Whoever the new Pope will be, he will have the chance to address the 900 pound gorilla staring down the Catholic Church, namely the constant sexual abuse scandals. I am a Jew who wishes to see the Catholic Church flourish. I count myself fortunate to have met Pope Benedict prior to his resignation and remember his humility, graciousness, and warmth. As I travel the world I am awed by the global network of schools, orphanages, and hospitals run by the... Read more

First of all, heartfelt thanks for what my Brother Andrew told us. Thank you so much! Thank you so much! It is a source of particular joy to meet you today, delegates of the Orthodox Churches, the Oriental Orthodox Churches and Ecclesial Communities of the West. Thank you for wanting to take part in the celebration that marked the beginning of my ministry as Bishop of Rome and Successor of Peter. Yesterday morning, during the Mass, through you, I recognised... Read more

Thirty-five years ago, having lost the moral battle for segregation, a small group of evangelicals met to rethink their attitude toward politics. Unlike Catholics and mainline Protestants, evangelicals had tended to stay out of secular politics, believing it to be irredeemable. But with the IRS’s decision to withdraw tax-exempt status from the evangelical Bob Jones University, which discriminated against African-Americans, the Christian right was born. Their mission, they said, was to defend “religious liberty.” Today is a different age—but the players,... Read more

This weekend, NPR’s Scott Simon invited Mary Eberstadt, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, to discuss what lies ahead for the Catholic Church under Pope Francis. Eberstadt used the opportunity to promote the thesis of her forthcoming book,How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization. Despite its title, Eberstadt’s book—and her interview with Simon—peddled a well-worn idea. As Eberstadt herself put it, Over time, the churches that have tried to lighten up the Christian moral... Read more

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Most Americans who oppose gay rights and same-sex marriage justify their opposition by turning to the Bible. But does the Bible really oppose homosexuality? You’d be surprised. At the end of March, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, which denies gay Americans the right to legally marry. Major polls show most Americans in support of marriage equality. Still a vocal and well-heeled right-wing evangelical opposition presents a formidable obstacle. Why? Because of... Read more

The third episode of the History Channel’s ratings-shattering series, The Bible, moves from the Israelite scriptures of Judaism and Christianity to the New Testament added by Christians to the canon we share with Judaism. I have previously responded to some of the issues of the series here and here and here. Today I’d like to reflect on some of the differences between the scriptures that Jesus knew and preached and the ones presented and, to some degree, created by the... Read more

Sometime last year, the US quietly passed a milestone demographers had long been predicting: for the first time in its history, this country is no longer majority Protestant. Fewer than 50 percent of Americans now identify as Protestant Christians of any denomination. This change has come on surprisingly recently, and from a historical perspective, with breathtaking speed.As recently as 1993, almost two-thirds of Americans identified as Protestants, a number that had remained stable for the several preceding decades. But sometime in... Read more

By Earle Fisher R3 Contributor *This is an excerpt of a paper originally presented at the National Council of Black Studies on March 14, 2013 in Indianapolis, Indiana  One of the classic works on prophecy is Abraham Joshua Heschel’s “The Prophets.”  Heschel projects theories of God’s connection to the ancient 8th century Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament and eloquently waxes concepts relative to their psychology, rhetoric and mission.[1]  As is the case with conventional concepts of covenantal theology, we... Read more

The number of Americans who claim to have no religious affiliation is the highest it has ever been since data on the subject started being collected in the 1930s, new research has found. Sociologists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Duke University analyzed results from the General Social Survey and found that the number of people who do not consider themselves part of an organized religion has jumped dramatically in recent years. Back in the 1930s and 1940s, the number of “nones” —... Read more