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Why the Hell Does Hell Still Matter?

By Kathryn Gin

…. The common claim that hell has been on the outs in America since at least 1800 is simply untrue. If anything, 1800 represented a turning point in the other direction. The idea of universal salvation had appealed to both elites like Chauncy and common folk in the late-1700s. The promise that all humans would eventually be saved represented an extreme backlash against the dominant Calvinist notion that God chose only some for heaven. Universal sal…

Catholic Bishops Meeting For Family Synod; South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church OKs Gay Weddings, Ordination; Court in Malaysia Deals Setback To Transgender Advocates; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…mibia, whose laws don’t recognise same-sex relationships.” Malaysia: Court deals setback to trans people In a setback for transgender civil rights advocates, the Federal Court overturned lower court rulings that an anti-cross-dressing Shariah law was unconstitutional. According to the Malay Mail, “The apex court’s decision today will set a precedent on other cases where state Islamic authorities are arguing that fundamental constitutional rights g…

Along Came a Spider: What the Pope Doesn’t See

By Anthea Butler

A few years back, Chris Rock dropped a nice spoken word ditty called No Sex in the Champagne Room. I am 100% sure Father David Dueppen, a priest in Miami, Florida, has never heard it. Why? Because not only did he spend $1800 dollars in the champagne room of a club called Porky’s, but he also had a sexual relationship with the stripper he spent the money on, Beatrice Hernandez. And if that weren’t fascinating enough, she claims that he promised he…

We Went Through Amoris Laetitia Section by Section So You Wouldn’t Have To

By Anthony Adams

…eteronormative uncontracepted sex in monogamous marriage.” Sections 243 and 299 would also disappoint any divorced and remarried Catholics who want to receive Communion openly. Pope Francis says they should be treated with care and kindness and respect, but he stops short of giving them access to receiving Communion. He offers the same condescension to LGBT Catholics in Section 250 when he says should be treated with care, kindness and respect, bu…

Episcopal Church Assault Data Reveals the Dark Side of Inclusive Christianity

By Charlotte Dalwood

When representatives of The Episcopal Church gather in Baltimore for the denomination’s General Convention taking place from July 8-11, they’ll be asked to consider a proposed overhaul to the church’s sexual violence prevention policy. Currently, Episcopal canon law requires those preparing for ordination to demonstrate competencies in the “prevention of sexual misconduct.” The proposed changes would strike that requirement. Instead, ordinands wo…

Is Joel Osteen, Success Mag Cover Boy, Really “God’s Best”?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…n selfish, slow to help the poor and needy around me, hesitant to give from my own abundance. If Joel Osteen is honest, he would see that while he is indeed living man’s best—and is a role model for worldly success—his ministry is woefully lacking when measured against “God’s best.”…

New Spencer Book Denies Existence of Muhammad

By Hussein Rashid

…m and Jew and Fred Donner’s Muhammad and the Believers, a recent book that deals with many of the questions Spencer raises, but that actually engages with primary material and that has been challenged by other experts in the field. My fear is that the new Islamphobic strategy is to simply edit solid scholarship like Donner’s into fear-mongering drivel and repackage it as their own. It’s the problem when you want money over truth or knowledge. And…

Too Hot for Shul: Rabbis Seek Healthy Israel Dialogue After Gaza

By Sarah Posner

…or Human Rights (formerly Rabbis for Human Rights-North America), which has 1800 affiliated rabbis. “Rabbis tend to be more progressive than their congregations and more knowledgeable” about Israel, Jacobs added, but fear losing their jobs, members, and donations, as well as contending with pushback from their more hawkish congregants—who may well be a very vocal minority. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the past president of the Union for Reform Judaism, wrot…

How We Got to Super: Grant Morrison’s Visionary Gnosticism

By Jeffrey J. Kripal

…decades, reading pretty much every periodical in French and English back to 1800 as he looked for reports of “super-constructions in the sky” (what we would now call UFOs) and paranormal people. He found plenty of both. In works like The Book of the Damned (1919) and Wild Talents (1932), Fort created an entire super-vocabulary. Here we encounter things like a super-bat, super-biology, super-chemistry, a super-dragon, super-evil, super-geography, s…

Living Between Worlds: Muslim, American, Five Percenter

By Hussein Rashid

…st/producer affiliated with the Wu-Tang Clan. It seems appropriate. Knight deals with the ciphers, the hidden knowledge the Five Percent trade in. But this is also a knowledge that is extremely public via cultural production; it’s available, yet so many people miss it. This metaphor of unrealized wisdom is a wonderful opening for the book. Knight continues, mixing academic musings with popular culture, and quoting Ebrahim Moosa on the stigma of as…