Is SCOTUS Too Religious?

Last year’s slate of religion-related cases taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court was … a lot. 

Coverage around Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District came hard and fast last spring and summer. Not only did landmark decisions around a woman’s right to choose and freedom of religious expression in schools cause cultural and political shock waves, they also raised the question of how religion itself functions on the Supreme Court and the current Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment.

Pundits and experts used Supreme Court verdicts to reexamine the role of law and the relationship between religion and the state. These conversations are ongoing, as the Supreme Court deliberates on First Amendment cases, specifically around establishment vs. expression, and analysts consider how the current justices’ decisions relate to precedent established by previous Courts.

In the wake of last year’s momentous decisions, and their significant reactions, some wondered what role religious faith plays in Supreme Court decisions and whether it should feature in the bench’s decision-making process at all.

According to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, a notable number of U.S. adults (35%) think the Supreme Court is “friendly” toward religion (compared with just 18% who thought so in 2019). Furthermore, people in the U.S. “are more likely to say the court’s recent decisions have helped (rather than harmed) the interests of U.S. Christians, and harmed (rather than helped) the interests of people in the U.S. who are not religious.”

But, as with most things in the U.S. these days, Americans are fairly split on whether justices should bracket their religious beliefs when making Court decisions. Around 44% say justices have been letting their faith have too much a say in their deliberations, while 40% feel the influence of religion on the current Court is about right.

The question of whether the Court is too religious depends on what perspective you come from. For example, religious conservatives might think SCOTUS is finally getting things right with what some read as a more traditionalist, Christian reading of the Constitution. Religious minorities, on the other hand, might feel the court is violating their religious freedom by favoring a particular tradition — or traditions. The non-religious and those that advocate for a strict separation between church and state are showing particular concern around what they see as the justices’ faith driving their decisions, as revealed in public comments.

And what faith do the Supreme Court justices identify with? Six of the current Supreme Court justices are Catholic (Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas), two are Protestant (Neil Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson), and after Stephen Breyer’s retirement, Elena Kagan is the only Jewish justice.

This mix is “not reflective of the U.S. population,” according to Gallup’s statistics:

… about 22% of the adult population identifies as Catholic, as opposed to the 67% Catholic representation on the court. Two percent of the population identifies as Jewish (Kagan represents 11% of the nine justices). The biggest disproportionality comes in terms of Protestants. About 45% of Americans are non-Catholic Christian, or Protestant, compared with what will be 22% Protestant representation on the court. There is also a completely missing constituency on the court, the “nones,” or those who when asked say they have no formal religious identity [who make up about 21% of the population] …

That overrepresentation has some concerned. Andrew Koppelman, a law professor at Northwestern University, wrote that the court’s religious persuasions have led justices to issue “orders to public officials based on [their] gut feelings, seemingly undisturbed by exposure to evidence.” In other words, Koppelman thinks SCOTUS is going against several decades of decisions regarding the balance of establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise in the First Amendment. For his part, he feels the Court is ignoring the First Amendment altogether and making decisions based on their personal faith.

Whether or not this has led to a certain “lawlessness” on the court, as Koppelman argues, the “Roberts Court” (under the leadership of Chief Justice Roberts) “has ruled in favor of religious organizations far more frequently than its predecessors,” according to research from the University of Southern California’s Lee Epstein and University of Chicago’s Eric A. Posner.

In their statistical analysis, Epstein and Posner found that the Roberts Court ruled in religious organizations’ favor 81% of the time, compared with around 50% for all previous eras since 1953. They wrote:

In most of these cases, the winning religion was a mainstream Christian organization, whereas in the past pro-religion outcomes more frequently favored minority or marginal religious organizations. … this transformation is largely the result of changes in the Court’s personnel: a majority of Roberts Court justices are ideologically conservative and religiously devout—a significant break from the past.

All of this suggests the justices’ faith will continue to play a role in the Supreme Court’s pending cases and impending decisions — in 2023 and beyond. It might also encourage some plaintiffs to appeal to the nation’s highest court, feeling they might have a bench stacked in their favor.

The latest Source Guide from ReligionLink explores these issues — and this term’s religion-related cases — in more detail. Click below to read more…

What Hath Religious Studies To Do With Interreligious Dialogue?

When I moved to Germany, I was invited to take part in a pioneering project to map interreligious dialogue (IRD) efforts across the country.

