(OPINION) This is an apt time for media to consider U.S.-focused big-think pieces on how religious communities are shaping population trends and, vice versa, how those trends affect religion.
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(OPINION) A blockbuster in the November U.S. Religion Census report said that, taken together, nondenominational Protestants number 21 million and are unquestionably the largest U.S. Protestant group, exceeding by millions the largest denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, and second only to Catholics.
Read More(OPINION) By coincidence, both party leaders in the U.S. House are now Baptists, a faith that outside the South has generally been underrepresented among the political elite. Catholics — think Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Paul Ryan — monopolized the speaker and minority leader posts for much of the 21st century.
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(OPINION) The 2022 report from the Open Doors organization says “persecution of Christians has reached the highest levels” since it began accumulating data for its annual “World Watch List” three decades ago. Hostile incidents have increased by 20% since just 2014, and some 360 million Christians, or 14% of the worldwide total, are said to have faced persecution, harassment or discrimination.
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(OPINION) It turns out women feel disheartened, dishonored and coerced by this supposed “freedom,” and they have good reason to be, says Britain’s Louise Perry in her spirited book “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century” (Polity Press). She assails so-called “liberal feminism” for routinely handing countless women a raw deal.
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(OPINION) After the historically brief leadership of Britain's Liz Truss, Conservative Party members of Parliament this week agreed on Rishi Sunak, a Hindu, to succeed her as prime minister at a moment of severe economic and political turmoil.
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(OPINION) Daniel Pipes penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed last month urging Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to end Islam’s long-standing ban against non-Muslims entering the faith’s two holiest locations, Mecca, where the Prophet Muhammad issued the Quran and founded the religion 14 centuries ago, and Medina, where he led the first Muslim state.
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(OPINION) The two aspects of accuracy is experts’ consensus on the best available texts in the original languages of Hebrew and Greek that underlie all translations, and debates over the accuracy of the English translations drawn from those reliable agreed texts. Modern English Bibles provide candid footnotes that alert readers to important textual variants, which rarely affect basic biblical doctrines.
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(OPINION) 29% of the adult population currently self-describes as either atheist, agnostic or — by far the biggest category — “nothing in particular” regarding religion. Americans depend on what’s called “organized religion,” actual face-to-face gatherings now weakened by both COVID and societal undertow. Organized secularism simply cannot offer a substitute for building and serving communities.
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(OPINION) Religion News Service columnist Jana Riess is a reporter on her faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Given the faith’s 21st century growth alongside setbacks elsewhere in American religion, national and regional media could combine doctrine changes with how Reiss explains the church has fared during and after the COVID-19 crisis.
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(OPINION) Grand Rapids, as much as any northern town a symbolic buckle on an established Bible (especially Calvinist) Belt outside of the South, is divided this election season. Underscoring hopes to flip the Michigan seat, House Democrats’ campaign arm horrified some party stalwarts by spending $435,000 on ads to boost John Gibbs’s name recognition, while undercutting Peter Meijer as the far stronger November opponent.
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(OPINION) In the Bible, does St. Peter call women the “weaker sex”? Jackson Wu, an evangelical theologian with the Global Training Network, raised the question about 1 Peter 3:7. Wu complains that the physical strength explanation “has often been used” to “subtly affirm the inferiority of women.” But some translations include a different interpretation in the text.
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(OPINION) This is the 11th Guy Memo in a year guiding the media and other observers on dynamics within U.S. evangelical Protestantism. Though made up of organizationally chaotic fiefdoms, the movement’s impact rested upon substantial solidarity in belief and social outlook compared with other religious sectors. Then seven years ago the disruptive force known as Donald J. Trump emerged.
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(OPINION) Without explanation, the Biden-Blinken administration removed Nigeria from America’s official listing as a “country of particular concern” on religious persecution while Nigeria is labeled the “most dangerous place to be a Christian” in the world. Why has the alarm over unending atrocities expressed by religious and human-rights media and organizations not broken into the West’s mainstream media in any major way?
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(OPINION) Currently, there is a season of speculation about Pope Francis’ future and whether his newly chosen cardinals are his final bid to shape the conclave that will elect the next pope. Francis has hinted he might consider the idea of resigning, but Vaticanologists figure Francis will not do so as long as another former pope is alive.
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(OPINION) A hundred years ago, Harry Emerson Fosdick threw a bright spotlight on the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, both predicting and demanding that his fellow modernists would win the era’s theological war. Did they?
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(OPINION) The whole country is chattering about Politico's revelation of a draft Supreme Court majority ruling that in coming weeks will presumably return abortion for decisions by each of the 50 states. That’s a huge scoop. But few recall that Time scored an equally big scoop when the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling abolished all abortion laws nationwide.
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(OPINION) As Russia’s invasion sought to erase Ukraine from the map, Moscow’s Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, a key ally of dictator Vladimir Putin, met via video last week with Pope Francis. In the meeting, Francis said Christians should never justify war: “Wars are always unjust, since it is the people of God who pay.”
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(OPINION) Russia's invasion of Ukraine has potential to be "the most transformational" European conflict since World War II. Will it be transformational for Christianity?
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(OPINION) Interviews are forever the linchpin of all original reporting. The key to getting a good interview: preparation. You've probably heard the preacher's rule of one hour of work in the study per one minute in the pulpit. The reporter’s rule is more modest: at least 10 minutes of research per one minute of interviewing.
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