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Conservative Hardliners at Synod Prompt Question: “What Are We Doing Here?”

By Patricia Miller

…m the first small group discussions held this week indicate that a sizable number of bishops believe that the preparatory document is all doom-and-gloom and doesn’t do enough to celebrate the sizable number of Catholics who are successfully leading a traditional Catholic family life, reports John Allen: The synod’s final report ‘should begin with hope rather than failures, because a great many people already do successfully live the Gospel’s good…

Islamic Intellectual Leadership at a Crossroads

By Amina Wadud

…th, for both are part of my devotion to Allah). They do have a substantial number of women included, so I would not complain on that count. But, here’s the thing: there are no women under the category of Muslim intellectuals. Apparently women don’t think. So it is even harder to adjust to the loss of these three men whose intellectual contributions helped to shape the ways we think about and in fact live Islam today; both for women and for men. I…

How Religion Shapes (or Doesn’t) Our Views on Public Issues

By Daniel Schultz

…dy late last week looking how religious beliefs influence perceptions on a number of different issues. A quick-and-dirty look at the results would tell you that religion doesn’t change much, with a few notable exceptions. For example, this surprising statistic: “60% of those who oppose gay marriage say religion is the most important influence on their views.” One wonders where the other 40% comes from. Likewise, social issues come in dead last on…

For Conservatives, the Future Looks Dim… and Gay

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ble.” But those “moral objections” seem to be of less concern to a growing number of Americans: Just under half of Americans (45%) say they think engaging in homosexual behavior is a sin, while an equal number says it is not. Those who believe homosexual behavior is a sin overwhelmingly oppose gay marriage. Similarly, those who say they personally feel there is a lot of conflict between their religious beliefs and homosexuality (35% of the public)…

The Messiah is Not Coming

By Peter Laarman

…es of self-congratulation and spiritual uplift among the rich. But middle-class congregations were the norm, and middle-class congregations are having a horrendous time coming to terms with the new reality of congregants who can no longer support the institution financially and who may even start disappearing—literally—because of the intense status-loss shame they have experienced. Please say that you heard it here first: those congregations that…

“Real” Evangelicals Don’t Support Trump? Not So Fast…

By Neil J. Young

…e larger point: Trump is still the one candidate who coalesces the largest number of evangelicals—even the weekly churchgoers—around him. Those numbers would likely shift should Trump face a two-man race with Ted Cruz. But if survey data still show what they have revealed so far—that Trump will continue to win at least a third of the most frequent church-attending evangelicals—it undermines anti-Trump evangelicals’ main argument about the suspect…

Is Twitter Doing Enough to Remove Extremist Content? An Ex-Employee Weighs In

By Sofi Hersher

…g to identify potentially radical organizations and individuals. The Green Number, or Numéro Vert, is a private telephone hotline in France where family and friends can report someone they fear may become radicalized. And in the U.K., Prevent is a program that essentially creates ‘trigger warnings’ for teachers and institutions to report the potential for radicalization. I do not mean to condemn or even criticize these programs, merely to point ou…

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

By R. Drew Smith

…n 1980.” Moreover, as noted in a report by ProPublica, there are a growing number of schools whose white population is 1 percent or less (mostly in the Northeast and Midwest), and roughly 12 percent of black students in the South attend such schools. The tragic plight of impoverished and immobile New Orleanians forced to ride out Katrina in 2005 also serves as a poignant metaphor of what has been a much larger problem of urban poor populations acr…

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

By Andrew Marin

…hristian, just like Tony Perkins. Mr. Perkins, you don’t speak for me or a number of conservative evangelicals who are worn out and sickened by the same old battle cry you believe we should join. Many ask today, why should we join one side and fight against the other? Each time it’s the same banal response: For no other reason than that we should just fall in line against what extreme public figures deem a societal evil worthy to be fought against…

The Fourth of July Is Not America’s Birthday

By Peter Laarman

…tuarts back in the Mother Country. In the English Civil War, these middle-class sectarians, mocked as “Roundheads,” routed the aristocratic Cavaliers. They were driven to resistance and even to regicide by their fear of episcopacy: they feared that their model of congregational governance would be outlawed and they would be forced to suffer under bishops and use prescribed Anglican forms and formulas still reeking of their popish provenance. Some…