In the aftermath of the 10th World Assembly of Religions for Peace in Lindau in August 2019, a group of colleagues got together to pursue the idea of an interreligious cartography in Germany. The goal was to make a comprehensive survey of local, national, and international interreligious initiatives and actors in German municipalities to serve as a reference for future research.

Through our investigation, we gained a clearer picture of what IRD looks like in Germany and who is taking part. From Bonn to Berlin, Flensburg to Freiburg, one of the things that became evident was that many of the local initiatives involved, or were led by, religion scholars and academic theologians. Based on my own research and experience, this holds true in the U.S. and elsewhere, with scholars often actively involved in IRD efforts at the local, regional, national, and international levels.

As I reflected on this, I pondered a few questions: Are religious studies and IRD natural companions or should they be carefully delineated and divided? Should those who study religion lead the way when it comes to multi-religious responses to the world’s pressing issues? Or, as some argue, should IRD remain an object for critical study and not participation?

Protect and Accompany: European Evangelicals Organize Against Abuse

When Fabian Beck volunteered to help with the children’s ministry at his small, evangelical church on the outskirts of Hanover, the largest city in the German state of Lower Saxony, he imagined he’d be singing songs, telling Bible stories or doing puppet shows.

He did not expect to be talking about sex.

But, as he prepared to join the team, he came across resources provided by the Federation of Free Evangelical Churches (BFeG) on the subject of violence against children and adolescents in the context of Christian communities like his own.

“Believers have to face the fact that our congregations are not safe just because they are full of Christians,” Beck said, “safe places for kids don’t come naturally and too often, we don’t know what we don’t know.”

Andreas Schlueter, the BFeG’s Federal Secretary for the Young Generation, said the program Beck discovered — known as “Protect and Accompany” — is part a much larger trend among free evangelical churches organizing against abuse, developing programs to face the reality of violence against children and adolescents, and seeking to prevent it from happening in the future.

“On the one hand, free evangelical congregations should be, or become, safe places for children and young people,” he said, but on the other hand, churches have to make intentional choices to make them safe.

In recent years, child sex abuse cases have been extensively reported across multiple Roman Catholic dioceses in Europe. Spurred by these revelations, Catholic initiatives in France and Portugal, Germany and Italy, have aimed at preventing and addressing abuse, with Pope Francis removing the applicability of pontifical secrecy in cases involving the mistreatment of minors or other vulnerable persons in December 2019.

Myriam Letzel, coordinator for the French organization Stop Abus, said that the Catholic Church in France’s groundbreaking investigations (the so-called “Sauvé report”) into clerical abuse not only highlighted the systemic nature of sexual violence, but put evangelicals on notice about dynamics in their churches that might also lead to inappropriate and illegal behavior. Not only that, but broader cultural conversations around #ChurchToo and revelations of widespread abuse among Southern Baptists in the U.S. have led European evangelicals to reckon with the fact their churches are not immune.

“We have to question ourselves on the theological bases which have, in the past, favored inappropriate sexual behavior: A misunderstanding of the relationship between men and women and a distorted relationship to sexuality.”

That is why, in September 2022, the National Council of Evangelicals of France (CNEF) started a listening service called Stop Abus to help its members remain vigilant in the fight against sexual violence. The service includes a commission of ten experts in the fields of social work, psychology, medicine, law, and pastoral care. There is also a team of 35 “listeners,” Letzel said, spread across France who connect with people who call their service. In its first six months, Stop Abus received 15 disclosures that are now being processed.

Letzel said this is just the first step. “What was happening elsewhere served as a warning: We could not pretend that such things did not exist in evangelical protestant churches, and above all we did not want to pretend that they did not exist,” she said, “on the contrary, the mission entrusted to us by Christ obliges us: as Christians we have a duty to be exemplary in our conduct and in our way of caring for the most vulnerable.”

Other evangelical groups in Europe have launched their own efforts too.

“I have come to serve, not to be served”: the World Evangelical Alliance’s permanent representative at the UN puts focus on serving others

Gaetan Roy goes to the United Nations building in Geneva with an unusual question: “How can I serve you?”

Roy is not a waiter or a salesperson but the new representative from the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) to the UN. Ever since he first got involved in politics, this is the question he’s led with. Back in 2015, when he went to the German parliament to lobby on behalf of evangelical organizations, he couldn’t get the words of Mark 10:45 out of his mind: I have come to serve, not to be served.

