By Philip L. TiteBulletin for the Study of ReligionAs an historian of early Christianity, I love reading written works from late antiquity. I have a particular fascination with ancient letters, be they communications between ordinary people doing their daily business or personal interactions with friends, family, or others (e.g., the Greek papyri letters from Egypt), or letters that were produced by and circulated among early Christians. In my recent research on an apocryphal Pauline letter from the second century, I... Read more

by Ira ChernusReligion Dispatches When the Obama administration declared that employees of Catholic institutions must have contraception covered in their health plans (before the president’s deft backtracking compromise), one group of religious Americans stood firmly opposed to Obama’s original position. No, it wasn’t Catholics. Despite the bishops’ howls of protest, poll after poll showed Catholics supporting the administration’s new rule. The opposition came from white evangelical Protestants, who stood against Obama by a whopping margin of 56 to 38. Protestants... Read more

The biggest religion stories of 2011 involved tensions over Islam and questions about faith in presidential politics, especially Mormonism, according to an annual review of religion in the news by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) and the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Events and controversies related to Islam also dominated U.S. press coverage of religion in 2010. However, coverage of some stories faded in the past year, notably coverage of the... Read more

by Lisa MillerWashington Post Last week, the Christianity police, in the persons of Rick Santorum and Franklin Graham, came forward to discredit the president’s religious beliefs. First, Santorum called Obama’s theology “phony”; then, on “Morning Joe,” Graham refused to accept Obama into his Christian band of brothers: “He has said he’s a Christian, so I just have to assume that he is.” With rhetoric like this, these Christian conservatives are playing an ancient game. They are using religion to separate... Read more

As far as Islam is concerned, it must be noted that Arab and Muslim majority societies are seriously lacking in spirituality. There is not a deficit of “religion” but of spiritual life. It can be encountered among Islamists, as well as among secularists and ordinary citizens. Religion refers to the framework, to the structure of ritual, to the rights and obligations of believers and, as such, lies at the heart of social and political debate. In the classical Islamic tradition,... Read more

by ANTHEA BUTLERReligion Dispatches Franklin Graham’s Fat Tuesday appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe came with his usual “dog whistle” to the Tea Party and Teavangelicals about Obama being a Muslim. Graham has done this before, back in April of 2011, when he discussed President Obama on This Week with Christiane Amanpour. Graham threw out all of the dog whistles he could, bringing up Jeremiah Wright, and pushing back on the panels’ direct question to him as to whether President Obama... Read more

By JAY MICHAELSONReligion Dispatches If you’ve unplugged your computer and TV for the last week, you may not have heard of Jeremy Lin, the sudden basketball phenomenon, Asian-American hero, and, like Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow before him, out-of-nowhere success story who wears his faith on his sleeve.Lin, like Tebow, is a deeply religious evangelical Christian. And while his own religious utterances have been both humble and thoughtful (Lin went to Harvard, after all), the press swirling around him has... Read more

by Patrick AndersonHuffington Post I am a southerner — born, bred, educated and domiciled. I have been in many other places, both in this country and others, but my accent and worldview betray a deep southern bent. I was raised in a segregated world, educated in all-white schools, worshipped in all-white churches, ate in all-white restaurants, waited in all-white waiting rooms, drank at all-white fountains, swam in all-white public swimming pools, was policed by all-white police departments and otherwise lived... Read more

By Gee JoynerContributor to Rhetoric Race and Religion Now that the spectacle of another iconic American celebrity death and funeral has dissipated (only minutely I may add), I think it is high time that the social commentators and those who keenly critique the nuances of popular culture and the inhabitants thereof compositionally delve into the death of Ms. Whitney Elizabeth Houston. Though I was reluctant to compose a text addressing her untimely death, or timely if you considered the way... Read more

On the premiere weekend of her new show, Melissa Harris Perry tackles the subject of gender and leadership. However, with Dr. Serene Jones, President of Union Theology Seminary and Dr. Anthea Butler, professor of Religion at University of Pennsylvania as her guests, the discussion shifted to how we see and construct God in the public arena. See it below. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640 Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Read more