(OPINION) Baseball is deeply ingrained in American life, from the ritualistic way viewers consume the sport to the faith of the individual players. Bryan Steverson, author of "Baseball: A Special Gift from God," talks about the spiritual role of baseball.
Read More(OPINION) Recent Supreme Court decisions have dealt heavily with LGBTQ rights and religious exemptions for these rights. It presents mainstream journalists with a test: to manage fair coverage of religious traditions that resist both same-sex relationships and gender identity as a replacement for DNA biology.
Read More(OPINION) The July 8 Supreme Court decision allows religious institutions to choose teachers who align with their spiritual commitments. This is especially important for minority faiths like Judaism and Islam.
Read MoreThis week’s Weekend Plug-in explores news coverage of churches as superspreaders of the coronavirus, plus top reads on a megachurch investigation, a Washington, D.C., church’s history and the faith angle on Kanye West’s potential White House bid.
Read More(ANALYSIS) For all the fallout caused by the virus (and how various states have handled it) and the divisions in this country around issues like race, the presidential election could — once again — be decided by a handful of majority Catholic counties in four states by voters who care about abortion and religious liberty.
Read More(OPINION) Take a look back at “The Bible Code,” the 1997 book that claimed that the Hebrew Bible’s text contained secretly coded, uncanny predictions of phenomena across the subsequent thousands of years that could only be revealed through modern computers. Did it ever prove anything?
Read More(OPINION) Pope Francis, who has consistently drawn the ire of Catholic media on the doctrinal right, gave his view of what the religious press should look like in the United States.
Read More(OPINION) The Hagia Sophia was once a Christian Orthodox church in the Byzantine era. Now, Turkish leaders want to convert Hagia Sophia – a museum for decades – back into a mosque.
Read More(OPINION) As Italians gained in power, Columbus Day officially became a U.S. federal holiday starting in 1968. Amerigo Vespucci, however, is barely mentioned in American classrooms.
Read MoreAs Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, Weekend Plug-in marks its six-month anniversary and offers its usual lineup of insight, analysis and top headlines from the world of religion news.
Read More(OPINION) Many Americans rely on politicians instead of priests or other religious leaders to guide their views of gun control in the United States. The data tells a compelling story — Americans of all religious faiths are less supportive of gun control now than at any point in the last two decades.
Read More(OPINION) A sexuality which severs our spiritual selves from our bodies leaves women with nowhere to go – quite literally. But is that not just the other side of the same coin as Harvey Weinstein, where men assume that a friendly woman wants something?
Read More(OPINION) We are living in a moment of deep suffering for African Americans: the modern Zipporahs of the U.S. Too many Americans, like Miriam, think and speak with bias or hatred. Too many Americans, like Aaron, go along with it, whether through laughter, shrugging or silence. The Bible does not let us deny this problem; it presents a solution.
Read More(OPINION) Despite the international connections of Hong Kong’s religious minorities, especially Christians, the American media has largely ignored new threats from China on the democratic region.
Read More(OPINION) India needs to urgently tackle its problems of obvious intolerance and police brazenness against members of the minority Muslim community and those who protest the government. Recent viral videos show physical attacks and intimidation have become commonplace, particularly under the guise of enforcing COVID-19 lockdown measures.
Read More(OPINION) Conversations surrounding structural racism and how to address it have risen to national attention, particularly in the disparate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color and in recent incidents of violence against Black people. This interview explores one pastor’s vision for the role of community-based, Black congregations and faith-based nonprofits in advancing solutions relevant to structural racism.
Read More(OPINION) The Kutupalong refugee camps in Bangladesh are inhabited primarily by the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group that fled mass atrocities in Myanmar. Amid the spread of COVID-19, there is a growing fear that the refugees will now face further threat to their lives, as the camps are more densely populated than New York City.
Read MoreWith Election Day four-plus months away, religion angles abound on the race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. Find links to some of the week’s most interesting faith-and-politics news in the latest Plug-in.
Read More(OPINION) The white-majority mainstream media often ignore the news of Black religion. Reporters should pay more attention to how African-American newspapers are treating the coronavirus crisis, with its disproportionate impact on communities of color, alongside the nationwide reckoning on police conduct, structural racism and protests.
Read More(OPINION) With Turkey President Erdoğan’s AKP party having suffered losses in municipal elections, his response to these drawbacks has been to emphasize his Sunni-Islamic credentials and to link these to the restoration of the splendors of the Ottoman Empire. One aspect of this propaganda effort has been to threaten the status of Hagia Sophia.
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