So Roy asked the first politician he met on his first day, “How can I serve you?” He’s continued asking it ever since.

“I thought this was really simple, but I felt God was unrelenting in this regard,” Roy told CT. “If Jesus came to serve and not to be served, then I will do the same by asking diplomats and politicians we engage with how we can serve them.”

With this question, Roy has become one of the primary evangelical voices at the world’s largest intergovernmental organization, speaking on behalf of 600 million believers in more than 120 countries. He takes over from Michael Mutzner, who helped establish the WEA’s office at the UN in 2012, and joins Wissam al-Saliby, director of the WEA’s Geneva office. Al-Saliby focuses on public statements about human rights violations while Roy works behind the scenes, brokering deals and developing official proposals for the UN representatives to consider.

Whether he’s promoting peace in Nigeria or working with the Coalition for Minority Rights in India, Roy said he hopes service will lead the way as he represents evangelical concerns and advances the cause of religious freedom for all.

If Roy’s approach to high-level negotiations and political diplomacy seems unorthodox, so was his pathway to such a high-profile position.

Religion at the 2023 Academy Awards

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its nominations for the 95th Academy Awards in January, contenders included several movies with religion angles and numerous actors with faith backgrounds.

A short list for the ceremony, to be held March 12, 2023, includes the eco-spiritual themes of Avatar: The Way of Water, revivalist roots in the Elvis biopic starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks, themes of “faith and fatness” in The Whale with Brendan Fraser, the Bible Belt cultural cues that are felt but never fully seen in To Leslie’s melancholic storyline, and confessions and questions of whether God cares about miniature donkeys in The Banshees of Inisherin.

That’s not even to mention Stranger at the Gate. Directed by Joshua Seftel, the film is about an Afghan refugee named Bibi Bahrami and the members of her Indiana mosque, who come face to face with a U.S. Marine who has secret plans to bomb their community center. That’s when the Marine's plan takes an unexpected turn. The moving real-life story is considered a favorite in the best documentary short film category.

Beyond awards season, 2023 has a slew of new religion-related releases sure to catch audiences’ attention.

It’s safe to say that if you head to the movies – or catch the Academy Awards ceremony – this year, you’re likely to run into religion. But what might we learn about religion and culture from this year’s many intersections between faith and film?

Religion in Your Face: Ash Wednesday and the Practice of Religious Facial Marking

Several years ago, when I was living in Houston, TX, a man walked up to me at a local café and kindly said, "Excuse me sir, you've...um...I think you have dirt on your face."

He was half right.

It wasn’t exactly dirt, but ashes. Ashes smudged on my forehead in the shape – if you looked at it just right and from a 43-degree angle – of a cross.

One could not blame the man for mistaking my visible marker of inward penance and outward allegiance to a particular strand of religiosity…for dirt.

These days, in places like H-town, you don’t see too many people wearing their religion on their face.

Nonetheless, later this month (February 22, 2023) millions of Christians across the world -- Catholic, Lutheran, Anglicans, others – will also don gray smudges on their brows to commemorate Ash Wednesday.

Traditionally viewed as the start of Lent – a 40-day penitential season of fasting and preparation preceding Easter – Ash Wednesday is most widely associated with the "imposition" or "infliction" of ashes on practitioners’ foreheads.

Christians, however, are not alone in marking their faces with religious symbols. There are traditions in India, New Zealand, sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere that involve religious symbology born on foreheads, cheeks, and chins.

While such outward signs of devotion may seem an extreme in our seemingly secular age, more often than not, these religious facial markings tell us relatively little about the “inner religion” of the devotee and much more about spiritual symbols’ social function(s).

Church Planting After the Fall (of the Berlin Wall)

Three generations after East Germany rejected Christianity, a small group of prayerful believers see an opportunity.

The contrast could not be clearer.

On one side of a thin yellow line marking the old East-West German border (1949-1990) is a striking black and gray mass that used to constitute former East Germany. On the other, West German, side of the map is a kaleidoscope of multi-hued blues and reds, with some grayish zones mixed in. The red represents degrees of adherence to Catholicism, the blue Protestantism, the blacks and grays, “None” or “Other.”

The map, produced by social media account Nerdy Maps and based on data from the Statistical Offices of German States in 2011, was tweeted out by Andrew Wilson, Teaching Pastor at King’s Church London and Christianity Today contributor, on October 4, 2022.  

