Our Death Mounds

As the Western suburbs of Chicago go, it’s a spectacular view. To the distant north is the angular, imposing steeple of Wheaton Bible Church. To the south looms the imperious tower of Fermilab, guarding its unnaturally circular particle accelerator. Continue Reading »

Who Am I To Judge?

At noon I have to be at the local Catholic school—let’s call it St. Dismas—to train altar servers. I will arrive a few minutes early, and by 12:05 most of the kids will have trickled in. We are in Southern California, so most of the boys at St. Dismas wear short pants year-round. Students are required to attend one Mass per month with the school, but it has never occurred to anyone, not their parents, not the pastor, not the teachers, and certainly not the students, that they should wear pants to Mass. The girls wear skirts that in 1966 would have been described as “micro-minis.” When I told the boys’ parents that I expected them to wear their uniform pants to Mass when they become servers, the school principal—a genial thirty-something man who insists on the rigorous use of the title “Dr.” but often wears sweatpants and flip-flops to work—cornered me outside his office for a talk. He warned me that I might get some pushback from parents on the pants requirement. “We are only a medium-Catholic school,” he informed me. “We’re not really that Catholic.” Continue Reading »

Why Christians Care About Sex

A new study out this week shows widening gaps in how different demographics in America approach sexuality and family. The Relationships in America study, produced by the Austin Institute, looks at “how social forces, demography, and religion continue to shape attitudes about family and intimate relationships.” The findings are notable, boosted by a survey that draws from 15,738 respondents ages eighteen to sixty, a very large and representative sample of the general population of the United States. Continue Reading »

The Coming Methodist Revival?

These days, when outsiders consider Methodism, they tend to quickly assume that it is just withering away on its deathbed. But before checking for a pulse, observers ought to call to mind its history, particularly its vigorous beginnings. John Wesley preached to thousands from his father’s grave after being muzzled by the Anglican Church, and when the movement he spearheaded crossed the Atlantic, American Methodism spread on horseback as its dedicated circuit-riders expanded their territory along with the young nation. According to Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, in 1776, Methodists made up only a sliver of the religious pie, just some 2.5 percent of worshipers. By 1850, however, Methodism was by far the largest expression of Christianity in the United States, claiming over a third of all the nation’s religious adherents. Continue Reading »

Secularization Thesis

With characteristic gleeful verve, Rodney Stark assaults secularization theory in his Triumph of Christianity.Secularization theory revived, he says, a charge brought against religious pluralism by “monopoly religions: that disputes among religious groups undermine the credibility of . . . . Continue Reading »

The World’s Homeless Shelter

The Economist contrasts the Chinese response to the Philippine typhoon with the American one: “The initial response from China was niggardlya mere $100,000. It was hard not to see this as a slap on the wrist for the Philippines temerity in standing up to China over disputed shoals in the . . . . Continue Reading »

American Muslims

Kirk Davis Swinehart reviews Denise Spellberg’s Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders in the NYTBR this week. Spellberg “”traces the partial origins of American religious toleration to a single day in 1765 when Jefferson, then studying law at the College of . . . . Continue Reading »

Stoic America

As summarized in NT Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God , Seneca can sound like Emerson in his awed response to the haunts of nature: “If ever you have come upon a grove that is full of ancient trees which have grown to an unusual height, shutting out a view of the sky by a veil . . . . Continue Reading »