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‘Do You Want Columbia to be Cursed by God?’ — Alarming Exchanges in Congress and Beyond Highlight the Desperate Need for Religious Literacy

By Chance Bonar

…itism, Islamophobia, (anti-)Zionism, and Israel (not to mention democracy, free speech, and open dialogue). These debates would be more fruitful if informed by the way scholars of religion approach their subject matter. As a starting point I’ve found Harvard Divinity School’s Religious Literacy Project and its four principles (which also happen to be guiding principles of RD) to be helpful in the classroom: Devotional religious expression is disti…

“I’m a Creationist,” Says Former Times Tech Writer, Heffernan

By Michael Schulson

…onsequential things. They matter. Sure, in the modern world we do have the freedom to choose our guiding stories. And, here in postmodernity, we do have theories that relativize and contextualize, making that choice seem arbitrary. But none of this means that, once we’ve chosen an idea, it exists in a vacuum, tickling our minds and having no effect on things like, say, funding for scientific research, or the rights of children to have a public edu…

‘People You May Know’ Reveals a War on Democracy Being Waged With Big Data

By Chrissy Stroop

…ey very often will have downloadable apps—you might find that your data is free to share with anybody. And of course you’ve signed yourself in, you’ve signed in your children, you’ve shared your vulnerabilities. Charles mentioned mental health, but it’s not just mental health, it’s vulnerabilities in general. After all, as a European, it’s interesting to watch how churches in the States, they fill every need. You have preschool, you have a couple’…

Spiritual Mapping Evangelicals Battle Vodou in Haiti

By Reza Aslan

…on’s comment about Haitians swearing a pact with the devil in exchange for freedom from the French is an allusion to an event that took place in Haiti on August 14, 1791. On that date, several hundred slaves from different ethnic groups came together in a place called Bois Caiman to conduct a Vodou ceremony. They sacrificed a pig to the lwa (the spirits of Vodou), and vowed that they would do whatever it took to break free from their bonds. What f…

Capitalism and Christianity

By Peter Montgomery

…data: 50 percent of white evangelicals say they believe capitalism and the free market are at odds with Christian values. According to the survey, white evangelicals are more likely to say the free market and Christian values are at odds than black Protestants, mainline Protestants, Catholics, and religiously unaffiliated Americans. On first glance that seems difficult to accept given white evangelicals’ overwhelming electoral support for the Repu…

Trump’s SOTU Address Was a Christian Nationalist Dog Whistle

By Andrew L. Seidel

…ludes the following line (emphases mine): In reaffirming our heritage as a free nation, we must remember that America has always been a Christian nation. Time magazine’s transcript, meanwhile, reflects what the president actually said: In reaffirming our heritage as a free Nation, we must remember that America has always been a frontier nation. It’s entirely possible that the speech wasn’t deliberately edited; that Trump, who’s famous for ad-libbi…

What’s Islamophobia, and Do I Have It?

By Haroon Moghul

…Islam is in our world—Muslims are the world’s youngest religion (by age), number nearly one-fourth of humanity, and live all over the planet—what good do we imagine Islamophobia will do for America? Islamophobia claims to tell the truth about Islam, free of bigotry and political correctness, but it does no such thing. Its only real legacy is one of bad foreign policy choices, too many incidents of domestic discord, all kinds of missed opportuni…

2012 Film Heralds Progressive Utopia, No Effort Required

By Jessica Weisberg

…or them. Meet Me at the Wrecking Ball Pinchbeck himself was raised among a number of sixties luminaries, including Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Jack Kerouac. (He lived in Manhattan, where his father was a painter and his mother a Beat writer and editor.) In his twenties, he worked as a freelance journalist and founded a literary journal called Open City. “Once upon a time, not so long ago, I was a typical Manhattan atheist, suspicious, cynic…

Will a New Dawkins Foundation-Sponsored App Help Atheists Talk to Believers?

By Alana Massey

…-escalation are all admirable, but as noted earlier the tone is not always free of condescension. Writing realistic dialogue for hypothetical conversations is a very particular skill, and several of the scenarios reflect a deep disdain for believers. At times, the app casts believers as belligerent doofuses: …or violent bullies: Another scenario assumes that you might be tempted to lecture an intoxicated panhandler about epistemology and divine ex…

Rewriting the History of Catholic Schools in America

By Marian Ronan

…religious identity. But even if Hughes was dedicated to American religious freedom, he certainly wasn’t dedicated to the freedom of Catholics within the church. Prior to his battle over the schools, Hughes spearheaded the destruction of the trustee system in Catholic parishes, a system that had since 1780 afforded the laity direct input into church governance. And as for Hughes’ dedication to poor Catholic children, it depends entirely on which on…