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Everything You Think You Know About the Dark Ages is Wrong

By Nancy Marie Brown

…n euros for the card to be activated for three days and to get three paper tickets. Up to the manuscript room, where I handed the ID card and one ticket to the clerk. She gave me a key to a locker, where I had to leave all my belongings except one pencil (not a pen, with which I could deface a manuscript) and a notebook. Reentering the reading room, I had to display my pencil and notebook to the clerk to get back my ID card and the ultimate prize:…

Some Thoughts on Richard Dawkins’ Terrible Tweet

By Haroon Moghul

…ept an ‘abstracted’ science? And what does abstract science do for us? The number of nuclear bombs used by the West outweighs the number used by the entire planet. Muslims did not invent nuclear weapons, nor have they used them. (Let’s pray that stands.) When Saddam Hussein was our ally, he unleashed chemical weapons on Kurds at Halabja, the only confirmed instance of a Muslim regime using chemical weapons. Even considering the possibility of Assa…

The Sacred and the Dead: Operator, Can You Help Me?

By Maren Haynes

…a wry humor with a silly streak, and a proclivity toward community. I put away my phone in order to devote free time to art, music, and curating opportunities for togetherness. I turned to studying music and religion as a graduate student, keenly aware of the powerful ability of both to link us and give us identity. I put those who had passed through my life on their own shelf, held tenderly in my memory, thankful for the growth, the joy, the awak…

Where Polls and Surveys Fall Short: A Conversation with Robert Wuthnow on “Inventing American Religion”

By Andrew Aghapour

…didn’t believe the Gallup numbers were right, and [they thought that] the best way to combat those Gallup numbers was to ask Gallup to do another survey. And so in 1978, Christianity Today, a leading periodical for evangelicals, paid Gallup to do a big survey and in addition to just asking the born-again question, they asked questions about belief in the Bible, belief in Jesus, and intent on converting others. As a result, Gallup revised its esti…

“Giving Godhead”: A Bloody Vision of Religion’s Deepest Influence

By Spencer Dew

…us moments at a revival, goes slack sometimes, and this book has its limp, cheap moments, cellophane grass and gassy puns that might only elicit an “organ yawn” from readers. It may not be the best poetry collection in English published this year—that may, in fact, like rivers of milk and honey or peace and goodwill between all humans on earth, simply not be a thing—but Giving Godhead is a worthwhile example of art using the so-called sacrilegious…

Lying About Our Religion, And Other Problems With Polling

By Michael Schulson

…raged these efforts, cited the polls, and at times even commissioned them. Today, when media outlets talk about “evangelicals,” they almost always mean white, politically conservative, born-again Protestants, unless they specify otherwise. The problem is that theological definitions of what makes someone an evangelical vary widely—and tweaking them, Wuthnow shows us, can generate substantial changes in poll results. Nobody actually agrees on the b…

Milquetoast Liberal Religion Won’t Challenge Conservative Values: A History Lesson

By Sheila D. Collins

…rty and unemployment was such a far cry from the cruel indifference we see today? There are a number of reasons, among them the fact that when Roosevelt took office, conditions were far more desperate for a far larger segment of the population than they were when the bottom fell out of the economy in 2008. This was, ironically, thanks in part to the very reforms like unemployment and food stamps that the New Deal had established. More importantly,…

Heterosexual Martyrs and Gay Saints: Did AIDS Coverage Clear the Way for LGBT Equality?

By Diane Winston

…called out black churches as detached from the crisis. Despite the rising number of African Americans with AIDS, black congregations offered little comfort and even less outreach to the afflicted, according to press reports. Black churches were slow to respond, reporters noted, because most believed that homosexuality was a sin. Yet were black congregations any more homophobic than white churches with similar theology? If Jerry Falwell became the…

Teaching Love: Soulforce Takes it to the Quad

By Nick Street

…r vigil. This past year we had just one rabid protester. We’ve come a long way.” Loyd, a soft-spoken Vietnam vet who grew up in a rural area near Conway, credits the peace that the couple currently enjoys to their willingness to confront their would-be oppressors head on. “The night before our first parade someone dumped six tons of manure in front of the house,” he says. “But we found out who did it and we saw to it that they did time in jail. We…

Why I Wrote the Freedom Seder And Why It’s Still Necessary 50 Years After Dr. King’s Assassination

By Arthur Waskow

…t to drown?” “What’s a midrash?” said I. “Oho!” said he, and even over the phone I could feel the excitement rise. “The rabbis would take the ancient text, and read it in new ways. On this one, where the Torah says the people ‘went into the sea on the dry land,’ the rabbis ask, ‘Which was it? How could it be both sea and dry land?’ And they answer that one of them went in while it was still sea; only then did it become dry land. “You see?—the peop…