they are “just Muslim,” and 4% are members of smaller communities such as the Ahmadiyya movement and the Nation of Islam. The 2017 Pew poll also reveals that the more things have changed in Muslim America, the more they have stayed the same. Muslims faced a lot of suspicion and discrimination in 1967, just as they do in 2017. In 1967, the…

For Buddhism, Science is Not a Killer of Religion

By Paul Wallace

…e polar bears, kiwi birds, and blobfish) reach nirvana themselves. All of this is highly unappealing to us doubting Thomases who live by Occam’s razor and won’t believe in anything without sufficient evidence. But here’s the rub: In Buddhism, it seems, you don’t have to believe any of this stuff. You can say with all the gravity you can muster that you believe none of it—except perhaps something about nirvana, perhaps—and no one will tell you that…