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Have We Evolved to Be Religious?

We humans have many varieties of religious experience. One of the most common is self-transcendence — a feeling becoming part of something larger, grander and nobler. Most people experience this at...

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Should We Bring Heaven Down to Earth?

As the world’s Christians prepare to commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, a debate over heaven is not as sexy or politically charged as other familiar battles in the American...

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The Lesson of the ‘Jesus Is Not a Homophobe’ T-Shirt

Good news for Ohio’s gay and lesbian students: You can be openly gay once a year now that Wayne Local School District officials have granted a small concession, after a little nudge from a lawsuit, and...

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Are We Sliding Backward on Teaching Evolution?

Tennessee was the center of the national debate when it prosecuted John Thomas Scopes for the crime of teaching evolution. Now, 87 years after the Scopes “monkey trial,” Tennessee is once again a...

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How Faith and Health Go Hand in Hand

Rick Warren changed my world view within an hour of my meeting him. We were speaking in earnest about the work he is doing to deliver basic health services in Sub-Saharan Africa. I was impressed by his...

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The Catholic Contraction

If you want some perspective on just how benighted the Roman Catholic Church looks today on the subject of women, consider Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard was a German Benedictine nun in the 12th...

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Why We’re Still Catholics

Before this month, there was just one Bill telling me to leave the Roman Catholic Church. That was Bill Donohue, the dyspeptic president of the conservative Catholic League. Donohue dislikes my...

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Sorry, Rome, U.S. Catholics Are More like Melinda Gates

Conservative Roman Catholics can handle it when non-Catholics oppose Vatican doctrine. But when other Catholics publicly disagree with church dogma and still have the audacity to call themselves...

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God and Gays

There is something by now familiar, even reassuring, about what happens in my church every third summer. I am an Episcopalian, and I can reliably look forward to popular news coverage of the church’s...

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Take Hate off the Plate

Recently, Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy had some unkind things to say about gay families, and a lot of people (present company included) didn’t care for his comments one bit. That shouldn’t surprise you:...

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Is Paul Ryan’s Budget ‘Un-Christian’?

Americans often tell pollsters they yearn for a return to the Christian principles on which the U.S. was founded. If so, they should take a closer look at the Mitt Romney–Paul Ryan ticket. Jesus’...

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Don’t Let Paul Ryan Become a Religious Lightning Rod

The Roman Catholic Church has a reputation for clubbiness. (A Protestant arrives in heaven and asks St. Peter if he can visit some of his old Catholic friends. “Best if you didn’t,” Peter tells him....

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Why Mother Teresa Still Matters

How do secular people remember a saint? As Mother Teresa‘s birthday on August 26th and the anniversary of her death on September 5th approach, I found myself thinking about this. I tried to imagine...

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Why I’m a One-Issue Voter

I have never voted in a Presidential election on one issue alone, but I will this year. We all know there are crucial economic and social issues. If you are out of a job, what could be more pressing?...

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Jesus’ Wife Matters a Lot — and Not at All

The Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests — a breakaway group founded in 2002 — sent out an e-mail yesterday announcing that its bishops will ordain six new female clerics next month. (The howl...

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Is This The Mormon Moment?

According to his memoirs, Richard Nixon believed that he lost the 1960 election because his opponent, John F. Kennedy, was a Roman Catholic. The Kennedy machine managed to “turn the election partially...

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How Mitt Romney’s Faith Could Help Him Win

For Mormons, America is a very special place indeed. It’s central to the story of their faith; it was home to the Garden of Eden and will be the site of the Second Coming of Jesus. The notion of...

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Empty Pews: Everyone Is Misreading the New Numbers of Religiously ‘Unaffiliated’

Earlier this week, while men in miters hunkered down in Rome for the start of a bishops synod on how to make the Roman Catholic Church more relevant to the 21st Century—which coincides with the 50th...

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The Decline of the Wasp President

The New York Times headline was straightforward: “Study Finds That Percentage of Protestant Americans Is Declining.” We knew this was coming; trend lines have been moving in that direction for years....

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Pulpit Freedom: Should Churches Endorse Political Candidates?

On Sunday Oct. 7, about 1,500 pastors of various faiths engaged in an organized act of civil disobedience: they endorsed political candidates from the pulpit, and many will continue to do so until...

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