For the casual viewer of the major party political conventions, the ritual presence of religious leaders (who open and close each night’s events with prayer) may be lost. But the candidates and leadership of both parties are aware of the importance of invoking religion at political conventions: two-thirds (67 percent) of voters – including 66 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of independents, and 78 percent of Republicans – say that it’s important for a presidential candidate to have strong religious... Read more

In preparation for winter camping our Boy Scout Troop would do cold weather first aid training. This included the treatment for hypothermia, the condition that occurs when core body temperature becomes dangerously low due to exposure to cold. For Scouts on winter encampment, treatment meant warming the afflicted scout by stripping down naked with the victim in his sleeping bag. In the late 70s, when I was a Scout, boys reacted to this proposal with exaggerated horror, loud protestations of... Read more

by Brian FoulksR3 Contributor I have grown discontent with the “system” of church. This is not to cast dispersion upon the biblical understanding of church but to identify the mis-education that have befalling the church. It has embraced a prideful stance of bigotry, hatred, racism and sexism disguised in Christian jargon and labeled as religious zeal and piety. It has managed to produce a hate based upon personal dislikes that are not comparable to the hatred that is described by... Read more

Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group on First Hill. On Sunday mornings, Redding puts on the white collar of an Episcopal priest. She does both, she says, because she’s Christian and Muslim. Redding, who until recently was director of faith formation at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, has been a priest for more than 20 years. Now she’s ready to tell people that, for the... Read more

As the Republicans leave Tampa and the Democrats prepare to gather in Charlotte, one dynamic is immediately clear in both parties: For the first time since Abraham Lincoln ran in 1860, no white Protestant will be on the ticket of either major party. Mitt Romney, the newly minted Republican nominee for the White House, is a Mormon, though he clearly does not want to talk publicly about how his faith shapes his identity and personal values. Paul Ryan, his running... Read more

W. David Nelson, a noted scholar of rabbinic literature and the Hebrew Bible at Groton School in Massachusetts, will discuss how the Bible has been used out of context in the past to promote anti-Semitism during a Thursday (Sept. 6) public lecture at the University of Mississippi. Norton’s lecture, “Say Again!: Race, Religion and Realities of Reading the Bible,” is set for 5:30 p.m. in the Overby Center auditorium. The next day (Sept. 7), the scholar will participate in an... Read more

http://dgjigvacl6ipj.cloudfront.net/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf Watch Religion and the Republican Convention on PBS. See more from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Read more

America has been characterized as a nation that tolerates many faiths and somehow keeps diversity from dividing her people. Exactly how true that is may depend on the person you ask. When Akron area people representing a variety of religious persuasions sat in focus groups recently to discuss their beliefs, tolerance became hard work. Differences in core values surfaced immediately. Are there common beliefs among all people? “God is supreme.” “Church and family.” “Love.” One person was shaking her head... Read more

July 29-July 31, 2013 Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration Accra, Ghana On the 150th year anniversary of the “Emancipation Proclamation,” and with participation in August 1 “Emancipation Day” events in Cape Coast This conference will convene in the shadows of the slave castles to examine church responses to contemporary threats to black social, physical, and religious well-being, including political oppression or coercion; group conflict; co-optation of religious life; captivities of persons (e.g., modern slavery, human trafficking, mass incarceration);... Read more

Date: Thursday, October 18, 2012 – 11:00am – Friday, October 19, 2012 – 5:00pm RACE / RELIGION / WARA SYMPOSIUMOCTOBER 18-19, 2012554 BARROWS HALLThis two-day symposium at UC Berkeley will explore the uses of race and religion to establish war as a strategy of political power, and conversely the uses of war to stabilize the epistemologies of race and religion as intimately linked organizing categories of social life—what we might call the “race/religion/war” nexus. This inquiry finds its proximate cause... Read more