Where Christianity intersects with politics, culture, and entertainment.
U.S. President Barack Obama’s multiple references to Planned Parenthood in the second presidential debate showed how keen he is to sway female voters in swing states. He may have emboldened another demographic in the process, without making an overt appeal. I’m talking about secular Americans. Compared with their religious peers, this bloc of Americans is…
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You've heard it suggested that the United States is simply Europe on a 50-year delay. Most churches will be museums before your grandchildren reach adulthood. Though new numbers from Pew Research released this month point to a decline in American Protestants, no serious scholar believes that Christianity in America is on a trajectory of extinction.…
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There's been a lot of talk about where faith-based groups stand on the issues and the candidates in the presidential campaign, but not so much about the faithless. Now the Secular Coalition for America, an advocacy group for atheists, has issued a report card on the candidates that knocks both major party candidates for injecting…
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The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling. In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased…
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A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed by an organization that includes atheists and agnostics over a Pennsylvania House resolution declaring 2012 the "Year of the Bible" but criticized the language endorsed by lawmakers as "proselytizing and exclusionary." U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner on Monday agreed with House Republicans that the suit filed…
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The Secular Coalition for America today denounced a resolution (H. RES. 789) introduced in the U.S. House by Stephen Fincher (TN-8) that attempts to “reaffirm the importance of religion in the lives of United States citizens” and makes reference to the country’s “Judeo-Christian heritage.” Fincher’s resolution cites a number of cases of religious symbolism or…
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Let’s be clear about this: I have never been, nor will I ever be a fan of athletics at the University of Tennessee. As an Alabama Crimson Tide fan, it simply would be sacrilegious. Besides, that gaudy orange is just not my color. Having said that, the image of the university itself went up a…
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My daughter has just turned six. Some time over the next year or so, she will discover that her parents are weird. We're weird because we go to church. This means as she gets older there'll be voices telling her what it means, getting louder and louder until by the time she's a teenager they'll…
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Earlier this year, NPR told the story of Teresa MacBain, a United Methodist pastor who had stopped believing in God. In March, when she just couldn't keep it to herself anymore, she told the American Atheists Convention that she was one of them. Coming out as an atheist felt good. But when she got home…
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