New Hampshire is the least religious state in the union and Mississippi is the most religious according to Gallup data. A minority of New Hampshire residents see religion as being important in their daily lives (46 percent) in contrast to a large majority of Mississippians (85 percent). How can such huge differences be explained? The Gallup organization (who collect the data in phone surveys) notes on their website that state differences in religiosity are poorly understood, and they are correct. Astonishingly, researchers have never... Read more

Where is Lou Reed? I know he’s dead, but I mean now that he is dead, where is he? Heaven? Hell? Purgatory? Heading toward the light? Nowhere? Everywhere? I ask this because so many of the obits and essays and celebrations and testimonials speak of Reed’s accomplishments, music, style, and so on while alive, but not a word about the afterlife, or the non-afterlife. Perhaps this is another sign of how irrelevant religion is in twenty-first century America. After all,... Read more

I posted at XX Factor about this website where women set out to shame “homewreckers”, i.e. women who slept with or even “stole” boyfriends or husbands who presumably had a monogamous commitment to another woman. It’s a brief post that doesn’t mention the blog of the woman—titled I’m In Love With A Serial Cheater—who started this shaming site, but I ended up reading many blog posts from it because, to be frank, the experience of being a woman who has completely absconded any... Read more

The 1853 slave narrative Twelve Years a Slave is now a major motion picture directed by Steve McQueen.The film is a faithful rendering of the life of Solomon Northup, a free African American man who is sold into chattel bondage and brutally enslaved. Northup’s life story highlights one of the little-known facets of American slavery: the dangers that free black people faced during the antebellum era, with little legal recourse if they were cheated, harmed, brutalized or even sold into slavery. Northup was eventually... Read more

Dr. Soong-Chan Rah to lead program North Park Theological Seminary, in partnership with Fuller Theological Seminary, is launching a new doctor of ministry in urban ministry leadership this academic year. The doctoral degree program is designed for ministerial leaders to develop the theological foundation and practical skills for effective urban leadership.The program’s cohort model allows students to learn and build relationships with peers also committed to urban ministry. Applications for the program are being taken now, and the first cohort will begin coursework in... Read more

On October 1, 2013, Congress could not agree to a continuing resolution to fund the government and it led to a shutdown. We here at Rhetoric Race and Religion decided to collect writings that examined the shutdown through the lens of religion and spirituality. We invite you to share your own writing or others by contacting us at [email protected] on Twitter @examinereligion or Facebook. Enjoy 1. Governments are People Too: Augustinian Thoughts on the Shutdown2. What kind of Baptists are... Read more

Part One of this blog really struck a nerve. I tried to respond to comments until they began numbering in the hundreds. Virtually everyone has an opinion about why the Church is declining. Fundamentalist Christians think it’s a sign the Church is being purged just before the Rapture and beginning of the end. Some atheists, and those really angry with the Church, just hope it will eventually disappear; sooner would be better. Both are wrong. The Church is not going away,... Read more

Pepperdine University’s Washington, DC program honored the late U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Oregon) in a Senate conference room on October 22 with speaker Randall Balmer, historian of evangelicals, Episcopal priest and Chairman of Dartmouth College’s Religion Department. Balmer’s lecture examined the history of evangelicalism’s — both liberal and conservative — effect on former President Jimmy Carter’s political success and failures. “How it is that the very [evangelical] people who helped catapult [Carter] to the White House in 1976 turned so... Read more

Sandra Roberts on Sunday, Oct. 27, became the first woman to lead a Seventh-day Adventist conference, a controversial move the worldwide church says it will not recognize. Roberts, who last year became one of the first women ordained as an Adventist minister in the United States, was elected president of the five-county, Riverside-based Southeastern California Conference by a 72 to 28 percent margin. A conference is similar to a diocese. Delegates at the meeting in Riverside’s La Sierra University Church... Read more

It took the jury fewer than fifteen minutes to convict substitute teacher John Scopes of the crime of teaching evolution to Tennessee public school students in 1925.  It was the last victory of Christian fundamentalists in their war against the disciples of Darwin, and a hollow one at that.  Although the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law, it reversed the verdict because the trial judge had imposed a $100.00 fine on Mr. Scopes, contrary to a provision in... Read more