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 A growing number of Americans want closer ties between church and state, a poll found.
October 10th, 2014
12:03 PM ET
Study: Americans want more religion in politicsBy Sara Grossman, Special to CNN [twitter-follow screen_name='saragrossman'] (CNN) - On Sunday, pastor Jim Garlow of Skyline Church in California stood before his congregation of more than 2,000 and told them he would be making an unusual announcement. The pastor proceeded to warn his audience against voting for a candidate in the upcoming midterm elections who supports gay marriage and abortion, even if that candidate, Carl DeMaio, is a Republican. Garlow, an outspoken evangelical who played a major role in organizing Christian groups in support of California’s anti-gay marriage Proposition 8, spoke plainly: He would not be supporting the Republican in this race. “I know enough that you cannot have the advancing of the radical homosexual agenda and religious liberty at the same time, in the same nation,” he preached. “One will win, and one will lose.” Instead, Garlow told his followers he would be endorsing DeMaio’s rival, Democratic incumbent Scott Peters, representative for California’s 52nd District, to send a scathing message to Republican leadership that candidates who back abortion and gay rights are unacceptable to the party’s Christian base. Garlow is one of a growing number of Americans who say that religion should play a greater role in politics, according to the findings of a recent study by the Pew Research Forum's Religion & Public Life Project. The study found that almost three-quarters of the American public — 72% — believes that religion’s influence is waning in public life, the highest level in Pew Research polling over the past 10 years. And many Americans say that trend is a bad thing, the study found. “A growing share of the American public wants religion to play a role in U.S. politics,” the Pew study authors write. What kind of role?
August 20th, 2014
08:31 PM ET
James Foley’s prayers and the dark side of faithBy Daniel Burke, CNN Belief Blog editor [twitter-follow screen_name='BurkeCNN'] (CNN) – We don’t know if James Foley, the American journalist beheaded by Islamic extremists, prayed in the hours and days before his death. We probably never will. But Foley said faith sustained him during another ordeal in 2011, when he was held captive for 44 days by forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. In a gut-wrenching article he wrote for Marquette University’s alumni magazine, Foley said he prayed while imprisoned that his family, many miles away, would somehow know that he was safe. “Haven’t you felt my prayers?” Foley asked his mother, Diane, when he was finally allowed to call home. Diane Foley told her son that his friends and family had been praying, too, holding vigils filled with former professors, priests and Marquette students. She echoed his question back: Have you felt ours? He had, the journalist said. “Maybe it was others’ prayers strengthening me, keeping me afloat,” Foley wrote. The 40-year-old Catholic, who reported for the GlobalPost among other publications, was abducted again in 2012, captured this time by the extremist group ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State. On Tuesday, ISIS released a video showing a Muslim militant clad in black beheading Foley, who was wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in the sand.  This tweet from Breanna Mitchell sparked a fierce debate over selfies and sacred spaces.
July 22nd, 2014
08:53 AM ET
Smiling for 'Auschwitz selfies,' and crying into the digital wildernessOpinion by Craig Detweiler, Special to CNN
A tour of a concentration camp, where so many Jews lost their lives, may move us to take photos or post responses - but few would include smiles, or selfies. But Mitchell is not the first teenager to generate Internet outrage by her response to the Holocaust. When Justin Bieber visited the Anne Frank House last year, he wrote in the museum guest book, “Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully, she would have been a Belieber.” While many have ripped into Mitchell and Bieber for their insensitivity, I don’t think they intended to be disrespectful to the dead. Thanks to the ubiquity of mobile devices (mobiquity!), adolescent mistakes and hard lessons that used to be learned in private can quickly devolve into public drubbings. This is what happens when new technologies clash with ancient understandings of the sacred. The problem is so pervasive that a Tumblr site, “Selfies at Serious Places” is dedicated to such faux pas. We have very few spaces that our culture considers sacred, where an association with the divine results in a feeling of awe or reverence. Death may seem especially abstract to young people who haven’t been shown how to grieve, mourn or respect the dead. So how might we help the emerging generation to develop a digital decorum that accounts for sacred spaces? Can we incorporate electronic ethics into religious instruction?  A new study hints that religion and resumes don't always mix well.
July 2nd, 2014
09:24 AM ET
Why you should leave religion off your resumeBy Sara Grossman, CNN (CNN) - If you’re applying for a new job, it may be best to leave religion off your resume, according to a new study. Job applicants who mentioned any form of faith affiliation on their resumes were 26% less likely to be contacted by employers than candidates who didn't, according to the study conducted by sociologists at the University of Connecticut. Muslim, pagan and atheist job applicants were the least likely to get callbacks from potential employers. “People have a fear of the unknown,” said Michael Wallace, a co-author of the study and a sociology professor at the University of Connecticut. The study “implies that when people don't know much about a religion, they have an instinctive fear of that group.”  Kate Kelly and Meriam Ibrahim have both been found guilty of apostasy by all-male councils.
