THE QUESTION: Why does Islam ban non-Muslims from the holy cities of Mecca and Medina? THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum is among the last people Saudi Arabians might want to listen to. Yet he penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed last month urging Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to end Islam’s longstanding ban against non-Muslims entering the faith’s two holiest locations, Mecca, where the Prophet Muhammad issued the Quran and founded the religion 14... Read more

THE QUESTION: In Islam, what is a fatwa? Why the demand to kill novelist Salman Rushdie? THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: In 1989, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s theocratic ruler, ordered the assassination “without delay” of novelist Salman Rushdie because of his novel “The Satanic Verses.” Remarkably, this official fatwa imposed the duty of freelance killing in the name of God upon masses of Muslim believers in all nations, and also demanded death for the editors and publishers involved with the... Read more

THE QUESTION: What does the Bible teach about abortion? THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: This question is raised by the assertion that the Bible “says nothing about abortion.” So writes Melanie Howard, a Scripture scholar at Fresno Pacific University, a Mennonite Brethren campus self-defined as both “evangelical and ecumenical” that “embodies Christ-centered values.,” Her July 25 article titled “What the Bible actually says about abortion may surprise you” for theconversation.com was widely distributed to Associated Press and Religion News Service clients... Read more

RACHAEL ASKS: Is there a Bible that’s the most accurate? THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: Almost all the varied 20th and 21st Century English translations on sale are sufficiently accurate and can be relied upon, though debates will never end on some details. The first and fundamental aspect of accuracy is experts’ shared consensus on the best available texts in the original languages of Hebrew and Greek that underlie all translations, based upon a far richer body of surviving manuscripts than... Read more

THE QUESTION: What is “Fundamentalism?” THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: After the Presbyterian Church in America decided in June to depart from the National Association of Evangelicals, The Religion Guy wondered in print whether some “evangelicals” are becoming “fundamentalists.” That raises how to define these two similar and historically interrelated versions of conservative Protestantism. Back in 2019, a New York Times Book Review item by a Harvard Divinity School teacher called Jehovah’s Witnesses “fundamentalists” several times. Well, Witnesses do share certain... Read more

THE QUESTION: In the Bible, does St. Peter call women the “weaker sex”? THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: Yes. But why? What did that mean? What was he saying about women’s status in a culture far different from that of the 21st Century? A preliminary point. Word limits do not allow adequate examination here of liberal scholars’ contention that St. Peter did not really write the two New Testament letters the texts attribute to him, or of the reasons conservatives are... Read more

THE QUESTION: According to the Bible, was Solomon a good or a bad king? THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: Both. With the political challenges afflicting the leaders of Britain, France, Israel, Nigeria, Ukraine, the U.S., and other nations, it’s interesting to look back to the rulers in the Bible even though their ancient monarchies were radically different. Among them King Solomon, whose 40-year reign began 2,993 years ago, ranks with his father David in significance. This ever-fascinating figure, portrayed onscreen by... Read more

THE QUESTION: Who should receive Christian Communion? THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: By coincidence, Christianity’s practice for sharing the Communion bread and wine (or juice) is popping up in two separate controversies. Item: San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone sparked an ongoing fuss with his May 19 declaration that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is not to receive the sacrament at Masses in her hometown because she vehemently advocates liberal abortion laws while openly identifying as Catholic. Item: On June 27,... Read more

THE QUESTION: Should religion influence U.S. public policy? For instance, look at Protestants. THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: The media occasionally press this question upon us as, as with a timely May article by Religion News Service columnist Jeffrey Salkin titled “Should religion influence abortion policy?” His thinks not. Salkin acknowledges that “religious ideas are part of the public discourse” but even so “those ideas cannot determine policy. Public policy must be open to rational discourse, with provable data, and not... Read more

THE QUESTION: Where do major U.S. religious groups stand on the contentious abortion issue? THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER: If the U.S. Supreme Court enacts that draft decision leaked to Politico, within weeks abortion policies will be returned to the 50 states for decision, adding to contention. Religious groups often consider the claims of the two lives, mother and unborn fetus, rather than this as simply a woman’s “decisions about her own body” per Vice President Harris’s formulation. Here are summaries... Read more