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Five Must-Reads on the “Nones”: A Tipping Point in American Religion and Spirituality

By Elizabeth Drescher

…other, she often situates the diverse rituals and mythologies in which she participates and which she observes within recognizable religious traditions—pilgrimages, rites of passage, spiritual quest, and so on—even as she insists that these practices actively resist and refuse religious histories and dogmas. The strength of Gilmore’s work, nonetheless, is in the insight and balance she brings to her role as a participant observer, especially in a…

Obama Inaugural Address Challenges Tea Party History

By Julie Ingersoll

…e remainder of the speech left no doubt that the meaning of the term has expanded. The story he told was not the story of conquest and expansion; it was not the story of the rise of corporate capitalism symbolized by the “self-made man;” and it certainly wasn’t the Wall Street “greed is good” creed. Like any good sermon, the president’s address invoked a three-part alliteration that tells the story of America from an entirely different vantage poi…

Progressive Evangelical Attacks AARP, Social Security

By Peter Laarman

…not because our seniors get better care, but because our doctors, drug companies, medical supply companies, and other providers get twice as much money as their counterparts in other countries. To claim that seniors are somehow benefiting because their specialists are getting paid $400,000 or $500,000 a year is just flat out dishonest. If we paid for our care what everyone else pays, our budget would look fine. 4. The amount we collect in tax rev…

Is Stephen Pinker’s Controversial Polemic in Defense of Scientism As Bad As They Say?

By Michael Schulson

…ndedness than any fundamental discord. These principles are also pretty compatible with liberal religion. They are not, you’ll note, especially compatible with fundamentalist movements; nor with totalitarianism, as Ross Douthat implies. The problem with science’s big cheerleaders, though, isn’t that they make bad arguments. It’s that they make decent arguments, and then wildly overstep. And, in this regard, Pinker delivers. “Most of the traditiona…

How Steve Stockman Is Challenging John Cornyn Without Religion

By Sarah Posner

…ay. And we have less than 90 days to stop him. Stockman is known as a Tea Party Republican, one for whom the rigid conservatism of all those RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) is not pure enough. (Even WorldNetDaily, hardly one to shirk its duty to play the religion card, identifies him as a “Tea Party Favorite.”) But Stockman is a born-again Christian, too, something he doesn’t tout—overtly, at least—in the fundraising letter. Instead, he buries h…

Addressing the Culture War Without Touching the Culture War

By Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins

…e idea of borrowed capital. By the 1970s the liberal consensus had fallen apart. Proponents of identity politics—women and minorities—were disinterested in re-establishing a political consensus. Meanwhile, shocked by the counter-cultural movements, legalized abortion and the Supreme Court’s decision to prohibit prayer in public school, the Religious Right emerged hell bent on taking America back. It pursued this cause by propagating the myth that…

Pigging Out: What ‘Radically Unkosher’ Jewish Foodies Like Michael Pollan Are Missing

By Jonathan Schorsch

…atter of individual dietary choices. One thing that seems clear is that we participate in an endless dance between the universal and the particular, neither of which can exist without the other. Lines are always being drawn. Will we avoid factory-farmed meat? Pig? An overlap of the two? Neither? Whose mores should be followed and why? It remains unclear whether the food movement’s unwritten rules offer benefits and solutions better suited to conte…

Does NIH Head Francis Collins Believe in Intelligent Design?

By Eric Reitan

…eds these remarks in the context of defending what might be called the “compatibility thesis”—that is, the view that belief in God is compatible with accepting the theory of evolution. His aim is not to prove the existence of God, but to prove that evolutionary theory leaves room for God. Although we can tell a just-so story of how evolution could lead to Wesley Autrey’s heroism, there is room here for a deeper explanation that makes Autrey’s acti…

Stop Debunking Climate Change Deniers

By Michael Schulson

…Environmental Network (EEN), which combines evangelical Christianity with passionate advocacy on behalf of environmental issues, including climate change, do exactly what a debunking cannot: remind us that the facts transcend particular groups, and that the threat of climate change is an issue that we all must face. Look, someone does need to assert the facts. But when it comes to tone, Plait and other debunkers would do well to observe organizat…

The Penis+Vagina Monologues

By Sarah Posner

…mitted from her homage to complementary marriage include love, commitment, partnership, affection, companionship, or even, if you want to get down and dirty (but not in an exclusively penis+vagina way) a married filing jointly tax return, hospital visitation, and inheritance laws. All these things are not just ontologically possible and desirable, they are also increasingly legal. So, when you think about it, it would be journalistic malpractice t…