“This is staggering,” he tweeted, “it shows a) the catechetical power of state ideology and b) the importance (and challenge!) of slow, patient, long haul church planting in eastern Germany.”

Multiple missionaries, pastors, and ministry leaders responded, echoing Wilson’s sentiments and sharing their own hopes to plant churches and “reach the lost” in eastern German cities like Leipzig, Chemnitz, and Berlin.

As the “dark side” on the map intimates, church planters and missionaries face an uphill battle in a post-church landscape where some people don’t even know that the Christmas holiday has Christian origins.

According to Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung), a 2018 survey found that 64.2% of Germans surveyed nationwide identified as Christian. The second largest group (27%), were atheists and agnostics. But it was the differences between western and eastern Germany that were truly remarkable: while only 16.6%  in western Germany described themselves as non-believers, in eastern Germany the figure was 68.3%.

Simon Tarry, originally from the United Kingdom and now a church planter with Newfrontiers, a network of evangelical, charismatic churches, near Frankfurt a.M. said, “the barriers to the Gospel are different across regions, but any assumption that Germany is a Christian nation is really flawed.

“The stats are sad enough, but the reality is even starker,” he said. “Germany is equivalent to an unreached people group. You might think of the 10/40 window, places in Asia or the Middle East. But a lot of places in Germany and Northern Europe as a whole are much more ‘unreached’ than elsewhere in the world,” said Tarry.

That’s especially true in the former East, where Tarry said the reality might even be bleaker than what the map shows. “The scales of measurement are membership where people pay their church tax for marriage and baptism purposes, but beyond the taxes, there’s no living faith.

“It’s incredibly hard work to plant a church in Germany. It’s incredibly discouraging at times. It feels like really really hard ground,” he said.

What is Christian nationalism? And how has it gone global?

The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol brought the Christian nationalist movement into sharp focus.

Christian symbols prominently displayed on banners and T-shirts as well as faith-filled messages that fueled the fire that day forced many to consider the role that white Christians’ religiously motivated rage plays in U.S. politics. 

But Christian nationalism exists beyond U.S. borders. It is a global phenomenon. 

In Europe and the Americas, far-right leaders are invoking a heady mix of racialized, religious rhetoric to rally support, upturn elections and threaten the democratic order. From Hungary to Italy, Brazil to Russia, Christian nationalism plays an increasingly critical role in the far right’s growing power and appeal.

The latest edition of ReligionLink provides background on what Christian nationalism is, stories that show how it is influencing politics worldwide and experts to help reporters and readers better understand its heady mix of ideological politics and national identity. 

How do we love our neighbors

Christians, and specifically those of the evangelical variety, can sometimes struggle to form deep, meaningful relationships with the "religious Other."

Whether it’s a tendency to interpret these relationships through the lens of “evangelism” or a fear of diversity and difference, evangelical Christians have often been absent from the interreligious table.

I happen to come from a tradition that is particularly ecumenically-challenged. While the denomination has its historical reasons for not playing nice with the “religious Other,” the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) lacks a robust model for interreligious encounters and education in religious diversity.

This can often be confounding or frustrating for LCMS laity — and clergy — who encounter a wide range of religious expressions in their day-to-day life.

While I was in St. Louis, Missouri teaching a two-week intensive on cultural anthropology at Concordia Seminary, I got the chance to chat with Sarah Crowder about these issues.

Sarah is a high school theology teacher in Las Vegas and her students had some questions about the world’s religions and how to approach the topic.

Thanks to Sarah and her students, for the conversation!

Young evangelicals listen to their pastors. Do pastors listen to them?

“When students come back at semester breaks, that’s when the conversations really pick up,” said Jon-Michael Phillips, 35, a youth pastor at a nondenominational church in Jackson, Michigan, a city of about 31,000 between Ann Arbor and Lansing, the state’s two big college towns.

As students from the University of Michigan and Michigan State return home for the holidays, Phillips is less concerned about college football rivalries than about the political discussions he is bound to have. “Every year, students want to talk to me about things they are struggling with,” he said, “and one of the topics a few are sure to bring up is politics.” 

Phillips said students often share that when it comes to LGBT issues, the environment or the Republican Party, they increasingly feel at odds with the politics they often heard from the pulpit as they grew up or what was shared at home. 

As they become more politically aware and active, Phillips said, they start to question how their evangelical Christian parents and pastors have presented these issues and others. 

