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Is Twitter Doing Enough to Remove Extremist Content? An Ex-Employee Weighs In

By Sofi Hersher

…es accounts or individual Tweets used to harass individuals or promote or incite violence. These reports go to a real person trained to evaluate and make a judgment call on whether or not the content in question violates the rules and should be removed. Note that on average 6,000 Tweets are posted each minute, totaling about 500 million each day. As Twitter doesn’t (and never has, and realistically never could) actively mediate content, even if ea…

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

By Eric Vanden Eykel

…te this, Metaxas’s tweet has been severely “ratioed,” which means that the number of responses far exceeds the number of “likes” and retweets. This is generally an indication that a tweet’s contents are either deeply controversial or profoundly ignorant (or both). In short: Twitter users have pushed back on Metaxas, and they’ve pushed back hard. In response he’s deployed a Trump-ian combination of backpedaling and doubling down on his initial clai…

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

By Daniel Silliman

…, moderate apocalypticism. Then you have populist apocalyptics who become incredibly popular, like Hal Lindsey in the 1970s, Tim LaHaye in the 1990s and into the 2000s. Then, you have growing numbers of self-proclaimed evangelicals completely rejecting the apocalypticism that had for so long given their movement its distinctive identity. The story of postwar evangelicals is this tension between the more respectable, more careful, more savvy, leade…

Obama’s Gay Marriage Support Shocks Black Church

By Anthea Butler

…s, stunted sexuality, homophobia, and sexual abuse are competing for issue number one in their churches; at many, they are tied at the number one slot. It is high time to for the leaders of the black church to ‘put away childish things’ and to engage in a real conversation about sexuality, same-sex marriage, and the homophobia embedded in the black church community. Pontificating and posturing props up preachers, and does little to edify congregat…

Growing Up Gay in 666: Fred Phelps in Retrospect

By Scott Blaine Swenson

…ng to the faith speaking to us each in our own hearts, calling us to reach for our better selves, rather than internalizing someone else’s fear and the narrow interpretation of scripture they use to justify hate and violence. And while the coincidence of being born under the “Sign of the Beast” in Topeka 666 is still a little unnerving, there are differing opinions about the number’s translation. Some theologians suggest the number should really b…

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

By Sarah Posner

…xious and fearful that their classmates “will look at them like aliens.” A number of religious leaders, including Mattson, spoke at the press briefing, which was one of the most highly attended press events relating to religion that I’ve seen — except for events hosted by religious right groups. Richard Cizik, president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, speaking to evangelical Christians engaging in or promoting anti-Muslim b…

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

By Sammy Feldblum

…hts that might help as part of a multi-dimensional effort to combat resistance to science. This fall, she spoke with Religion Dispatches in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey about the fallout from the storm and about how religious and scientific communities might be able to communicate more effectively. It seems like a lot of your research is focused on demonstrating that despite the way that they’re generally talked about, science and religion ar…

Conservative Hardliners at Synod Prompt Question: “What Are We Doing Here?”

By Patricia Miller

…is only one likely outcome to this synod. It’s unlikely, given his preference for consensus, that Francis will override the bishops and go “full Kasper,” issuing an edict giving divorced and remarried Catholics a path to communion. But it’s equally unlikely that given all the effort put into the two-year-long, two-part synod process, he won’t do anything. That makes the most likely outcome, according to Douthat, “simple ambiguity,” with Francis i…

Exclusion is Causing Great Harm: A Conversation With Suspended UMC Pastor Rev. Cynthia Meyer

By Joel Pitney

…interesting about this is that I grew up in the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference, and it’s a much more inclusive atmosphere there. The leadership is almost entirely supportive of LGBT members and clergy, and there are many, many reconciling congregations. You’re in a much more conservative area of the country and of the church, and I’m curious to know what the general attitude towards LGBT people is? Do you find that there are more supportive people…

How Religion Shapes (or Doesn’t) Our Views on Public Issues

By Daniel Schultz

…comes from. Likewise, social issues come in dead last on a list of voter concerns. It’s not even close. Even more startling, however, just 7% of respondents said that religion is the biggest influence in their thinking about immigration. And only 6% say the same thing about the environment. That’s despite the messages they’re getting from the pulpit: about 1-in-4 said they’d heard clergy talk about immigration, and nearly half said their religious…