June 25th, 2014
11:29 AM ET
Hey religion, your misogyny is showing
(CNN) - Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate from South Africa, called one of his books “God is Not a Christian.” He might have added a subtitle, “God is not a man, either!” One of the great problems in our world is patriarchy. The late James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, put best in song, “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World.” Patriarchy assumes that men are made to lead and women are simply cooperative and reproductive subordinates. These assumptions come to light in all kinds of ways, but especially through religion — the various faiths that treat women as though they are not equal to men. We read it in the Quran and the Bible. We see it in iconic imagery, and religious taboos about sexuality, particularly women’s sexuality. And we see that around the world these days, from Salt Lake City to Sudan. Men continue to dominate religious institutions, and use them to judge whether women can be in religious leadership or change faiths. There is a direct link between Kate Kelly, a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter day-Saints, who was excommunicated on charges of apostasy, and Meriam Ibrahim, a Sudanese woman sentenced to death for her supposed apostasy. And the link is deeper than the charge of abandoning one's faith.  Rohingya Muslim children at a refugee camp in Burma, where authorities have incited violence against them, according to the State Department.
May 15th, 2014
10:56 AM ET
The worst places in the world to be religiousBy Daniel Burke, CNN Belief Blog Editor [twitter-follow screen_name='BurkeCNN'] (CNN) - Since 1999, the U.S. State Department has tracked the world's worst abusers of religious rights. As the most recent report notes, it has never lacked for material. Persecutions of people of faith are rising across the globe. Among the most worrying trends, according to the State Department, are "authoritarian governments that restrict their citizens’ ability to practice their religion." In typically bland bureaucratic language, the State Department calls these "countries of particular concern." But the designation can come with some teeth. Sudan, for example, where a Christian woman was sentenced to death this week for leaving Islam, is ineligible for some types of foreign aid. In addition to Sudan, here are the State Department's "countries of particular concern." You might call them "The Worst Places in the World to Be Religious."  Jose Luis Sedano prays during Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles last March.
May 7th, 2014
11:58 AM ET
Study: Young Latinos losing faithBy Daniel Burke, CNN Belief Blog Editor [twitter-follow screen_name='BurkeCNN'] (CNN) - Young Latinos are leaving the Catholic Church in droves, according to a new study, with many drifting into the country's fastest-growing religious movement: the nones. Nearly a third of Latino adults under 30 don't belong to a faith group, according to a large survey released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center. That's a leap of 17 percentage points in just the last three years. While the demise of organized religion, specifically Catholicism, is most dramatic among young Latinos, the overall shifts are broad-based, according to Pew, affecting men and women; foreign-born and U.S. natives; college graduates and those with less formal education. The trends highlighted by Pew's Latino survey also mirror large-scale shifts in the American population as whole. According to other studies conducted by Pew in recent years, nearly a third of all millennials - Americans between the ages of 18-33 - are religiously unaffiliated, a dramatic and ongoing change from previous generations. “One of the most striking recent trends in the American religious landscape has been the growing share of the unaffiliated, and this study allows us to see where Latinos fit into that story,” said Cary Funk, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center and one of the co-authors of the study.  A new study suggests that the Internet may play a role in the demise of organized religion.
April 9th, 2014
12:17 PM ET
Is the Internet killing religion?By Jessica Ravitz, CNN (CNN) We can blame the Internet for plenty: the proliferation of porn, our obsession with cat videos, the alleged rise of teen trends like - brace yourself - eyeball licking. But is it also a culprit in helping us lose our religion? A new study suggests it might be. Allen Downey, a computer scientist at Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, set out to understand the national uptick in those who claim no religious affiliation. These are the “nones,” which the Pew Research Center considers the fastest-growing “religious” group in America.  The rapid rise of the "spiritual but not religious" crowd may not be such a bad thing.
February 22nd, 2014
09:06 PM ET
Good news about the ‘spiritual but not religious’Opinion by Linda Mercadante, special to CNN To accept this as good news, however, we need to listen to what they are saying, rather than ridicule them as “salad bar spiritualists” or eclectic dabblers. After spending more than five years speaking with hundreds of “spiritual but not religious” folk across North America, I’ve come to see a certain set of core ideas among them. Because of their common themes, I think it’s fair to refer to them by the acronym: SBNR. But before we explore what the SBNRs believe, we first need to learn what they protest.
November 26th, 2013
08:49 PM ET
Giving thanks for the miracle of survivalBy Moni Basu, CNN (CNN) - Leon Gersten could not bear to watch “Schindler’s List,” the movie about Czech industrialist Oskar Schindler who saved 1,200 Jews from Nazi extermination camps. It was too painful for the Holocaust survivor, too close to reality. But now, almost 70 years after his village in Poland was liberated by the Soviet army, Gersten is meeting the man who is the Oskar Schindler of his own life: Czeslaw Polziec. Like Schindler, Polziec is Catholic. His family secretly sheltered Gersten in rural Poland for two years during World War II. As though such a reunion between survivor and rescuer were not emotional enough, this one is taking place Wednesday on the eve of Hanukkah, which coincides this year with Thanksgiving. Two celebrations of gratitude. |
  About this blog
The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
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(CNN) - It is understandable why Breanna Mitchell’s sunny tweet from Auschwitz as “PrincessBMM” would spark a viral outcry.
Opinion by Randal Maurice Jelks, special to CNN