“The nice thing is they still want to talk and want to know what I think,” Phillips said. “The question is what I can do with these conversations.” 

For Norwegians So Loved the Bible, a New Translation Made Many Mad

Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

But what if it isn’t that straightforward?

In Norway, a public debate about what the Bible says — or doesn’t — is currently unfolding around the latest efforts to translate scripture into modern Norwegian.

At the center of that controversy are terms like “brothers and sisters,” “slave,” “flesh” and the words of John 3:16, known as “the Little Bible” (den lille bibel) in Norway.

As the Norwegian Bible Society (Det Norske Bibelselskap) worked toward releasing a new Bible revision in 2024, it published previews. Reception to the published pericopes was mixed, forcing questions about the use of biblical texts in public worship, the relevance of scripture in largely secular Norway, and whether a new revision is needed after a major overhaul to the text as recently as 2011.

In a country where only 2 percent of the population regularly attend church, one doesn’t expect to find a national debate about the correct translation of John 3:16. And yet, across Norway, news that a forthcoming Bible translation will replace gå fortapt (get lost) with gå til grunne (perish) has roused strong feelings.

In my latest for Christianity Today, I talk to translators and critics about the controversy and what it can tell us about the Bible and Norwegian society.

The Past, Present, and Future of Religion

Every year, numerous pundits and forecasters offer their crystal-ball takes on financial futures, political potentials, and what they think will be the calendar-defining or epoch-making events in the year to come.

But what about religion?

As 2022 ended, I had the chance to look back on, and forward to, the year in religion.

Working with the Religion News Association (RNA) – a 73-year-old trade association for reporters who cover religion in the news media – I helped oversee a poll of its membership on the top religion stories over the previous year. Then, in my capacity as Editor for ReligionLink – a monthly resource for reporters writing on religion – I put together some predictions for the big religion news to come in 2023.

The two experiences gave me an opportunity to reflect on religion’s persistent and ubiquitous role in global events. They also underscored once more how a basic knowledge of religion is not so much about understanding worlds beyond, but the world we live in right now.

Your 2022 Favorites: The Religion + Culture Top Ten

Back in 2007, I started a blog I hoped would become my first book (blogs are what we did back in the aughts, kids).

My grandma was a faithful reader. So were a few friends. Other than that, you might say not much came of the experience. The book did not work out, the stats were flat, and the writing was sometimes…oof.

What did come out of the blog was a joy for sharing through writing, opening worlds to others through words, and creating a community online.

I’ve been publishing my work online ever since. Now, as a professional religion nerd (a.k.a., religion newswriter and scholar), I continue to be humbled by those of you who take the time out of your day to read what I have to share.

The past year was no different. From predictions about what religion headlines would capture our imagination to spirit tech trends, exploring Morocco’s architecture with the “Prince of Casablanca” to traipsing around Berlin in search of its soul, I got to share some cool stories in 2022.

A blogger at heart, I share all my publications here on KenChitwood.com. Over the last twelve months, some caught your attention or imagination more than others. As 2022 comes to a close, I thought I’d share them with you again as the Top Ten Religion + Culture Stories.

Looking at the list below, your tastes range widely. The religious contours of the war in Ukraine featured twice in the list to no surprise, but otherwise we have selections on the limits and dangers of religious freedom, modern paganism, interreligious dialogue, global Islam, American Christianity, airport spirituality, Mormon missionaries in Berlin, and James Bond’s spirituality.

Y’all are such interesting people. Really. I can’t wait to catch up with you at a cocktail party to discuss the stories below. Until then, take a moment to revisit some of your favorite stories from 2022 or jump in for the first time (and share them with your friends at that cocktail party, in case I can’t make it).

Thanks again and cheers, friends. 🥂Until 2023!

“God puts us here especially for such moments”

Christians Respond to War in Ukraine

Persecution or proper protection?

In Finland, a case looks set to probe where religious freedom ends and other human rights begin

This ain’t your mama’s paganism

Understanding modern witchcraft, nature religions, and ‘neopaganism.’

Why does dialogue often fail?

People just don’t care.

What you missed without religion class

You don’t know what you don’t know.

Did Muslims discover the New World?

No. But that’s just the beginning of the story…

On a wing and a prayer

What airport chapels have to tell us about religion in the 21st-century.

Mission Berlin

The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints And Its Nearly 170 Years In Germany’s Capital City

Religion, James Bond religion

Does 007 take his Christianity shaken, not stirred?

