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Articles by Benjamin Spratt
Balbir Singh Sodhi Archives
Skip to content Mastodon Rana Singh Sodhi, second from right, brother of Balbir Singh Sodhi, speaks at the Balbir Singh Sodhi commemoration ceremony, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026, outside the family's gas station in Mesa, Arizona. (Photo courtesy of The Revolutionary Love Project) Opinion Most Popular Stories 1
When antisemitic violence came to our synagogue’s doorstep, Tisha B’Av’s ‘narrow straits’ became frighteningly real
Members of the NYPD Crime Scene Unit investigate the scene of a stabbing attack at the intersection of West 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in New York City, July 23, 2026. (Kyle Mazza Anadolu via Getty Images) JTA – On Thursday, on Tisha B’Av, violence came frighteningly close to home to Congregation Rodeph Sholom, the synagogue I lead on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
When antisemitic violence came to our synagogue’s doorstep, Tisha B’Av’s ‘narrow straits’ became frighteningly real
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... On Thursday, on Tisha B’Av, violence came frighteningly close to home to Congregation Rodeph Sholom, the synagogue I lead on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. One person was stabbed a city block away, near 84th Street and Central Park West, followed shortly afterward by a second stabbing outside the Jewish Center on 86th Street. One of the victims was wearing a kippah.
Matthew Johnson Harris uses faith to leverage the theater's power to heal
(RNS) — Matthew Johnson Harris grew up in North Texas in a family filled with complexity and a deep love of faith. But each week at the Black evangelical church where his family attended, Harris felt himself being pushed away and pulled close at the same time: He was inspired by the music and prayer, singing in the church’s praise team and choir, he said, while hearing sermons about how he was going to hell for being gay.
Uriah Kim: Decentering Christianity as an act of faith and justice
(RNS) — The Rev. Uriah Kim remembers his childhood fondly. He did not grow up in a religious family, though his Buddhist mother did share her practices with him. Instead he explored being nonreligious, saying he fancied himself an atheist, especially in his teen years. Then he came across Christianity, and found a new sense of “coherence,” he said. His discovery compelled him beyond what he referred to as “the vanity of vanity (that) everything is nothing” and toward a sense of higher purpose.
Lisa Doi: Pilgrims sustain the memory of Japanese American detainment
(RNS) — Two months after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, forcing 120,000 Japanese Americans, Japanese immigrants and their relatives living in the United States to leave their homes and take up residence in prisonlike camps in sparsely populated areas in seven states. In 1942, polling indicated that nearly 60% of Americans supported this decision, even though two-thirds of the relocated people were American citizens.
Casper ter Kuile sees America's religious decline as an opportunity
(RNS) — Where many observers look at American religion and spirituality and see decline, Casper ter Kuile sees the changing faith landscape as an opportunity. “We are in crisis today. Too many of us feel isolated and bereft of purpose. What worked for prior generations is failing,” said ter Kuile, the founder, most recently, of The Nearness, in a recent interview.
Bringing light without God: Humanist chaplain Anthony Cruz Pantojas
(RNS) — When the Catholic student community gathers for worship on the Tufts University campus near Boston, candles burn to represent the light of God. They are also a symbol of an uncommon religious pluralism: The tapers used at Sunday Mass and other worship are made by hand by the Humanist Community at Tufts,a student-led community “that is striving for meaning without boundaries,” as its mission statement says.
Nadiah Mohajir works to better Muslims' sexual health and relationships
(RNS) — Many religious communities struggle to discuss sex in a way that is both grounded in tradition and affirming of their members’ modern experience of love, attraction and gender. What is the cultural custom of a faith, and what is a religious requirement? What are norms, and what are mandates?
My Mission: ‘Healing the healers’ with the restorative wisdom of the Black church
13 April 2023 JOSHUA STANTON and BENJAMIN SPRATT United States RNS The Black church is one of the most visible institutions in American life, its national leaders’ names nearly synonymous with the civil rights movement from the 1960s to the present day. It’s a powerfully unifying force, with 74 per cent of Black adults identifying as Christian. Before the pandemic, some 40 per cent of those Christians reported attending a church service in the prior week.
