Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s been common knowledge since the coronavirus pandemic arrived in America several years ago that empty pews have sharply increased, as churches, often controversially, closed their doors to protect congregants from spread of the deadly disease among their flocks. But in reading some year-old statistics on the pandemic’s effects on religious ritual, I was surprised […]
Christianity
Posted inThe Secular
The Bill of Rights is the baby in the manger
Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s that time of year again. Red and green decorations dominate the landscape. Mariah has come out of her 11-month hibernation to serenade us with her Christmas carols. Time again to trade cookies with the neighbors and to watch a decked out pine tree die slowly in the living room. Jesus is hard to miss […]
Posted inReligion
Captive audiences: Why Uber and Lyft are evangelicals’ newest mission field
Reading Time: 10 minutes Recently, Hemant Mehta asked a very good question: “Why are Lyft and Uber letting Christian drivers preach at passengers?” It’s a very good question. Uber and Lyft have not, as of this writing, explained why they allow this. Another good question is how evangelicals got to the point where preaching at captive audiences has become […]
Posted inLeaving Religion
Not so much better angels: Celebrating with the ghosts of Christmas past
Reading Time: 3 minutes Despite Catholicism lurking in the background, Christmas was a magical time when I was a kid. Jesus was watching but from a respectful distance. Even when my old aunties came to visit, he kept quiet. Well mostly. He apparently insisted we give him thanks for our meals and upper-middle-class lifestyle in sunny 1980s Southern California. […]
Posted inCulture
On Margaret Mead and healed thigh bones: Not all compelling stories are true
Reading Time: 7 minutes I’ve loved Margaret Mead ever since first reading her classic Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization. I read it more than 50 years ago as a clueless college sophomore. There was something seductive about this diminutive, headstrong, homely, strikingly honest young woman, intrepid enough to will herself […]
Posted inCulture
The road to hell: How a Christian missionary lost his life for nothing
Reading Time: 2 minutes In 2018, a missionary named John Allen Chau was killed by residents of North Sentinel Island, owned by India and home to the Sentinelese, one of the Andaman tribal people. After the decimation of the Amazon rainforest, they may be the only remaining Stone-Age-adjacent tribe on the planet. Chau was a Christian who felt it was […]
Posted inReligion
Catholic power politics boil even closer to schism
Reading Time: 9 minutes American hardliners in Catholic leadership are dragging their religion closer and closer to schism. They absolutely despise Pope Francis, and lately they’ve been ramping up their defiance of him. The hardliners’ defiance hit a fever pitch last month at a big conference, which makes schism even more of a possibility. Meanwhile, the rank-and-file Catholics in […]
Posted inParenting & Family
Are religious hospitals inappropriate for secular kids?
Reading Time: 3 minutes I have been very fortunate that my son hasn’t had to make too many trips to the emergency room— a fact that an ER physician pointed out while he was stitching up my son’s eyebrow after a tumble on some bleachers. He was around ten years old, and we had been exercising at a local […]
Posted inReligion
The atheist worldview beats the Christian worldview
Reading Time: 4 minutes Christians might sidestep that whole evidence and argument thing, but they’ve got a winner with their worldview! The Christian worldview is just happier. Or is it?
Posted inPolitics
Nancy Pelosi’s swan song implies America is a Christian nation
Reading Time: 3 minutes US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s epoch-ending, gavel-passing speech Thursday on the floor of the House demonstrated—the Founding Fathers’ vision of secular governance notwithstanding—how casually and normatively embedded Christianity remains at the summit of American government. Speaker Pelosi’s “swan song” as the revered, two-decade leader of Congressional Democrats and final arbiter of House public-policy priorities was […]