War in Ukraine

Covering the conflict’s religious contours.

And, an honorable mention…

Who are the exvangelicals?

Understanding the exodus from contemporary U.S. Christianity.

The Religion + Culture 2022 Reading Rundown

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: I have a ridiculous job.

I get to read books, talk to authors and creatives, and write about it all so that others can listen and learn, rage and wonder, contemplate and cause trouble.

I read things I love. Things that interest me. Things that matter. Things that I would read and write about for free (shhh, don’t tell my publishers).

Really, it’s a ridiculous vocation. A calling that I am immensely humbled to have.

One of my favorite things to do at the end of the year is look back on all the things I read, the ideas I encountered, and reflect on the people I interviewed or interacted with along the way.

This year, I read a total of 25,353 pages, including numerous news pieces, 63 journal articles, a behemoth of blogs, countless chapters, and 84 different books (including 19 works of fiction).

The following are some of the books that moved me, made me smile, or that I think matter in a world swimming with competing and contrasting ideas, viewpoints, and perspectives. They are, you could say, my Top 25 Books of 2022.

Perhaps you’ll find something that piques your interest in the list as well.

A lot of the books below featured in my research and writing over the year, but others just caught my attention (and more importantly, held it). Among them are my usual themes and interests: religion, borderlands, interreligious encounters, Berlin and Germany, spirituality, James Bond, Islam and Christian-Muslim relations, and travel (this year, to places like Italy and Scotland, Morocco and Mexico).

And so, here are my Top 25 Books of 2022, in the order I finished them throughout the year. Many of the hyperlinks connect you to reviews or other relevant works. Others take you directly to the publishers’ webpage, where available (be sure to support your local bookstore!):

• My Broken Language: A Memoir, by Quiara Alegría Hudes

• A Traveler in Italy, by H.V. Morton

• The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, by Lindsay Chervinsky

• Journeys toward Gender Equality in Islam, by Ziba Mir-Hosseini.

• Ministers of a New Medium: Broadcasting Theology in the Radio Ministries of Fulton J. Sheen and Walter A. Maier, by Kirk D. Farney

• Berlin Global, from the Humboldt Forum.

• Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and their History, by Simon Winder.

• What We Owe the Future, by William MacAskill

• Theater Unser: Wie die Passionsspiele Oberammergau den Ort verändern und die Welt bewegen, by Anne Fritsch

• The Light We Give: How Sikh Wisdom Can Transform Your Life, by Simran Jeet Singh

• Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde, by Erich Kästner

• Race and Rhyme: Rereading the New Testament, by Love Lazarus Sechrest

• Borders and Belonging, The Book of Ruth: A Story for Our Times, by Pádraig Ó Tuama, Glenn Jordan

• Religion in 50 Words: A Critical Vocabulary, by Aaron W. Hughes and Russel T. McCutcheon

• Casablanca: Colonial Myths and Architectural Adventures, by Jean-Louis Cohen and Monique Eleb

• Islamic Empires: The Cities that Shaped Civilization: From Mecca to Dubai, by Justin Marozzi

• Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular, by David A. Hollinger

• An Odd Cross to Bear: A Biography of Ruth Bell Graham, by Anne Blue Wills

• Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Alfred Döblin

• Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts against Domestic Violence, by Juliane Hammer

• Manifold Destiny: Arabs at an American Crossroads of Exceptional Rule, by John Tofik Karam

• Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland, by Francesca Sobande and layla-roxanne hill

• Undocumented Saints: The Politics of Migrating Devotions, by William A. Calvo-Quirós

• Trainspotting, by Irvine Welsh

• The 007 Diaries: Filming Live and Let Die, by Roger Moore

Let me know if you also read any of the books above, want to share your thoughts on titles you enjoyed in 2022, or if you have any book recommendations for 2023 (yes, please!).

Until then, Happy New Year friends. Here's to more good reads in the year to come.

Spirit Tech is here to stay

In our house, we have a new laptop.

It’s shiny and new, with a fancy blue OLED touchscreen and widgets galore.

Perhaps you too — not long after “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday,” nor long before the festive, gift-giving season — will be purchasing new tech.

Maybe a new smartwatch? The latest video game console? How about a meditation headset from tech startup Muse?

Yep, you read that right. The Muse headband is a brain-sensing device that provides real-time neurofeedback during meditation sessions or, as the company promises, to help you focus, sleep, or otherwise reach peak performance.

