Archive
What Lies Beneath USA’s Dig Is More Than Entertainment
There is an unholy secret hiding in Jerusalem. So says the website and promotional material for the USA Network Show: Dig. It airs this spring as a 10-part series that promises a …
How To Create a Church Budget – Church Finance Series
A version of this article appeared in the Los Angeles Sentinel. The church budgeting process can be difficult or delightful. Either way it’s necessary. As I wrote in part one, churches have …
L.A. Times, American Banker: Community Coalition Supports Bank Merger
The Rev. Mark Whitlock, executive director of the Cecil Murray Center for Community Engagement, is bringing religion to the financial pages. Whitlock played an active role in the public hearings on the …
From Giving up Ice Cream to Giving up Self-Sacrifice – A Social Work Professor’s Evolving Take on Lent
I must admit that the first mention of Lent brings back haunting memories. In our house, each day we randomly picked something to give up from a jar of little paper slips …
Mindfulness is as American as Apple Pie
“I want to deal with the chaos in my mind.” “I need to find some stillness and clarity in my mind.” So said two students at the first session of a six-week …
L.A.’s Congregations Raise New Questions About Multiracial Churches
The Southern Baptist Convention is turning its attention to race this month, with its policy arm changing the topic of its annual spring summit from bioethics to multiracial churches. The move revealed …
How To Make Sense of the Latest Killing on Skid Row
Los Angeles police officers killed a man on Skid Row on Sunday night, shooting him outside the building where I work. He died, his body broken, as others’ have been, just a …
Show Members the Money! Church Finance Series
A version of this article appeared in the Los Angeles Sentinel. Churches are required to be transparent and fiscally accountable and to work together to manage God’s money. But too many churches …
Building the Future of Religion, One Burrito at a Time: Service Groups and Religious “Nones”
On a recent Thursday night, a group of about 75 volunteers for the Burrito Project commandeered the kitchen and fellowship hall at the Church of the Epiphany to make 1,000 burritos to …
Pentecostal Prayer Gangs: Documenting Religion in a Brazilian Prison
CRCC research associate Andrew Johnson is not a filmmaker, he insists: he conceived the documentary, “If I Give My Soul,” while he was doing research for his sociology dissertation at the University …
The “Nones” Are Alright
This article originally appeared on Al Jazeera America. This article argues that far from becoming morally rudderless secular citizens, many religiously unaffiliated people are seeking ways of forming meaning and identity as …
A Pragmatist’s View of Religion
It is reasonably easy to be an armchair critic of religion. There are ample examples of religious leaders who compromise the values of their tradition, and the fundamentalists of every religion are …
Muslim Women Create A Mosque of Their Own in Los Angeles
This post originally appeared on Religion Dispatches. The day before the inaugural jumma, Friday congregational prayer, at the Women’s Mosque of America, M. Hasna Maznavi, who serves as the project’s President, was …
First All-female Mosque Opens in Los Angeles
This post originally appeared on Al Jazeera America. The first women-only mosque in the United States opened its doors in Los Angeles on Friday with an inaugural jummah, or prayer, by Edina …
Pentecostals, Proselytization, and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India
Pentecostals, Proselytization, and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India Chad M. Bauman, Author (Oxford University Press: 2015) The writing of this book was supported by the Pentecostal Charismatic Research Initiative. …
Who Will Care for the Rest? Executive Action on Immigration
(Photo by Stephanie Barto from Flickr Commons) The response to President Obama’s brief but pointed reference to the need for immigration reform during his 2015 State of the Union address was predictably …
Intersections: Cecil Murray, South L.A.’s Civic Leader and Spiritual Guide
This article originally appeared on Intersections South LA. By Jordyn Holman Since late November, residents from South Los Angeles have been peacefully protesting courthouse decisions to not indict police officers in Missouri …
Foreign Policy: The United States Will Never Win the Propaganda War Against the Islamic State
CRCC’s Executive Director Brie Loskota advised Manal Omar on her piece on countering the Islamic State in Foreign Policy. In the article, Omar refers to Loskota’s interview with terrorist attack survivor, Ndugwa Hassan. …
Mile of Miracles: A Microcosm of L.A.’s Religious Diversity
The processes of spiritual seeking, discovering and creating are constantly shaping and reshaping the religious landscape of Los Angeles. Far from being a godless metropolis, L.A. is one of the most religiously …
Hampers of hope in Harbor City
This post originally appeared on Al Jazeera America. HARBOR CITY, Calif. — From the Pacific Coast Highway exit off the freeway in Harbor City, it is impossible to miss the towering exhaust stacks …