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Pope Praises ‘Complementarity’ & Resists Gay Ambassador; Irish Religious Leaders Spar Over Marriage; Colombian Atty Gen Cites ‘Bogus’ Study Opposing Adoption; Global LGBT Recap

…tened to boycott IKEA, after it provided Family Card holders with discount tickets to his Christian magic show, ‘Vision’. In a statement, the chain said it would not be cutting ties with the pastor. IKEA said: “Dear IKEA fans, thanks for your patience while we took time to come to an informed decision on an issue that has raised sensitivities in our community. “After listening to the questions raised, we decided to do a thorough review. We spoke d…

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Spiritual Unplugging, Or What to Do When There is Wifi at the Ashram

…self-interrogation boiled, my hand extended to the right. I reached for my phone, but I found nothing. At first I laughed at my instinct, my muscle memory. The phone, with its glowing screen, gave me solace and control. But I was tied to my cushion for another hour, and in this ashram for another day, so email would have to wait. I panicked. My heart raced. Would my editor be asking for me? Would a reply from that politician’s secretary sit unansw…

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Pop-Culture Angels Are More Than Just Embarrassing Kitsch

…y from Victorian sentimentalism. Such angels are on sale at reduced price; cheap wares for cheap faith. It would be an error, however, to fully dismiss pop culture angels. Despite the fact that representations of angels in film and television, comics and music, paperback novels and posters, are filtered through market concerns, such pop culture can still speak to human meaning—and because of that they merit our attention. Besides, the bulk of art…

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No Bible-as-State-Book for Tennessee as Legislators Suffer “Symbol Fatigue”

…Friendship sloop designated as the official maritime sloop of the state of Maine. Ohioans also sought out sloop-related recognition, appealing to their state’s governing assembly to name “Hang on Sloopy” as the state rock song. And in Missouri, where I grew up, residents of the show-me state felt they needed an official state wonder dog. (Specifically, Jim the Wonder Dog, who was not from Missouri but evidently baffled some important Missouri psyc…

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Salvation, Purity, and Right Wing Activism: A Sampling of What Taxpayers Will Be Forced to Support as a Result of Carson v. Makin SCOTUS Ruling

…is, Indiana and Colorado Springs, Colorado. As The New York Times reports, Maine’s Supreme Court brief noted that the schools “candidly admit that they discriminate against homosexuals, individuals who are transgender and non-Christians.” This stance is par for the course for evangelical schools, which frequently refer to themselves simply as “Christian schools” or “Christian academies.” Catholic schools, which have their own problems and are cert…

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Religious Right Very Much Alive in Tomorrow’s Elections

…y.” The embarrassment that may befall Virginia might well be duplicated in Maine. Polls there show a dead heat on a referendum to overturn the recently-enacated gay marriage law. The reactionary anti-equality National Organization for Marriage (NOM) has set its sights on Maine just like it did on Cailfornia’s Proposition 8 last year. In New York, it’s exactly those “personal definitions of morality” that drove Scozzafava to drop out of the race an…

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How Much Did Jesus Care About Sex?

…cost of true discipleship. The price it was called upon to pay was all too cheap…We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale; we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition…Was there ever a more terrible and disastrous instance of Christianizing the world than this? It’s regrettable, I think, that “cheap grace” has turned into a kind of meme that Rod Dreher can toss into his debate with Andrew Sullivan without…

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Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate

…church, they’re marinating, so to speak, in the the various teachings of a number of people. I’ve covered many an event where I’ve been waiting in line to get in, and the inevitable conversation with the people around you goes something like this: they ask first where you go to church, and second which teachers you admire, and then you get into a long conversation about the relative virtues of all of them. A really good example of how all these te…

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Episcopal Church Assault Data Reveals the Dark Side of Inclusive Christianity

…a random sample size and therefore isn’t statistically representative. The number of individuals reporting victimization in Episcopal spaces is alarming nonetheless. However, I would argue the data is more likely to under- than to overestimate the scope of the abuse that occurs. To see why, the survey results must be interpreted in light of the Episcopal Church’s larger culture of inaction around sexual violence. See no evil, hear no evil… LGBTQ+…

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Power Up: Turn Off the Cell Phone

…plugged-in lifestyle doesn’t really get at the heart of the issue. I think the Amish, of all people, have it right. It’s not so much about what you as an individual are doing or not doing, as the effect technology has on the community: Why not make life easier and just put [a phone] in the house? “What would that lead to?” another Amish man asked me. “We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a tel…

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