The decline of religion remains a fundamental reality in most Western countries, particularly in Europe, where over 50% of those under age 40 do not identify with any faith. Even in more religious America, some estimate that as many as 100,000 churches will close in the near future. Meanwhile, the ranks of “Nones,” those outside religious communities, have grown so large that their numbers rival those of Catholics and evangelical Protestants.
Yet, as we document in a...
It was summer 2021, and my mother’s desk was a mess, including a torn envelope from the IRS shoved in the back of a drawer.
“Mom?” I asked. “Did you pay your taxes?”
My mother, increasingly forgetful at 84, said she wasn’t sure. She told me to call her accountant of 30 years, who said the taxes hadn’t been paid but that he would take care of it.
That’s not all he took...
In December, bestselling author and humorist David Sedaris wrote a New Yorker magazine essay about a recent trip to Portland, Oregon. While on a walk to a donut shop, he “lost count of the strung-out addicts I passed on my way” before eventually encountering four homeless people huddled around an empty baby carriage and smoking drugs right on the sidewalk. Moments later, a dog belonging to one of the addicts rushed...
The Republican leader of Pennsylvania's state Senate saluted his allies in labor earlier this month after their successful, years-long effort to defeat what they saw as a job-killing climate initiative.
"Thanks to this repeal, the members of this union won't have to pack suitcases to go to a job," Sen. Joe Pittman declared while introducing business agent Shawn Steffee of Boilermakers Local 154 in Pittsburgh. "They'll pack lunchboxes."
In the years since...
