Religion Dispatches
…to become better organized as a political force, even as they increase in number. The major impediment to that kind of organization is the fact that it is very difficult for secularists to conceive of themselves in tribal terms. Most tribes, whether of nations or ethnicities or sports fandom, can easily demarcate their membership—it’s the people who look like us, or talk like us, or dress like us. Tribes organized around religious belief have rit…
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…now that they need to have more children, because their death rates are outnumbering their births rates, and they’re in crisis,” Michelle Duggar told Christian news network CBN last week. “My Body is Not My Own” It’s not only on the campaign trail that the Quiverfull playbook is enjoying a wider audience. Amid all the discussion in recent months about the new fight over contraception—a development that seemed to take much of the mainstream media…
Read More…have the greatest concentration of white supremacists in America), I met a number of Christian pastors and activists. Afterwards, a conservative evangelical told me he felt that Islamophobia and Christophobia were similar (I guess it’s better than denying bigotry exists at all). I also received an e-mail from a participant in the event who came by because of RD: Dear Haroon, Thanks for your talk at WSU tonight and [for] your perspective on things….
Read More…’s Jewishness seems like a weird way to do that. I do, however, like their new video (though I worry about some of its implications): As a strong answer to a question I recently posed in The Forward – why should American Jews care about social justice? – the clip succinctly highlights a century of Jewish social justice concern. It’s compelling viewing. At the same time, both the clip and Bend The Arc’s new website situate this narrative in a Jewis…
Read More…spirituality, meaning-making, and self-realization in my Nones Beyond the Numbers narrative survey.* *The survey results will contribute to three intertwined research projects I am currently conducting on the meaning-making practices of Nones. The first, sponsored in part through the Social Science Research Council’s “New Directions in the Study of Prayer” initiative, will explore the plurality of Nones who say they regularly engage in prayer….
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Amid news that the GOP is trying once again to restart negotiations over their failed ObamaCare “repeal and replace” measure, it’s worth noting that the party’s problems with health care go beyond schisms within the party and Trump’s incompetence. They go to the heart of how seemingly dry public policy issues take on a morality that transcends the actual issues in question. The country faced a similar dilemma in the 1890s over vexing questions of…
Read More…lity and gender. One night this spring I came home late to switch on a PBS news segment about kids as young as 3 years old announcing that they were not the sex they seemed to be. Then there was “S/He,” a feature article in New York magazine, on the challenges presented to the parents of such children, including whether or not to allow them to use drugs to block the onset of puberty even before they transition to the opposite gender as teens. At…
Read MoreThis week Rep. Peter King of New York alleged that “over 80 percent of the mosques in this country are controlled by radical Imams,” based on a remark made 12 years ago by neoconservative-friendly American Muslim leader, Shaykh Hisham Kabbani. In honor of this magic number and the hearings King will hold next month in order to address the “creeping threat of Sharia law,” RD presents the first edition of Life Imitates Satire Imitates Life. In th…
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…ed less-than-orthodox. And even relatively conservative Catholics like the newly-minted Pope Francis would agree that the “Christian moral code” involves a commitment to peace and social justice, which Eberstadt seems to ignore in favor of questions of sexual morality. (To be fair, Simon didn’t ask her about such issues.) But the heart of Eberstadt’s argument is demographics, and just about every piece of social research released in the few years…
Read More…han the Republican base, and includes a far more significant (and growing) number of unaffiliated voters, avowed secularists (who are both non-believers and religious people) and religious minorities. And because more of those people like the Establishment Clause and would shudder at religiously-directed public policy. Given that the Gun Violence Prevention Sabbath had the support of a variety of faith traditions, it’s a good question to ask why i…
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