It is one of many technological innovations promising to trigger, enhance, accelerate, modify, or measure spiritual experiences and deliver more peace and progress in the process.

From brain stimulation to synthetic psychedelics, new spiritual movements in Silicon Valley to the everyday ways technology is used in worship and devotion technology is changing the way we do religion.

This is what researchers Kate Stockly and Wesley Wildman of Boston University’s Center for Mind and Culture call “spirit tech.”

Not only do they believe “spirit tech” is here to stay, they also suggest it has the potential to heal our relationship with technology and radically alter the way we think and pray.

Recently, I had the opportunity to dive deeper into the world of “spirit tech,” writing two pieces to help you explore the wide world of religious technologies, their meaning, and their potential futures.

The "Prince of Casablanca"

“A city,” wrote British town planner and polymath Patrick Geddes, “is more than a place in space. It’s a drama in time.”

Casablanca — celebrated by colonial architects as a laboratory for visual and architectural experimentation and long-romanticized by Hollywood — is a quintessential example of such urban spectacle.

Emerging as a modern metropolis in the 20th-century, “Casa” is a city of chaos and contradiction, the cherished and kitsch, the brutal and beautiful. At once unsettling and inviting, uncertain and yet enduring, the city’s future, past, and present collide in a merger of Moroccan artisanship with European modernism.

Striding through its streets with a palpable sense of familiarity and pride, you might come across young author and architect Alaa Halifi. He wrote the book, In Praise of Madness (مديح الجنون) , the only Moroccan work to receive the Al-Rafidain First Book Prize. Distinguished by the judges for its “deep dive into the worlds of Casablanca,” Halifi said he wrote the book to “reflect the complex reality of my city” and “shed light on the marginalized and chaotic part of the city’s underworld,” by putting on paper things that he and his generation see every day of their lives. The result is a book that fuses reality with fantasy, a vision for the city as it is, but also for what it could become.

Halifi brings this same energy to his architectural designs. He has designed award-winning mobile health clinics, transforming old city buses to be used during the COVID-19 pandemic and envisioned a network of green spaces in a city in desparate need of them. His hope is that his work can speak for a generation of Casawi — native Casablancans — who are too often left out of discussions of the city and its future.

“Without art or concrete forms of expression, we will be forgotten. Instagram posts and TikTok videos aren’t enough,” he said, “and so I write, design, and dream of a world that could be, in the midst of the one that is.”

Andrew Nemr Taps into Story

Andrew Nemr is breathless. Sweating profusely. Focused.

Swinging his arms and shuffling his feet, he is dancing across a stage made of four, square, darkly and deeply scuffed wooden gig boards, shedding tears, and telling his life story. Through the panting, pointed moves, and visible pain, Nemr isn’t just telling his story, but inviting the audience into it. 

PHOTO: Courtesy AramcoWorld magazine.

It’s 2017 and Nemr is performing “Rising to the Tap,” a one-man show produced in collaboration with the Flying Carpet Theatre in New York City. Combining tap, storytelling, and physical drama, Nemr does more than dance. He taps his away across continents and time, recounting the beats and drops of his own narrative in rhythm and spoken word, stomps, and flicks of the toe.

In the show, he takes the audience from the war-torn streets of Lebanon to the quiet suburbs of Edmonton, Alberta, from the dizzying heights of dancing with tap gods in New York City to his own inner journey toward deeper community across borders and boundaries. 

Five years later, in 2022, Nemr is still performing the show. He’s also still writing that life story, improvising new chapters, and inviting others into a grander narrative about setbacks, growth, and shaping the world for good.

Oppression or Liberation? Sweating Over Modest Clothing

Sitting with Soraya under the shade of a palm tree along Balneario del Escambrón’s sun-soaked sand in San Juan, Puerto Rico, I could barely stand the heat.

It was 88° F (31° C) with high humidity. Sweat was pouring down my face as I listened to her talk about her experience as a Puerto Rican convert to Islam.

Amidst the discussion, she noticed my perspiration and laughed. “Hermano, you think you’re hot?! Imagine being dressed in a black abaya [loose over garment] and hijab!”

Bringing the topic up, I asked her why she chose to wear hijab — or Islamic headscarf. Soraya replied, “before I became Muslim, men were always judging my body by its curves, by how tight my clothes were and how round I was in certain places. Wearing abaya donning the hijab, takes those evaluations out of the conversation and forces people to take me for who I actually am, what I say, what I do — not what I wear.”

