The last few weeks have seen a lot of media attention directed toward religious organizations, their representatives, and the positions they are taking on various public issues, from climate change to marriage equality for homosexuals, from health care reform to hate crime laws, from rising poverty rates and income disparity to the decline of religion in the U.S., based on the number of U.S. citizens who claim “no religion” in answer to survey questions. more

A new book exploring religious behavior has appeared, with a most interesting approach to its explanation. The book is The Biology of Religious Behavior: The Evolutionary Origins of Faith and Religion (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2009) and it is edited by Jay R. Feierman, M.D., a retired Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico. more

I couldn’t tell whether the message on the marquee in front of the church I passed was a sermon title or one of those witty aphorisms intended to be the religious “thought of the day” – a version of populist Gnosticism where the insiders get it and like it, and the outsiders are amused by its pithy piety but quickly forget it–if they bother to read it. more

During worship one recent Sunday, the pastor encouraged the worshipers to take a few moments following the service to step into the fellowship hall and sign a petition on health care reform to be forwarded to representatives and senators in Washington. This request followed some remarks made by the pastor on the inequalities in health care services … more

Scenario #1: Your husband of forty years has been diagnosed with bladder cancer. The doctor reports that the protocol would normally be surgery to remove the tumor, followed by a series of chemotherapy treatments over a period of four months. However, the doctor says, your spouse is ineligible for the treatment because he is sixty-seven years old. more