“Tax the churches” is a slogan that long predates social media – Frank Zappa was singing it back in 1981 and Mark Twain expressed similar sentiments many decades before that. So what does it mean today?

Religion influences morals and values and shapes the way people think about and respond to the world. So what happens when the religious say they're done with religion?

I was ordained as a Southern Baptist minister in 1993, and I know the opposition to women in the Southern Baptist Convention being ordained. But many denominational leaders, seminaries and local churches have supported the practice.

COVID at church? The lockdowns to combat COVID-19 interrupted nearly every aspect of American life. One of the most controversial aspects was the closure of churches. But as an analyst of religious data, I believe evidence shows a correlation between attending church and the spread of COVID-19.

Does crisis make people more religious? Organized religion has been on the decline for decades in the United States. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers found that online searches for the word “prayer” soared to their highest level ever in over 90 countries.

A political activist in 2021 might maintain their “sacred canopy” – whether it is called “social justice” or “freedom” – by calling out opinions they consider too abhorrent to be tolerated in contemporary society.

The mark of the beast – a cryptic mark in Revelation which indicates allegiance to Satan – has been invoked by fringe Christian figures throughout the pandemic in reference to what they deem to be the evil of masks and vaccines.

As a scholar of gender and evangelical Christianity who grew up Southern Baptist, I watched how complementarianism became central to evangelical belief, starting in the late 1970s, in response to the feminist influence within Christianity.