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Category: Religion

The forgotten role of religion in science writing

The forgotten role of religion in science writing

Adam Shapiro writes: It’s been nearly 30 years—a generation!—since professional science communication as a field began to seriously push back against what’s been called the knowledge deficit model (sometimes just called the “deficit model.”) (See “The Trust Fallacy,” July–August 2021.) That model describes a way of thinking about people’s understanding and acceptance of scientific knowledge, supposing that the greatest barrier to scientific literacy was a lack—or deficit—of information about a topic. If only people better understood evolution, the thinking went,…

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Churches target new members, with help from Big Data

Churches target new members, with help from Big Data

The Wall Street Journal reports: Struggling with grief? Too much debt? On the verge of divorce? Churches are ready to deliver a digital intervention, with help from Big Data. A small company called Gloo has put itself at the forefront of an effort to analyze Americans’ personal data and online activities to help churches reach people most likely to be open to their messages and join their congregations. The more surgical method of evangelization borrows techniques long used by businesses…

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Desmond Tutu 1931-2021

Desmond Tutu 1931-2021

On June 24, 2021, His Holiness the Dalai Lama reunited online with Archbishop Desmond Tutu from his residence in Dharamsala, HP, India, on the occasion of the release of their new movie “Mission: Joy – Finding Happiness in Troubled Times.”   The New York Times reports: As leader of the South African Council of Churches and later as Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, Archbishop Tutu led the church to the forefront of Black South Africans’ decades-long struggle for freedom. His…

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His reasons for opposing Trump were Biblical. Now a top Christian editor is out

His reasons for opposing Trump were Biblical. Now a top Christian editor is out

The New York Times reports: When Marvin Olasky gets angry emails from readers — more often than not about an exposé of wrongdoing at an evangelical church, or about a story that reflects poorly on Donald Trump — he has a stock reply. “We think this is useful to the Church,” he tells disgruntled readers, “because we are also sinners.” As the longtime editor of World, a Christian news organization that has a website, a biweekly magazine and a set…

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Sikh ethics sees self-centeredness as the source of human evil

Sikh ethics sees self-centeredness as the source of human evil

Keshav Singh writes: According to the Sikh worldview, the whole is prior to its parts. The level of reality at which we are all individuals is a less fundamental reality than the level at which we are all One. This is a different worldview from that of most philosophers in the Western canon, who have usually posited the individual as fundamental. Western philosophers tend to think of the parts (us) as prior to the whole (if any whole even exists)….

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Why ‘evangelical’ is becoming another word for ‘Republican’

Why ‘evangelical’ is becoming another word for ‘Republican’

Ryan Burge writes: The conventional wisdom about religion in the United States is that the number of people who have no religious affiliation is rising rapidly. In the 1970s, secular Americans (often called the Nones) made up just 5 percent of the population; now, that number has climbed to at least 30 percent. The data suggest that religious groups must be suffering tremendous losses as the Nones continue to increase in size and influence each year. That’s why a recent…

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Christians must reclaim Jesus from his church

Christians must reclaim Jesus from his church

Peter Wehner writes: The election of the elders of an evangelical church is usually an uncontroversial, even unifying event. But this summer, at an influential megachurch in Northern Virginia, something went badly wrong. A trio of elders didn’t receive 75 percent of the vote, the threshold necessary to be installed. “A small group of people, inside and outside this church, coordinated a divisive effort to use disinformation in order to persuade others to vote these men down as part of…

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For many American Muslims, the legacy of 9/11 lies in the battle for civil rights

For many American Muslims, the legacy of 9/11 lies in the battle for civil rights

NPR reports: Soon after [the attacks], like so many Muslims in the United States, a different fear set in [for Ali Malik]: that his faith would be associated with the 19 hijackers. What followed were two decades of policies that civil rights advocates say add up to the religious profiling and unlawful surveillance of Muslims in the U.S. under the broad banner of national security. “My life at that time was completely different I would say to my life afterwards,”…

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Anti-Defamation League head: We were wrong to oppose location of Manhattan Islamic center

Anti-Defamation League head: We were wrong to oppose location of Manhattan Islamic center

Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of the ADL writes: Around the world Jews are celebrating the High Holy Days. During this time, Jews focus on the need for Teshuvah, or self-examination and repentance. But self-examination need not be limited to individuals. Institutions, especially century-old institutions like ADL, also can commit to the practice of self-examination and Teshuvah. And it is in this spirit that I have been reflecting on a stance ADL took 11 years ago when we…

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The Christian right is in decline, and it’s taking America with it

The Christian right is in decline, and it’s taking America with it

Michelle Goldberg writes: The presidency of George W. Bush may have been the high point of the modern Christian right’s influence in America. White evangelicals were the largest religious faction in the country. “They had a president who claimed to be one of their own, he had a testimony, talked in evangelical terms,” said Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of the 2016 book “The End of White Christian America.” Back then, much…

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White evangelicals now outnumbered by mainline Protestants in U.S.

White evangelicals now outnumbered by mainline Protestants in U.S.

New York Magazine reports: The new “2020 Census of American Religion” from the Public Religion Research Institute is out, and while it has a number of interesting findings, the most surprising is that among white Christians, mainline Protestants have reversed a long-standing decline in membership and have now surged past Evangelical Protestants. The survey measured self-identification among white Christians as “evangelical”/“born-again” Protestant or “other” Protestant, so it is not correlated to institutional membership in this or that denomination. But generally…

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Researchers identify brain circuit for spirituality

Researchers identify brain circuit for spirituality

Brigham and Women’s Hospital reports: More than 80 percent of people around the world consider themselves to be religious or spiritual. But research on the neuroscience of spirituality and religiosity has been sparse. Previous studies have used functional neuroimaging, in which an individual undergoes a brain scan while performing a task to see what areas of the brain light up. But these correlative studies have given a spotty and often inconsistent picture of spirituality. A new study led by investigators…

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Why it matters that seven U.S. states still have bans on atheists holding office

Why it matters that seven U.S. states still have bans on atheists holding office

Above the Tennessee State Capitol, only skies. In it, any atheists? AP Photo/Mark Humphrey By Kristina M. Lee, Colorado State University Tennessee’s Constitution includes a provision that bars three groups from holding office: atheists, ministers and those engaging in duels. Efforts are under way in the state legislature to remove this exclusion for ministers, but not for duelists – or atheists. In January 2021, Republican Tennessee State Senator Mark Pody proposed Senate Joint Resolution 55 to amend Article IX of…

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The evangelical politician who doesn’t recognize his faith — or his party

The evangelical politician who doesn’t recognize his faith — or his party

Emma Green writes: Bill Haslam is not a natural fit for the Donald Trump–era Republican Party. The former Tennessee governor checks certain GOP boxes: He favors low taxes and opposes abortion rights; his background is in business, including an executive role in his family’s highly successful truck-stop chain. But during his time in office, Haslam also got in trouble with his base for vetoing a bill that would have declared the Bible Tennessee’s official state book. He successfully championed Tennessee…

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Modi’s bulldozing of parliament shows him as the architect of a Hindu Taliban

Modi’s bulldozing of parliament shows him as the architect of a Hindu Taliban

Anish Kapoor writes: At the heart of New Delhi, the capital of India, sits a Mughal-inspired monument that houses the seat of the Indian parliament. Built by the British architect Edwin Lutyens between 1911 and 1931, the parliament buildings and their grand roadways and water channels follow the form established by the Islamic rulers of Iran and elaborated by the Islamic sultanate of Samarkand and the Mughal rulers of India. Lutyens designed perhaps the most important Islamic-inspired edifice of modern…

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Kumbh Mela: How a superspreader festival seeded Covid across India

Kumbh Mela: How a superspreader festival seeded Covid across India

The Guardian reports: On 12 April, as India registered another 169,000 new Covid-19 cases to overtake Brazil as the second-worst hit country, three million people gathered on the shores of the Ganges. They were there, in the ancient city of Haridwar in the state of Uttarakhand, to take a ritual dip in the holy river. The bodies, squashed together in a pack of devotion and religious fervour, paid no visible heed to Covid protocols. This was one of the holiest…

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