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Amid the bombings and murders of Northern Ireland’s decades-long conflicted called the Troubles, Rev. Gary Mason would go to the bars that he had frequented before embracing Christianity and talk with combatants.

“Tell me your story,” he would ask. “What shaped you as a person? What voices spoke into your life to give you that worldview?"

This report seeks to help practitioners, content creators, academics, and funders understand the landscape of religious literacy content being developed in education, new media, and journalism.

Images such as a flag that said “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president” seem new, but this mix of white, right-wing identity politics and nationalist Christianity has been stirring for many years. It’s hard to say exactly when this version of white supremacist Christianity — embedded within and supported by the Republican Party — began, but one important turning point was President Nixon’s commitment to the GOP’s Southern strategy to attract Dixiecrats disaffected by the Democratic Party’s commitment to the civil rights movement.

California has become a battleground between churches and the government during the coronavirus pandemic, with implications for faith groups across the country.

When we think of congregational security, it is hard to not be flooded with images of mass shootings across the globe and in our own backyard, where those who gathered together to pray, to sing, to learn, to reflect were murdered in their most sacred and holy of places.

For more than 15 years, I’ve watched as people from all religions and walks of life come to our offices to get a few moments of his time. I’ve seen mothers drag sons by the ear to sit them down for a talking-to at the table of the one who many call Papa.  I’ve seen fellow pastors seek his guidance, political leaders seek his approval, community leaders seek his backing, couples seek his blessing.

Evangelical churches have maintained their core institutional strengths, including megachurches that still can coordinate blocs of voters, wealth amassed over decades, media outlets and donors ready to fund candidates.

In order to understand innovation, we first need to define it. My center, the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at USC, undertook a multi-year project to explore how religions are changing and where there is creativity in religious environments across Greater Los Angeles and Seoul, South Korea.

The idea that government alone can solve complex problems has long been on the wane—so much so that many people today think government cannot solve any problem, regardless of its complexity. In reality, effective governance takes collaboration between government agencies, the private sector, and community groups to make progress on social problems, whether large or small.