‘Healing the Healers’ With the Restorative Wisdom of the Black Church
ShareTweetPinPocketFlipboard (RNS) — The Black church is one of the most visible institutions in American life, its national leaders’ names nearly synonymous with the civil rights movement from the 1960s to the present day. It’s a powerfully unifying force, with 74% of Black adults identifying as Christian. Before the pandemic, some 40% of those Christians reported attending a church service in the prior week.
'Healing the healers' with the restorative wisdom of the Black church
(RNS) — The Black church is one of the most visible institutions in American life, its national leaders’ names nearly synonymous with the civil rights movement from the 1960s to the present day. It’s a powerfully unifying force, with 74% of Black adults identifying as Christian. Before the pandemic, some 40% of those Christians reported attending a church service in the prior week.
Anju Bhargava: Getting Hinduism a seat at the table Original
(RNS) — Eighty-seven percent of Hindus in the United States today are immigrants. A striking 62% are male, suggesting that many families in South Asia, where Hinduism is geographically and historically rooted, are first sending men of working age abroad in search of opportunity and only later send over other relatives.
For Father James Martin, Ministry Means Going Wherever the People Are
ShareTweetPinPocketFlipboard (RNS) — The Catholic Church in America is experiencing great flux — with profound potential and the pain of reckoning and responsibility. Thirteen percent of Americans, according to Pew Research, are former Catholics, while the parish Masses are filled with growing numbers of immigrants from Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa.
For Father James Martin, ministry means going wherever the people are Original
(RNS) — The Catholic Church in America is experiencing great flux — with profound potential and the pain of reckoning and responsibility. Thirteen percent of Americans, according to Pew Research, are former Catholics, while the parish Masses are filled with growing numbers of immigrants from Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa.
Sukkot and a New Ecosystem of Jewish Leadership
By Rabbi Benjamin Spratt and Rabbi Joshua Stanton A teaching from Sukkot merits our attention. Amid the building of huts and the welcoming of guests, the gathering of four different flora offers a powerful image about Jewish community and its leadership today. Those who have shaken the Lulav and Etrog may remember the four species of plant celebrated during the harvest holiday: etrog, palm, myrtle, and willow.
Her own trauma showed Yolonda Blue Horse how Indigenous Americans can overcome history
Trigger warning: Content about abuse, the death of a child and brutal American policies toward Native Americans. (RNS) — The destruction of Native American lives, cultures, languages and traditions is a scar on American history that disrupts simplistic narratives of American democratic ideals and exceptionalism.
US evangelicals: Bishop Robert Stearns wants to reinvent evangelicalism without leaving it behind
06 September 2022 BENJAMIN SPRATT and JOSHUA STANTON United States RNS In the Trump years, white evangelical Christians deepened their association with political power and doubled down on their social conservatism, even as - and some observers would say because of - a “precipitous drop” in their overall numbers. Evangelicalism’s 23 per cent share of the American population in 2006 shrank to 14 per cent in 2020.
Bishop Robert Stearns Wants To Reinvent Evangelicalism Without Leaving It Behind
ShareTweetPinPocketFlipboard (RNS) — In the Trump years, white evangelical Christians deepened their association with political power and doubled down on their social conservatism, even as — and some observers would say because of — a “precipitous drop” in their overall numbers. Evangelicalism’s 23% share of the American population in 2006 shrank to 14% in 2020. Despite this decline, evangelicals comprise a large and prominent segment of the population — one too large to be static or monolithic.
Bishop Robert Stearns wants to reinvent evangelicalism without leaving it behind
(RNS) — In the Trump years, white evangelical Christians deepened their association with political power and doubled down on their social conservatism, even as — and some observers would say because of — a “precipitous drop” in their overall numbers. Evangelicalism’s 23% share of the American population in 2006 shrank to 14% in 2020. Despite this decline, evangelicals comprise a large and prominent segment of the population — one too large to be static or monolithic.
The New Jewish Awakening
Our obsession with the narrative of our community's decline overlooks threads of optimism and opportunity.
