How Does Catholic Identity Affect Hookup Culture? — “Hooking Up at College: Does Religion Make a Difference?” (2009), found that hooking up was more frequent among students who identified as Catholic. For Faith with Benefits: Hookup Culture on Catholic Campuses (Oxford University Press. 2017), I surveyed more campuses and more diverse campuses than all the previous studies […]
Conflict Resolution in Public Schools: This 7 min. video clip reports on conflict resolution circles, a practice rooted in Quaker, Mennonite and North American Indian beliefs, and visits two Kansas schools that use circles to try to end the revolving door of suspension and expulsion of students. Teachers say they hope students will take the peace-making […]
Can We Trust Science? — We are sometimes asked, “Do you believe in science?” Upon reflection, this question is a bit puzzling, and its weasel word is “believe.” This article can assist students with teasing out some of the issues around the nature of science, belief, reliability, and other basic epistemological questions.
Daily Life May Collide with Law: Why do so many religions care what believers wear? — Students can use this brief article from Richard Ostling to consider the many cultural textures about religion and the textiles we wear: sociology; rites, ceremonies, and liturgies; social psychology; anthropology; and neuroscience.
Assessing the Faith-Based Response to Homelessness in America: Findings From Eleven Cities — From the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, the report was undertaken to provide an estimate of the impact, socially and economically, of FBOs in eleven cities across the country in responding to homelessness. Almost 60% of the Emergency Shelter Beds, what many […]
America’s Fighting Faith: The writer examines American civil religion and its influence on American foreign policy as these themes are related in the book, The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America’s Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest by Walter A. McDougall (Yale University Press, 2016). “Civil religion may once have described a kind of ecumenism. It now means […]
Rick Steves’ Luther and the Reformation: The popular travel guide, author, and TV host has produced a program on the sites that take us to Luther’s complicated political world of the 16th century. The package includes slides, discussion, Q&A, travel information, and kit for presenting the video. For the online material, go to https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/video/tv-show/tv-specials/luther
For Darwin Day, 6 facts about the evolution debate: This piece from Pew begins by saying, “When Darwin’s work was first made public in 1859, it shocked Britain’s religious establishment.” That statement itself needs more attention, and Darwin’s work was initially received with mixed responses. Nevertheless, here are Pew’s six facts for today.
What Churches Can Bring to the Battle Against Servitude: This report concerns the multitude of scourges now described as modern slavery: bonded or indentured labour, human trafficking, prostitution rackets involving trafficked persons, and the criminal exploitation of vulnerable people on the move, and that anybody who consumes a product made with bonded labour, or patronises a business […]
The Refugees Among Us: Our theology of vocation (callings) calls upon us to pay special attention to our location. That is to say, it focuses on how God has placed us in particular places at particular times. The needs of our neighbor in these locations and at these times function as God’s call for us to […]
