The familiar “Protestant-Catholic-Jew” mantra no longer defines American religion. Politicians, bloggers, statisticians, and demographers now conventionally add “Evangelical” to the classifying. When Will Herberg wrote the canonical book Protestant-Catholic-Jew in the mid-fifties, Evangelicals appeared to be marginal at best. In recent decades they make the
Don’t think that just because you live in the king’s house you’re the one Jew who will get out of this alive. If you persist in staying silent at a time like this, help and deliverance will arrive for the Jews from someplace else; but
Poll after poll has found that the Catholic papacy is out-of-step with its increasingly shrinking U.S. flock. On the topic of abortion, 55% of U.S. Catholics do not want the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade decision overturned, 67% favor pre-marital sex, 71% approve of divorce,
There has to be a distinction between “religious conservatives,” and “religious fascists.” Those who seek to deny others basic civil rights, and cast aspersions on assorted minority groups such as gays and illegal immigrants are religious or secular fascists. People like Franklin Graham, Ken Hutcherson,
If there is one thing that is sure as the rising or setting of the sun, it is “Christians” do not like to be called on their crap. They say they help those who are hungry, homeless or on society’s edge because it is the
Listen to the podcast interview with Diana Butler Bass Miracles do happen. They are happening recently in the media world on the church front. Critics are responding to recent attacks on the Episcopal Church. Inspired by reports of the obvious, that that church body has
The two “big kids on the block” of American denominationalism are making front-page and prime-time news this early summer in ways which crowd out other stories of events and trends in most other groups. Only the Mormons are in competition for the spotlight right now.
Inclusivity and religion, inclusivity and Christianity. I know those two words in today’s world seem to reside side by side. We know in our heart one cannot not have one without the other. However, what we experience with inclusivity and religion and/or Christianity, in this
On January 1, The New York Times reported that the Roman Catholic Church had established a “Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter” which will function as an ecclesiastical home for members of the Episcopal Church who wish to transfer their allegiance without giving
A recent study, “A Longitudinal Study of Attempted Religiously Mediated Sexual Orientation Change,” published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, has been hailed by conservative U.S. Christians in publications and websites as a breakthrough. A Christian political group in Australia, the Salt Shakers,