religious conversion

I’m currently trying to finish a book manuscript on the malevolent effects of what I identify as “triumphalism” in Christian-Muslim relations. I define “triumphalism” as a mode of relating to…

Over the past few months, Louisiana Governor Piyush “Bobby” Jindal has been making aggressive moves to prepare himself for a 2016 presidential bid. In addition to rejecting a Medicaid expansion (and…

Called to the carpet for the decision to reinstall controversial bishops, the Vatican has taken to doing what it does best: issuing public statements, coupled with obfuscation and outright denial.

The anti-abortion movement takes conversion narratives to the next stage.

A few years ago during a college break, when my floor was deserted and peaceful, a middle-aged couple stopped by my office door looking for someone who taught religion. “We’re from the Unification Church,” the man said. I gasped. The Moonies! was my immediate, rather graceless thought. With great excitement, and flashbacks to news reports of mass weddings dancing through my head, I composed myself and invited them in to chat. They seemed pleasantly surprised that I knew what the Unification Church was and, perhaps most of all, that I hadn’t shut the door in their faces.

Some people think that evangelicals only do charity out of a selfish desire to convert non-believers. Others insist that evangelical faith-based organizations are secretly installing a Christian theocracy. Both assumptions are misguided in my view because they are too narrow. Moral Ambition seeks to broaden (and refine) our sense of what everyday evangelicals believe they are doing, or would like to be doing, when they engage the public sphere.

Louis Marinelli goes from big-time anti-gay activist to supporter of freedom to marry.

In the fall of 1999, I was a freshman at Gordon College, an evangelical liberal arts school in Massachusetts. There, fifteen years earlier, a professor named Thomas Howard resigned from the English department when he felt his beliefs were no longer in line with the college’s statement of…

Some are familiar with Glenn Beck’s teary Mormon conversion story, but what many are not aware of is the extent to which Mormonism has given Beck key elements of his on-air personality and messaging—and how it may shape the future of American conservatism.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning author tangles with one of the most fraught questions of the day: “The danger for science is that, if forced to choose between God or evolution, most Americans will choose God.”