religion

By Adrian Bardon | – U.S. Christians, especially evangelical Christians, identify as environmentalists at very low rates compared to the general population. According to a Pew Research Center poll from May 2020, while 62% of religiously unaffiliated U.S. adults agree that the Earth is warming primarily due to human action, only 35% of U.S. Protestants […]

Christians

Why are Americans abandoning Religion in Droves?

James A. Haught

Charleston, W.Va. (Syndicated to Informed Comment) – Religion is fading more quickly in the United States than in any other nation, according to a forthcoming research book. Religion’s Sudden Decline: What’s Causing It and What Comes Next, by University of Michigan scholar Ronald Inglehart, is to be released in January by Oxford University Press. Writing […]

Featured

Revolutionary, Muslim-Majority Sudan Declares Separation of Religion and State

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) The transitional government of officers and civilian revolutionaries in Sudan has separated religion and state. In an agreement signed Thursday in Addis Ababa with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement–North (SPLM–N), Sudan’s prime minister Abdullah Hamdok agreed that Sudan would not establish any particular religion. The agreement included the language, “The state […]

Arab Americans

The Hate Lobby: Teachers slammed for Teaching objectively about Islam and the Arab World

Waging Nonviolence

Susan H. Smith | – ( Waging Nonviolence ) – As Muslim and Arab students join their classmates in heading back to school this fall, the 19th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks weighs on their minds. It’s a time of perennial blame and shame, a time when classmates and teachers hold them unjustly […]

Christianity

Why does Donald Trump appeal to so many Evangelical Christians?

The Conversation

By Emma Long | – “He’s following the radical left agenda, take away your guns, destroy your second amendment, no religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God … He’s against God,” President Donald Trump told supporters during a recent trip to Ohio. Trump was speaking about Joe Biden, the Democrat challenger for the White […]

Culture

Kanye West Offends Muslims by appropriating Angels of Death and Resurrection for his Sneaker Lines

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Muslim twittersphere was on fire this week with the news that Kanye West’s Adidas lines would offer two new sneakers, Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Israfil and Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Asriel. Israfil and Azrael are angels in the Islamic tradition. According to Dubai-based Alarabya, many Muslims found the names […]

Islam

The Empires of Faith and the Making of the Prophet of Islam

Sean W. Anthony

What can modern historians know about the historical figure of the prophet Muhammad? Can modern historians and their critical methods add anything new or, at the very least, be more certain about aspects of his life than generations past? In 1968, the French orientalist Maxime Rodinson began his influential biography of Muhammad with a dour […]

Christianity

White too Long? Why is Racism so much stronger among White Christians than among Unchurched Whites?

James A. Haught

Racism is much stronger among America’s white Christians than among churchless whites – and it always has been. That’s the message of a new book by social analyst Robert Jones, head of the Public Religion Research Institute. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity contends that white churches didn’t merely adapt […]

Christianity

Declining Religious Right could go down with Trump

James A. Haught

Charleston, W.V. (Special to Informed Comment) – Barely three months from now, the 2020 election may reveal whether America’s white evangelical “religious right” finally is losing political power. So far, early polls imply that obnoxious President Trump, the darling of born-again whites, may suffer a historic defeat. (Although I’m unreligious, I pray ardently for that […]