Religion Dispatches
Mitt Romney’s delusional 2012 pollsters got nothing on apologists for last week’s Pew Poll that found no real “Francis effect” from the pope’s first year. According to Daniel Burke at CNN.com in a lengthy, mostly anecdotal piece, “there’s more way than one to measure the pontiff’s influence” than, say, actual metrics like the number of people going to mass or returning to the church. According to Burke, you just have to “ask around” Boston to fin…
Read More…of the oldest and least favorable public stereotypes of Mormons as an insular, secretive, manipulative people. During the campaign season, many of us who were Mormon and supported marriage equality found ourselves in the otherworldly situation of trying to communicate to outsiders the magnitude of what we saw happening inside our Church, only to be met—for the most part—with disinterest or disbelief, or a consistent underestimation of Mormon or…
Read More…gs and politicians can cloak ethnic hostilities and turf wars in religious language. Yet even so—people believe that they are acting in God’s name. Second: Gallup speculated that the growing sense of religion’s decline has less to do with personal religiosity than with events. The last time religious influence was deemed to be in sharp decline was the 1960s. Political protests along with cultural upheavals left many wondering about the future of t…
Read More…versal, Jewish experiences. Ironically, this choice is at once too particular, and not particular enough. It excludes many Jews, and perhaps deliberately depicts Jewishness as a secular, American immigration narrative that is accessible to non-Jews as well – such as, importantly, readers of this publication. This is good for building bridges with the wider progressive world and with contemporary immigrant communities, and maybe that’s the point….
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