Even so, Soraya still gets stopped on San Juan’s streets and asked about her clothing, her religion, or whether she feels “oppressed.”

For many, the “controversial fabric” is a symbol of subjugation and segregation. Especially right now, as protests continue to rage in Iran after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Ahmini who was killed while resisting the country’s compulsory laws forcing women to wear hijab, the headscarf has once again become a trademark of tyranny and functional emblem of fundamentalist religion.

And yet, for millions of religious women, headscarves, veils, and others forms of conservative clothing remain a prized tradition, a fashion statement, or — as with Soraya — a means of liberation.

In my latest piece with Patheos, I explore the material contexts and colonial pasts that are imperative to keep in mind when discussing hijabs, veils, and other forms of modest, religious dress.

Best In-Depth Reporting on Religion

I am beyond grateful to announce that I was named the third place winner of the Best In-Depth Reporting on Religion award from the American Academy of Religion.

I love writing on religion, and going in depth on stories of relevance and import. To be recognized by the world’s largest association of academics who research or teach topics related to religion and to place behind wonderful religion writers like Peter Manseau and Dawn Araujo-Hawkins is an immense honor.

The judges had this to say about my work:

[Ken’s] reporting includes a delightful and eye-opening history of a Muslim acrobat in Liverpool, an insightful and timely article on how sports play a role in combatting ignorance and Islamophobia, and interesting reports on Jewish music and spiritual seeking in modern-day Germany.

Here below are the three stories I submitted, just in case you missed them last year.

Thanks in advance, for taking a (second) look.

The Liverpool Effect

A hidden grave, Moroccan acrobats, and combatting Islamophobia in Liverpool through sport.

Berlin: The not-so-secular city

Is Berlin the atheist capital of Europe? Maybe so…but maybe not.

Klezmer’s modern European revival

Yiddish Music Is Resurging In The Weimar Square Hitler Frequented

How migrants are changing Europe's churches

“Each apartment block has its own community, its own dynamics, its own culture,” Ute Paul said as she walked among the Plattenbau — formidable apartments built of prefabricated concrete slabs —  in Gotha West, a working-class suburb of the central German city, Gotha.

Originally constructed as a planned housing development (Neubaugebiet) during the waning years of the socialist East German Republic, the district is now home to migrants who have made their way from Ukraine and Eritrea, Afghanistan and Romania, Nigeria and Syria. Many of them are relocated to places like Gotha West, where they often end up grouped with their fellow countrymen and forming cliques based on shared language, religion, or background.

On Coburger Place, a centrally located square with shops and a small casino that serves as the neighborhood’s main hangout spot, there is a small storefront with the words, “from dark to light” written across its windows.

The shop is the principle gathering place for the Mustard Seed District Mission (senfkorn.STADTteil Mission). Since 2015, pastor Michael Weinmann and his wife Christiane have been leading Mustard Seed and “experimenting with new forms of community in Gotha-West,” said Paul, who joined the pair along with her husband, Frank, in 2021.

Focusing less on events and more on “relationships, ‘accidental’ encounters, and natural life in the district,” Paul said the mission has little to show in terms of deliverables or church attendance.

Instead, reflecting the challenges and opportunities of migrant mission in Europe, Paul said Mustard Seed has been able to “create a vibrant network of relationships between people of different backgrounds and origins from across the world.”

Along the way, Paul said the Mustard Seed team has had to unlearn a lot of what they thought they knew about mission and adapt to the everyday realities of those God has given them to serve.

Since the unprecedented migratory movements that shook Europe in 2015 and 2016, an increasing number of Christian organizations have had to reshape their institutions and rethink the identity of Christianity from below.

Mustard Seed is just one example of how the movement of asylum seekers, economic migrants, and internally displaced persons has created new commissions and institutions to meet changing facts on the ground across the continent.

Migration to Europe is not a recent phenomenon. But since 2013, some 17.2 million migrants from outside the European Union (EU) have come to Europe, finding their way to places like Germany and Spain, the UK and Italy. As they arrived, they have sparked public discourse around European culture, values, and religious identity.

Amid the debate, churches have played key roles in the process of integration. Beyond offering religious hospitality, a 2018 study from the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe (CCME) found how congregations provide “symbolic resources for positive self-identification and opportunities for interaction with others as well as crucial services.”

The result has been a transformation of the churches themselves.