Commodifying Faith
70 years ago, religion was America’s heart. Church gave spiritual significance, social responsibility, and a sense of community to the average American, serving as a hub for all layers of life. On any given Sunday morning, half of all Americans attended church, and 95% of Americans identified with a religious tradition. Today that number hovers at 70%. Instead, new centers of society now bloom to occupy the spaces once dominated by religion.
A saint-soldier defending Sikhs and reviving the American melting pot Original
(RNS) — The Sikh Coalition was born in the hours after 9/11, out of self-defense. In those raw days after the attacks, Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot outside the gas station his family ran in Mesa, Arizona. In the months following, American Sikhs were beaten and their temples, called gurdwaras, were set on fire. Less than a year after Singh Sodhi’s murder, his brother was shot while driving his cab near San Francisco.
American Judaism is in decline. That's great news for American Jews | Opinion
Haaretz Hebrew and TheMarker Haaretz.com, the online English edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, gives you breaking news, analyses and opinions about Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World. © Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. All Rights Reserved
American Judaism is in decline. That's great news for American Jews | Opinion
We stand now before the falling stones of American Judaism. So many of the structures, boundaries, and even purposes that gave American Jews definition and texture now face seismic upheavals. Rapidly declining religious participation, rising rates of intermarriage, deepening division surrounding American and Israeli politics, declining participation in Jewish philanthropy all tell the story of decline.
Break Up America’s Clergy Cartel
By 2034, the United States will face a shortage of between 38,000 to 124,000 physicians. The supply of doctors is tightly controlled by the number of medical school slots and medical residencies, both of which are set by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. This means that American physicians get to legally limit their competition and thereby artificially inflate their compensation.
Creating a Catholic Church she can belong to
(RNS) — Jamie Manson is a Catholic whose work is completely focused on the church while existing almost completely beyond the bounds of Catholic teaching. The longtime author of the award-winning National Catholic Reporter column “Grace on the Margins,” Manson is president of Catholics for Choice, a nearly half-century-old group that advocates for abortion access in the face of the church hierarchy’s staunch opposition. She doesn’t do it quietly.
Who’s ‘Really’ Jewish: the Sefardi Floridian, the Ashkenazi Californian, or the New York Jew By Choice? ‘Authenticity’ is a Trap
Jared Armstrong was raised Jewish in the United States and wants nothing more than to become an Israeli citizen and pursue his career as a professional basketball player for one of Israel’s leading teams. But Israeli authorities have challenged the extent of his Jewishness, potentially jeopardizing his career and also his dream of becoming Israeli.
An immigrant Muslim finds his model of empowerment in Black American Islam Original
(RNS) — Rami Nashashibi, who founded the Inner-City Muslim Action Network on Chicago’s South Side 25 years ago, is a community builder, a teacher and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” award. Georgetown University has called him one of the world’s 500 most-influential Muslims. What he is not is an imam. He is part of a rising generation of lay leaders blending ancient tradition with modern activism to mobilize their faith communities.
An awakening is coming to American religion. You won't hear about it from the pulpit.
(RNS) — Among clergy and sociologists, film directors and songwriters it’s become practically a matter of cliché that Americans are searching for wholehearted belonging and not finding their needs met — the phenomenon, in short, behind the phrase “spiritual but not religious.” These Americans are setting out on an open-ended quest, on their own or with trusted friends, to find meaning.
Evangelical Christians looking for renewal should look to the margins
(RNS) — Earlier this month New York Times columnist David Brooks published a devastating piece titled, “The Dissenters Trying to Save Evangelicalism from Itself.” Taking stock of the state of conservative Christianity, the piece identified widespread polarization, pain and disaffiliation, as well as the rapid decline in the number of people who call themselves evangelicals. But Brooks’ survey is not the whole story.
How a Supreme Court bent on protecting religion could harm it
(RNS) — Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that New York state can’t stop religious communities from gathering in large numbers, even where worshippers are likely to spread the deadly COVID-19 virus to the wider community. With its new conservative majority, the court is poised to intervene repeatedly in the coming years, ostensibly buttressing faith against the onslaught of secularism.
Department of Health and Human Services
Skip to content Mastodon Opinion Nitrogen tanks holding tens of thousands of frozen embryos and eggs sit in a lab at New Hope Fertility Center in New York on Dec. 20, 2017. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images) Opinion
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