111th Street Jesus
My profile of Kent Twitchell, dean of Los Angeles mural art, whose work asks: Can the visual language of photorealism communicate the truth of God? In the arts journal Image.
Jim Hinch
April 7, 2014
The Nones Have It?
A few recent stories about changing faith in America. Decline of the Revival, in The Los Angeles Review of Books, examines evangelicals’ efforts to understand their sudden loss of cultural and moral influence. What Happened to Religion in America? The I’s Have It, in OnFaith, posits American Christianity’s embrace of individualism as one explanation for that loss. Further evidence of religious conservatives’ current struggles can be found in activists’ recent turn to the courts in their fight against same-sex marriage. Faced with setbacks at the ballot box, religious conservatives have begun focusing on legal efforts to shield believers from the effects of what is increasingly considered a lost cause. It’s not all struggle and decline. Here’s a fun story about a day in the life of one of the rising generation of young, American-born imams quietly but inexorably altering the public contours of their faith. All in a day’s work: basketball, frank talk about sex, and instructions for brushing teeth in Ramadan.
December 6, 2013
Crystal Ball
My cover story for the latest issue of The American Scholar shows how the death and rebirth of Orange County’s Crystal Cathedral (which went bankrupt and now is being transformed by the county’s surging Catholic diocese into a regional worship and cultural center) signals a wider transformation in the fast-changing landscape of American spirituality.
October 28, 2013
The Future of Faith?
Much of my recent reporting has focused on the uncertain future of religion in America. Most recently, at Zocalo Public Square, I wrote about an immigrant Catholic resurgence in Orange County displacing the county’s once dominant evangelical Christians. In the Orange County Register, I’ve written about Asian-American Christians demanding greater respect from America’s evangelical establishment (here and here); a rapid change in evangelicals’ attitudes about sexuality; and growing resistance in the developing world to American-led Christian aid initiatives. The common thread in these stories is demographic change overturning established patterns of belief. The future of faith in America is increasingly hard to predict.
August 7, 2013
Wild/Underground/Hip Imams/Immigration
A roundup of recent work. A review in the Los Angeles Review of Books of Cheryl Strayed’s hiking memoir Wild argues that the book, more memoir than nature tale, augurs a decline of nature writing as a self-sustaining genre. Three recent articles in the Orange County Register document an underground movement of gay students at an evangelical Christian college; the rise of hip, American-born imams in Southern California mosques; and immigration activists’ claims that U.S. immigration authorities are attempting to silence criticism of conditions in California immigrant detention centers.
April 25, 2013
California Dreamers
I report in the Orange County Register on Terrence Park, a student at U.C. Berkeley who is president of the university’s math club, on his way to graduate school at Harvard — and in the United States illegally. Park is one of at least 220 undocumented immigrants studying at U.C. Berkeley, America’s premiere public university. Life is hard for these kids, as Terrence’s story amply demonstrates. An in-depth look at the human cost of America’s divisive, dysfunctional immigration system.
I also profile undocumented Berkeley student Linda Sanchez in Boom: A Journal of California.
January 27, 2013
The Future of (Asian-American) Christianity
I report in today’s Orange County Register on next-generation Asian-American churches in Southern California influencing the world. Goodbye, mono-lingual, hierarchical, tradition-minded immigrant churches. Hello, multi-ethnic, multi-media, service-oriented worship. Coming soon to your city, too.
December 18, 2012
Christians’ Demographic Cliff
In today’s Orange County Register:
As sanctuaries fill up for the holidays, forward-thinking church leaders are finding little to celebrate in a growing body of research that shows American Christianity at risk of losing an entire generation of young people, perhaps for good.
A record one-third of Americans under age 30 are now religiously unaffiliated, according to a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. That’s up from one-quarter just four years ago. There are now more religiously unaffiliated Americans than white evangelical Protestants.
Sixteen percent of non-Christians under 30 say they have a “good impression” of Christianity, and a mere 3 percent feel that way about evangelical Christianity, according to the Barna Group, a Christian market research organization. As recently as the 1990s, a majority of non-Christians viewed Christianity favorably.
More potentially troubling to church leaders is that half of young Christians have negative views of their own faith, according to Barna.
“It’s the melting of the icebergs, but many people aren’t paying attention to it,” said David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group.
December 7, 2012
Swerve/Fanboy
Two new publications: Why Stephen Greenblatt is Wrong — And Why It Matters in the Los Angeles Review of Books. And Mogul of the Fanboys in the Orange County Register. The former has inspired much comment (e.g. here). Update: There are reports that this week the Modern Language Association awarded its James Russell Lowell Prize to Greenblatt’s The Swerve.
November 5, 2012
Little Saigon, Unbound
I report in this Sunday’s Orange County Register that O.C.’s Little Saigon, the largest Vietnamese community outside Vietnam, has become an international beacon of Vietnamese culture and enterprise. Vietnamese enclaves, restaurants and businesses around the world have named themselves Little Saigon. Vietnamese expatriates look to Orange County for trends in music, food and commerce. Vietnamese pop music and television shows produced in Orange County are avidly consumed in Vietnam. Vietnamese-Americans have staged protests and hunger strikes to compel city officials to name their communities Little Saigon. “Little Saigon in Orange County is the granddaddy of Little Saigons,” says one longtime observer. “It’s sort of like the mecca.”
Jim Hinch 