(EXCERPT) “Faith-Based Fraud,” by Warren Cole Smith, is a new book on financial and other scandals in the church. Almost a chapter centers around Bernard Madoff, who confessed to one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history.
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(ANALYSIS) Massive crowds are expected to gather at India’s northern city of Haridwar throughout April 2021 for the religious festival of Kumbh Mela, despite the country’s grappling with a COVID-19 surge. The Kumbh Mela is a Hindu pilgrimage held every 12 years and is the world’s largest religious festival, with a total 100 million pilgrims expected over several weeks.
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(OPINION) Though Christianity later became preponderant in Europe and America, the assertion that it is a White man’s religion is neither historically accurate nor theologically correct.
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(ANALYSIS) Across the country, houses of worship are shuttering by the thousands. Municipalities have a role in finding new uses for abandoned buildings that have long anchored communities and neighborhoods.
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ANALYSIS — For all the predictions and talk of a slump in support among evangelicals, it appears Donald Trump’s election loss was not at the hands of religious voters. There was very little notable change in the vote choice of religious groups between 2016 and 2020 – in fact, for most faiths, support for Trump ticked up slightly. Instead, it was among those who do not identify with any religion that Trump saw a noticeable drop.
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Ramadan, which spans the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, is a full month of religious fasting. The associate professor of religious studies and director of the Muslim Studies Program at Michigan State University answers six questions about its importance.
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(OPINION) How do we assess what can be known about people and events from long ago that we ourselves did not witness? One approach is the ideology known as “logical positivism,’ which rules out supernatural claims in advance by definition and thus wipes out many assertions by the great world religions. That’s a simple method, but other philosophers say it’s far too simple.
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Heraldic achievements — a personal ecclesiastical coat of arms — have historically been one of the most important possessions of high-ranking Catholic clergymen and contain layers of meaning. But today they are an increasingly ignored art form inside and outside the Church. Will the Church abandon heraldry traditions going back centuries or will more bishops resurrect the practice?
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(OPINION) In the first decade of the 21st century, the Pew Research Center began charting a surge of religiously unaffiliated Americans, describing this cohort in a 2012 report with this newsy label – "nones." But, hidden under that "nones" umbrella are divisions that deserve attention. For example, the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study found that 5.7% of the American population is atheist, 5.7% agnostic and 19.9% "nothing in particular."
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(ANALYSIS) The study characterizes the Supreme Court’s previous approach to religious freedom as one that interpreted the First Amendment’s religion clauses to offer “weak but meaningful” safeguards for minority faiths from adverse treatment by public policies that privileged “mainstream Christian organizations, practices, or values.” But the study’s authors also admit that conservative Christian values are no longer mainstream.
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An Afghan official told Religion Unplugged that the country plans to repatriate various ancient artifacts they believe were looted from their national museum in the nineties during civil war, including a medieval Hebrew prayer book now in the Museum of the Bible’s possession in Washington, D.C. The 1200-year-old prayer book is the world’s oldest Hebrew manuscript after the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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(ANALYSIS) The culture wars have been on full display during the first two months of the Biden presidency. It isn’t so much that Joe Biden is fueling the wars — he’s actually steered clear of many of these recent battles that brew on Twitter and cable TV news. How the press covers his faith, however, isn’t helping matter.
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Bobby wrestles with a nasty finger infection. Meanwhile, evangelical leaders encourage congregants to take the COVID-19 vaccine, and a crucifix in a Michigan church was finally restored after being destroyed by a squirrel.
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(REVIEW) Horror movies have long been influenced by religious tradition, often involving evil spirits and possession. These are some of the most notable horror movies with religious themes, including new movie “The Unholy” — which follows a girl after she believes she’s been visited by the Virgin Mary.
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Thousands of Kashmiris are flocking to Sufi shrines this Ramadan, where their faith and worship is taking a leading role in their healing from trauma, depression, PTSD and other mental health issues.
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(OPINION) Sarah J. Robinson, author of “I Love Jesus, but I Want to Die,” offers crucial information about shame for mental health disorders in the modern church through her own experience as someone diagnosed with suicidal depression.
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Ministers from Churches of Christ on Monday joined Texas lawmakers and the family of Botham Jean at the Texas State Capitol in Austin to promote the Botham Jean Act — a bill proposed to ensure systemic accountability for Texans in their own home in response to Botham Jean’s murder in 2018.
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(OPINION) If the bike tire’s losing air, first fix the flat. Then reinflate. Our three awakenings quickly deflated because American Christianity kept trying to reinflate a leaking tire instead of first fixing it. Will “wokeness” have the same effect?
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The pandemic has prompted composers to create new sacred music of all kinds — hymns, liturgical music, prayers, praise music and more. These are not limited to one religion, but have cropped up in Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic and Protestant circles.
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(OPINION) Does Christianity believe in the “immortality of the soul”? No — Instead, Christianity teaches that just as Jesus arose bodily from the grave, so the promise of everlasting life involves a person’s eventual resurrection that unites the soul with the body in a newly glorified state.
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