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ABC’s Hit Sitcom Black-ish Does God, Pushes Theological Respectability

By Anthony B. Pinn

…face of a growing trend, tracked by pollsters. The Nones, or unaffiliated, represent a growing percentage of the US population. And African Americans represent an important demographic within this growth. Keep in mind, too, that the number of African Americans falling into this category has almost doubled over the past thirty-years. Belief in God doesn’t bind African Americans to one other, and it is unfortunate to assume—even with a laugh—that be…

Rome Has Spoken and Rome Is Finished: The Vatican’s Sexual Abuse Summit ‘Failed Miserably’

By Mary E. Hunt

…ed minors and some covered it up. What’s so mysterious about that? A large number of minors have been sexually abused by a large number of clerics. Period. Full stop. It’s simply the beginning of a hideous story that includes the abuse of seminarians, nuns and other women, children of priests, and more, all of whom merit summits of their own. Francis’ discussion of power fell flat. He claimed that the sexual abuse of minors is an abuse of power. H…

Marriage equality and ‘the end of Catholic Ireland’; Gambian Prez vows to slit gays’ throats; Colombian govt affirms support for marriage and adoption; global LGBT recap

By Peter Montgomery

…round the world. Gambia: President threatens to slit gays’ throats We have repeatedly reported on viciously anti-gay President Yahya Jammeh and his use of homophobia as a nationalist, anti-European posture. Another example was reported last week by Kayla Ruble at Vice: The Gambia’s notorious dictator Yahya Jammeh recently intensified his anti-homosexual rhetoric, threatening to slit the throats of gay men living in the small West African nation wh…

Forced Cremation of Covid Dead in Sri Lanka Further Marginalizes Muslim Community

By Andrea Malji and Amarnath Amarasingam

…to the other.” The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom also tweeted that they are “concerned with reports of forced cremation of Muslims who died from coronavirus.” As of December 10, 2020, there have been 146 Covid deaths in Sri Lanka with a disproportionate number coming from the Muslim community; despite making up less than 10% of the population, Muslims account for nearly half of the reported deaths. A Muslim leader in…

Before Black Twitter: How the Early Black Press Shaped American Discourse Around Race and Religion

By Benjamin P. Fagan

…hing you had to leave out? Early on I decided to focus intently on a small number of newspapers, rather than try to tackle the whole range of black newspapers published before the Civil War. I’m still happy with this decision to go for depth over breadth, but it means that there are lots of papers that I didn’t have a chance to include. I would have really liked to spend some time with Frederick Douglass’ Paper, or the Christian Recorder, but happ…

The Family Research Council’s Mistaken Identity

By Sarah Posner

…rather about the radical far right, described in the FBI’s Project Megiddo report as “a vast number and variety of groups, such as survivalists, militias, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, Christian Identity churches, the AN and skinheads.” The report called Christian Identity “the most unifying theology for a number of these diverse groups and one widely adhered to by white supremacists. It is a belief system that provides its members with a religious…

Satanic or Silly: Does Yale Press Censorship of Cartoons Insult Muslims?

By Daniel Martin Varisco

…that publishing the images would cause riots from Indonesia to Nigeria; a repeat of the previous protests that led to a boycott of Danish products, attacks on Danish embassies, and a number of deaths. Last month in the New York Times, however, Reza Aslan countered that the controversy over the cartoons has died out and that in any case, there never was any violence over them in the United States. I agree with Aslan that the novelty of the cartoon…

How Not To Defend Atheism

By Vlad Chituc

…four years. And last year, I specifically asked Silverman if he would stop reporting the stats on “nones” as being representative of atheism, and he told me he would. Yet here we are. There’s a philosopher at the UC Riverside I admire named Eric Schwitzgebel. One of his more popular theories is his theory of jerks, which he defines as follows: “the jerk culpably fails to appreciate the perspectives of others around him, treating them as tools to b…

Hell, in Rob Bell’s Own Words: State of Belief Radio

By The Editors

…and I’ll do an event, and the level of electricity, of excitement, and the number of people who say: “I always had these questions, I always wondered about this, I always knew there was another way to understanding this…” It’s really… It blows me away. Every night, at one of these events, I just… Wow. What an amazing thing to be a part of. [WG]: Tell us, what has been your favorite comment from a reader, or, one or two of your favorite comments. […

Special Report: Have Evangelical Colleges Succumbed to “Theological Paranoia”?

By Chrissy Stroop

…orming students are being intimidated, speech is chilled, and academic freedom is on life support.” “Laura” (not her real name), a Wheaton alumna who studies Christian theology, sent RD the following sobering assessment: “Several dimensions of the current situation at Wheaton raise serious doubts as to whether an evangelical Christian liberal arts education is in fact possible.” “The education I received at Wheaton suggested so,” she continued, bu…