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Civil Religion v. Uncivil Religion; With Deadly Consequences

By Daniel Schultz

…ch of ourselves, into a phenomenological approach: sometimes religion is a net positive. Sometimes it is not. Much of the time, it’s a confusing muddle. We try to look at it from many different angles, not to praise it or kill it, but mostly just to observe it for what is and how it is lived, whether good, bad, or weird. Ordinarily, we would not ask you to judge between two competing religious practices. I certainly have no interest in weighing in…

The Problem with Pew’s Science & Religion Poll

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…to say that their personal religious beliefs conflict with science. Time, CNET, and LiveScience all took up this angle, and many chalked this up to hypocrisy. LiveScience’s Tia Ghose, for example, interprets Pew’s report to indicate that Americans perceive anti-science to be “a problem with those other people.” CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk attributes this to a holier-than-thou attitude that’s fundamental to human nature. If we remind ourselves that Pew…

Holey Holey Holey: The Problem with a New Study Valuing Religion at $1.2 Trillion Per Year

By Michael Schulson

…s educational institutions, charities, media organizations, and healthcare networks, and adds that to the multibillion dollar kosher and halal foods industry and to an estimate of the total revenue of American religious congregations. To get that final number, the Grims took one estimate of the total number of congregations in America (344,894) and multiplied it by another estimate of the average revenue of each ($242,910). Depending on how you lo…

New Book: God Favors Supply-Side Economics

By Gordon Haber

…ivate donations handle it? Thank goodness for Cincinnati pastor and Beliefnet blogger Chad Hovind who knows exactly how to help the poor—and even to end the Great Recession. Turns out we don’t need any fancy economists or earthly expertise of any kind. All the answers are in the Bible. Or so Hovind claims in his new book, Godonomics: How to Save Our Country—and Protect Your Wallet—Through Biblical Principles of Finance, published by Multnomah Boo…

Francis Must Make Changes to Have a Real Effect

By Patricia Miller

…trine typo was just that, as was the difference in Francis’ and Benedict’s net favorability rating, which is 11 points, not 6. But my point remains. Given the near-consensus that Benedict’s papacy was pretty much a disaster for the church, I find it a bit surprising that three-quarters of Catholics still had a generally favorable view of the guy. To me, as I said, it suggests that most Catholics don’t pay much attention to the particulars in Rome…

New Research May Explain the Weakness of Centrism and the Religious Left

By Daniel Schultz

…life candidate (or even conceding too much ground on the issue) would be a net loser: you lose about 6% of Dems by ticking off pro-lifers, and 17% by cheesing off the pro-choicers. As the party includes more religiously unaffiliated voters, these numbers only increase. It would be a terrible mistake for Democrats to follow Day’s advice and seek a “big tent” on this issue to defeat Trump. They need to keep their 94% fired up and ready to ride, not…

New Bailout For Hypocrites

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…the country put together possess. We now owe nearly $57 trillion while our net worth is $56.5 trillion. President-elect Barack Obama has said that we can expect a trillion dollars in additional debt each year as far as the eye can see into the future. Soon Obama will ask Congress for an additional trillion dollars to bail out certain large companies. Remember when they gave $350 billion to the banks? That money is gone and guess what? The banks ca…

Is the Francis Era Ending the Catholic Bishops’ Cozy Ties to the GOP?

By Patricia Miller

…y criticized the budgets put forward by Ryan because they would gut safety net programs for the poor. But this isn’t surprising given the enduring ties between institutional Republicans and the conservative wing of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Dolan and his ilk have been cozy with the leadership of the GOP since the Bush administration, when a number of archbishops and cardinals openly campaigned for Bush. It was in the bishops’ intere…

One of These Things is Not Like the Other: Religion and the Obama Campaign

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…the Wall Street Journal, Steven Waldman, founder of the online site Beliefnet made several interesting observations about the current climate of political campaigning. Now admittedly, there is a long tradition of Republican sniping at “liberal” concerns that they’ve wedded themselves too closely to evangelical Christianity. And Waldman is surely right to suggest that one cannot simultaneously lionize Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s involvement in Eb…

A Lone Blogger vs. the McCain-Hagee Alliance

By Bruce Wilson

…rd-Faith evangelist Kenneth Copeland and sent out via Hagee’s broadcasting network, a co-sermon in which Copeland declared divine power to be a technology humans could learn and wield. It was a classic form of Christian heresy and yet, as with many aspects of the evolving Christian right culture, such views have generally been ignored as marginal by the American mainstream. So why did Senator McCain pursue John Hagee’s endorsement for over a year,…