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Pricey Tickets, Cranky Citizens, and Priests Behind Bars as Philadelphia Prepares For Papal Visit

By Anthea Butler

…to continue to shrink into the insularity and disorganization that caused the Philadelphia Archdiocese to decline so precipitously? It remains to be seen. Meanwhile, faithful Catholics and others who want to see the Pope may be losing heart. 10,000 tickets for the Pope’s Speech at Independence Mall sold out in two minutes on Tuesday, with 394k people trying their best to get a few. Tickets are already being scalped at $100 and up on craigslist. I…

Mile-High Identity Politics: What We Can Learn From the Same-Sex Seating Controversy

By Eboo Patel

…, not the fourth century … You’re not free to practice your religion in my airline seat.’ ‘This is male entitlement .. the height of male arrogance.’ One comment referred to this as a ‘back of the bus’ issue; as in, women being asked to move in such circumstances was tantamount to assigning them a lesser status as citizens and lower dignity as human beings. Other readers proposed that airlines set aside special seating for men requiring such accom…

The Key to Understanding the Federalist Society Isn’t Originalism — It’s This 800-Year Old Tradition

By Peter Schwartz

…notions of “human dignity” and “human flourishing,” Catholic natural law—an 800-year-old tradition dating back to Thomas Aquinas—is a lens that offers utter clarity to conservative Catholic jurists, activists, policymakers, and scholars as they observe, describe, and engage the world. The power and sharpness of this lens allow them to confidently snap every human movement—every human desire and motive and act—into its divinely appointed and proper…

Atheist Nazis? The Pope’s Cheap Atonement

By Susannah Heschel

Adam Clayton Powell called it “cheap grace,” but we might call it “cheap atonement”: the effort by sinners to select which sins to acknowledge and repent. Pope Benedict XVI ended his heavily protested visit to England with a heartfelt apology for German bombings of England during the Battle of Britain; though he refused to accept Christian responsibility for the Holocaust, blaming it instead on pagans and atheists. Given that Cardinal Walter Kasp…

Pope Denounces Gender Colonization; Indonesian Court Considers Islamist Request To Criminalize Homosexuality; Egypt’s Grand Mufti Says No One Has Right to Harm Homosexuals; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…are a historic milestone for Egypt’s religious institution. Along with the grand imam of al-Azhar mosque, the grand mufti of Egypt holds one of the highest positions on religious authority and plays an important role in determining opinions on religious law. Allam noted that other religious communities in Egypt, such as the Coptic Church, have also condemned homosexuality but say gays and lesbians should be treated fairly. The interview comes amid…

Is Religious Freedom a Casualty at Ground Zero?

By Kambiz GhaneaBassiri

…and, Ross, North Dakota, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The mosque built in Cedar Rapids in 1934 is the oldest American Muslim institution and is on the national register of historic places. American Muslims refer to it fondly as the Mother Mosque. American Muslims’ community building efforts between the World Wars were so successful in shaping a specifically American Islamic identity that when American Muslims who had fought in World War II returned hom…

Glenn Beck’s Cheap Grace

By Karyn Carlo

…way from the hard work of repentance, who tickle our ears with promises of cheap grace, and offer a vision of the cross of Jesus that has nothing to say to the crosses, and lynching trees, of history. But, if we do, we will be settling for the gospel of Caesar, not the good news of Jesus Christ. Perhaps it is time to put down the chalk, stop drawing pyrotechnical conspiracy theories that play into our worst fears and listen, instead, for the diffi…

Amway, Religious Right Pyramid Scheme, Returns to the Motherland

By Bill Berkowitz

…r named in his honor at Calvin College, a small Christian college based in Grand Rapids, Michigan; for years he has had the ear of top-shelf Republican Party political leaders; and he has been a prolific author of books, writer/co-author of columns, and is regular host of a Christian radio news program. Receiving the Presidential Citizens Medal (PCM) was Colson’s most prestigious comeback award. The man with the checkered resumé was now, in the ey…

Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate

By Anthea Butler

…or any other creed or doctrine. Rather, it is from the realm of the “Holy Spirit” and is “spirit-led” or derives from “divine revelation.” That makes it difficult to characterize, since he is mixing a lot of old doctrines and “heresy” together to make his NAR movement. Wagner’s founding of the NAR comes out of two streams: one, his time at Fuller seminary from the 1970s on, working with John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard church movement, and se…

Vandalism as Conversation-Starter

By Elizabeth Drescher

…h of a teen caught in a drive-by shooting in the King Park neighborhood of Grand Rapids, Michigan and the subsequent suicide of one of the suspected shooters as police closed in on him where he was holed up in a local hotel. A postmodern dream vision, the song imagines the initial murder, the response by the community and police, and the theological question that animated the last moments of the shooter’s life. It is a meditation on violence, deat…