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Distant Churches and the Isolated Poor: Lessons from Katrina, Ten Years Later

By R. Drew Smith

…large-scale flight of social resources left in its wake was not an urban demographic characterized by upward mobility but by severe poverty and social isolation. Between 1970 and 1990, the percentage of persons living in neighborhoods with a poverty rate of 40 percent or higher grew from 7.8 to 15.8 percent for blacks and from 7.0 to 9.5 percent for Hispanics, and by 2010 the proportion of Americans (irrespective of race) living in high-poverty ne…

No ‘Christian Compassion’ in Tony Perkins’ Response to Anti-Gay Bullying, Suicides

By Andrew Marin

…her for the first time. When social policy, theology, and personally-tied emotions are parted for even the slightest moment, it becomes clear that at a base level no one wants their story or their journey to be labeled invalid; as if their life experiences never actually happened. To agree or disagree with someone else’s outcome is a separate issue to the biblical mandate and human right to dignify the validity of someone’s experience as legitimat…

The Fourth of July Is Not America’s Birthday

By Peter Laarman

…e American Revolution as but a new chapter in an ongoing war not just with monarchy but with monarchy’s boon companion, the established church. English royalists understood this dynamic very clearly. George III himself called the colonists’ rebellion a “Presbyterian War.” Edmund Burke told Parliament in 1775 that the people to worry about were the New England Protestants “of that kind which is most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and op…

The Catholic Apocalypse Cometh

By Patricia Miller

…they ginned up was a major factor in alienating white Catholics from the Democratic Party. The number of white Catholics who said the Obama administration was “unfriendly to religion” more than doubled from 17 percent to 36 percent between 2009 and 2014. And it was white Catholics who were overwhelmingly in favor of Trump—60 percent versus 37 percent for Clinton, a stunning gap of 23 points. While Clinton did win Hispanic Catholics by a similar wi…

The Catholic-Evangelical (Non-)Coalition

By Patricia Miller

…rty, not wanting to get married or not wanting more children, was as high among Catholics as among Protestants.” The tendency for Catholics to mirror general public opinion on abortion has held over time. A 2007 Pew Poll found that 51% of Catholics think about should be legal in all or most cases, which is “nearly identical to the views of the public as a whole.” A 2009 Gallup Poll found “almost no difference between rank-and-file American Catholi…

Post-Election, “Is The Black Church Dead?” Redux

By Anthea Butler

…for the Democratic Party in 2012 is going to be tested by the Tea Party’s mobilization, voter apathy, and a growing number of conservative African-American candidates. A record number of black Republicans ran in this midterm election (some had already lost their primaries), and two are heading to Congress. Tim Scott will be the first African-American Republican to represent South Carolina in Congress since Reconstruction. (He beat out Strom Thurm…

“Can You Tell Me Who The Villains Are?”: Rock and Religion, Irish-Style

By Lisa Bitel

…me who the villains are?” the Saw Doctors go on to ask. The answer is obvious to an Irish band: self-proclaimed faith leaders and putative models of morality who don’t understand the lyrics….

Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…Duggar children in Arkansas. In following the Ray story over the past few months, I am amazed at the number of non-Indian sweat lodge experts the media has been able to locate. Few Indians if any have been interviewed; and even decidedly liberal MSNBC featured Court TV anchor Ashleigh Banfield as their expert on the sweat lodge. Banfield’s expertise, admitted on air, was one sweat experience with her stepbrother or brother-in-law (she wasn’t sure…

New Report: Angels & Aliens in Texas Schools

By Mark A. Chancey

…relationship. Academic Quality A surprising number of courses asked little more of students than to memorize Bible verses or learn basic details of biblical stories so that they could fill in the blanks on tests. Some made very questionable choices about the use of classroom time, such as the course that spent two days watching “the historic documentary Ancient Aliens,” which presents “a new interpretation of angelic beings described as extraterre…

The World is (Always) About to End, No Zombies Required

By Kelly J. Murphy

…a. (Dan and his brother Ron belonged to a splinter group of fundamentalist Mormons who believed in polygamy, among other things, and Dan continues to identify as the prophet Elijah, who will herald the Second Coming of Jesus.) The Stracks and Dan Lafferty knew each other, but apparently, according to reporters Lafferty did not talk much about the impending end of the world with the Stracks and their contact ended in 2008. Nothing in the Strack’s h…