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A Life After Death Double-Feature: Eastwood’s Hereafter and Noe’s Enter the Void

By Jay Michaelson

…hereas the characters in Hereafter live in upper-class Paris, middle-class San Francisco, and the most caring and engaged child welfare system the world has ever known. But the differences are more than skin-deep, especially when it comes to religion. Hereafter goes out of its way to demean traditional religion (and esoteric nonsense) en route to its reluctant affirmation of the afterlife—if the film were a person, she’d be “spiritual, not religio…

This Year in Satanism

By Joseph Laycock

…that gay marriage is a Satanic sacrament and that Satanic bodies are sacrosanct and cannot be subject to trans-vaginal probes. On June 30, The Supreme Court ruled that Hobby Lobby could invoke religious objections to avoid covering contraception in its employees’ health plans. This ruling encouraged the Satanic Temple to launch its “Right to Accurate Medical Information” campaign. The campaign took aim at state laws requiring women to review info…

HitchBot Meets His Maker: What a Robot’s Murder Tells Us About Ourselves

By Michael Schulson

…ago, the Canadian-built hitchBOT left Marblehead, Massachusetts. The goal: San Francisco. It was supposed to be an On the Road-meets-Wall-E jaunt, and a testament to the goodwill of human beings. Instead, over the weekend, somebody in Philadelphia destroyed hitchBOT. Game over. The timing for hitchBOT’s destruction felt oddly appropriate. Late last week, the New York Times published a startling article about Xiaoice, a Microsoft chatbot that’s gai…

Conservative Christians Insist the Toxic Theology Portrayed in the Duggar Family Doc is ‘Fringe’ — But is it Really All That Different?

By Caroline Matas

…of Joshua Harris, whose 1997 book I Kissed Dating Goodbye made waves in American evangelical purity culture. Alex Harris—a lawyer who has clerked for both Justice Anthony Kennedy and then-Judge Neil Gorsuch—tweeted that he participated in the docuseries to tell the story of his own family’s involvement in the movement to “take America back for God” and to explain how his own religious views have shifted over time. In a review of the docuseries for…

How Will We Teach About Sikhism After the Tragedy?

By Laurie Patton

…ring of videos, blogs, and articles by Muslim leaders aiming to educate Americans about Islam. In the various radio appearances by Sikh leaders this week, all of them articulated the need for education about Sikhism. To be sure, this is part of the bedrock upon which American society is built. Minority religious communities should have the right and freedom to represent themselves and their traditions—however, wherever, and whenever they choose. B…

“Ex-Gay” Therapy Revealed in Prop. 8 Trial

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…to change.” Those are the words Ryan Kendall uttered in a federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday as the trial over whether or not to overturn Proposition 8 that stripped gays and lesbians of their right to marry in California, got into its second week. Kendall took the stand to recount his harsh treatment in an “ex-gay ministry.” His deeply religious parents forced him into so-called “reparative therapy” after finding a note that Kendall had…

Cruz Backs Bishops on Religious Liberty Claims

By Patricia Miller

…, who is under fire for imposing a strict “morality clause” on teachers in San Francisco’s Catholic schools. But in an indication of how the religious liberty issue crosses the political lines of the Francis papacy, the letter was also signed by two noted moderates: DC Archbishop Donald Wuerl, whose DC offices would fall under the law, and Boston Archbishop Sean O’Malley, who is considered Francis’ closest US ally. Of course, with Ted Cruz’s anti-…

Trump Considers Pulling USA Out Of Human Rights Council; Indonesian President Blames Democracy For Rise of Militant Islamism; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…t held in Budapest 20 years ago in 1997, and last year it drew over 20 thousand participants. In May, Budapest will host this year’s World Congress of Families gathering, a networking and strategy-sharing event for anti-LGBT and anti-SRHR groups worldwide. Malaysia: Human Rights Watch reports on rise of anti-LGBT Sharia codes Human Rights Watch reported on the brutal murder of a transgender woman in Kuantan city, connecting it toward a shift in go…

Why Kaepernick’s Refusal to Stand Is an Act of Religious Dissent

By Benjamin E. Zeller

…nimals did for ancient societies, flags do today. The totemic symbol of America, the American flag, represents the nation state as a sacred entity—it serves as symbolic referent point for the nation’s self-worship. From this perspective, what else is the national anthem but a hymn to the nation, and what else did Kaepernick do but thumb his nose at American civil religion by sitting down in church while the choir sang? For his part, Kaepernick was…

Republicans Silent on Islamophobia

By Sarah Posner

…sounds like a Rush Limbaugh playbook, as the organization aims to “give Americans their voice back. That unique American voice, full of joy and anticipation and better days and and infinite aspirations . . . muted by the scourge of political correctnes. We are now a society neutered by this scourge, . . . unable to act or speak for fear of offending, or of lawsuits, or of accusations of one-sided political views. Millions either do not realize, or…