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

By Elizabeth Drescher

…request from U.S. Army Major Ray Bradley to amend the approved list of religious preferences used on military records. Bradley and others may now identify as “Humanist” rather than “Agnostic,” “Atheist,” “no religious preference,” or “none”—the codes previously approved by the Army Chaplaincy 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…

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

By Michael Schulson

Are kids from more religious families more or less altruistic than their peers from less-religious families? That’s what a high-profile new study from University of Chicago neuroscientist Jean Decety and a global crew of collaborators sought to determine. In the course of the study, published in the journal of Current Biology, the researchers use something called the “children’s dictator game,” a.k.a. stickerpalooza. Here’s how it worked: Step on…

Do iPads Cause Religious Experiences?

By Andrew Aghapour

…ng of a London Apple store and noted the “evangelical frenzy” of the fans lining the block. At first Riley stayed mostly at the periphery of the crowd, shooting sarcastic looks to the camera and lobbing one-liners about the seemingly religious ecstasy of the “glassy-eyed” consumers being ushered in by a team of Apple’s blue-shirted “preachers.” Entertaining as these loose comparisons might be, it was what Riley did next that caused a brief media f…

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

By Grant Gallicho

…ps will take up a number of issues, from the revised liturgy to assisted suicide, but their conversations are sure to be dominated by an issue that has been dogging them since the mid-1980s: sexually abusive priests and the bishops who enabled them. Ten years after Cardinal Bernard Law became the poster bishop for failed religious leadership, new revelations of episcopal misfeasance threaten to swamp the real gains made by the Church. One Step F…

There’s Something Rotten in Ireland

By Haroon Moghul

…Israel’s embassy in Ireland. They go from digs at Ireland (“naïve”) for joining Europe and much of the world in voting for an upgrade in Palestine’s status at the United Nations, to the most recent—an allegation that, if Jesus were alive today, he would probably be lynched by hostile Palestinians. Nobody at the embassy seems to know who’s writing and posting these very ugly statements—and they’d prefer it stay that way; a spokesperson notes that…

And What of the Non-Jewish Jews?

By Shaul Magid

…here’s been much reaction to the Pew poll in regards to denominational viability, affiliation, and attitudes toward things such as Israel, the Holocaust, God, and religion. Interestingly, Zionism has been replaced by “caring for Israel,” which is in some ways similar, though there are important distinctions. Zionism represents a systemic Jewish experiment in identity, language, culture, and politics, while “Caring for Israel” is largely an emotion…

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

By Marcia Pally

Trump, long up in the polls, stays up; Cruz is rising. What do they have in common? Savior appeal. Of the idolatrous kind. The two front-runners differ is some ways—among likely caucus voters in Iowa, Bloomberg News reports, Trump is considered stronger on managing the economy, illegal immigration, and the deficit while Cruz is stronger on leadership and persuasiveness to conservative evangelicals. But their common savior appeal tells us a great…

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

By Murali Balaji

…th politics, and the frequency of intra-religious conflict (Sunni versus Shiite Muslims, Jat versus non-Jat Sikhs, upper-caste Christians versus Dalit Christians) has also played a role in India’s recent spike in social unrest. Despite the complex nature of identity politics in India, one thing is more apparent: the unease with which Indians of all faiths are dealing with the conversation about conversion, as well as its ramifications beyond the c…

Can the Catholic Church Survive Trump?

By Patricia Miller

…anger for any institution that allies itself too closely with any given political party, a hazard that’s pronounced in the age of Trump, as the raw racial animus at his core becomes impossible to ignore for even those who were determined to avert their gaze. But that danger is especially acute for religious institutions, which face a special moral hazard in becoming too closely identified with a specific party. And, as political scientist Timothy…

Are You There God? It’s Us, Googling

By Michael Schulson

…to the rest of the country, for every search I looked at, retirement communities search more about hell,” he writes. Each month, on average, 422 people in the US ask Google “Why did God make me ugly?” and 103 ask “Why did God make me black?” The most common God-related question, asked over 25,000 times per month in the US, is “Who created God?,” followed by that old Job-ian classic, “Why does God allow suffering?” But we should be careful here; Go…