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Religion Dispatches - Religion Dispatches Religion Dispatches
  • Racial Justice
    • White Smoke, Black Pope? Pope Leo XIV, first US pontiff, has African roots
      White Smoke, Black Pope? Pope Leo XIV, first US pontiff, has African roots
    • HABEMUS PAPAM: New Pope Selection Signals Church’s Concerns about Spread of US, Global Authoritarianism
      HABEMUS PAPAM: New Pope Selection Signals Church’s Concerns about Spread of US, Global Authoritarianism
    • EXPERTS AGREE: what Trump is doing is fascism
      EXPERTS AGREE: what Trump is doing is fascism
  • Sex/Gender/Justice
    • HABEMUS PAPAM: New Pope Selection Signals Church’s Concerns about Spread of US, Global Authoritarianism
      HABEMUS PAPAM: New Pope Selection Signals Church’s Concerns about Spread of US, Global Authoritarianism
    • EXPERTS AGREE: what Trump is doing is fascism
      EXPERTS AGREE: what Trump is doing is fascism
    • What The Roman Catholic Church needs is a wholesale reset, not a new Pope
      What The Roman Catholic Church needs is a wholesale reset, not a new Pope
  • Christian Nationalism
    • Catholic Right Support isn’t the Only Reason Trump Believes He Can Get Away with Mockery of Catholicism
      Catholic Right Support isn’t the Only Reason Trump Believes He Can Get Away with Mockery of Catholicism
    • EXPERTS AGREE: what Trump is doing is fascism
      EXPERTS AGREE: what Trump is doing is fascism
    • My Book on The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity Was One of Hundreds Just Banned by the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
      My Book on The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity Was One of Hundreds Just Banned by the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
  • Politics
    • Catholic Right Support isn’t the Only Reason Trump Believes He Can Get Away with Mockery of Catholicism
      Catholic Right Support isn’t the Only Reason Trump Believes He Can Get Away with Mockery of Catholicism
    • EXPERTS AGREE: what Trump is doing is fascism
      EXPERTS AGREE: what Trump is doing is fascism
    • Once Again the ADL Antisemitism Audit Overreaches — Including an Embarrassing Failure to Recognize a Jewish Ritual
      Once Again the ADL Antisemitism Audit Overreaches — Including an Embarrassing Failure to Recognize a Jewish Ritual
holly.welker@gmail.com'

Holly Welker

Holly Welker is the editor of Baring Witness: 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage. Her poetry and prose have appeared in publications ranging from Seventeen to Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought to Bitch to the New York Times.

(A)theologies, Archive, Racial Justice, Sex/Gender/JusticeApril 13, 2022

‘Always Pray to the Father’: Mormon Leader Calls Desire for Knowledge of Heavenly Mother ‘Arrogant and Unproductive’

By Holly Welker

In 1995, in a document called the Family Proclamation, leaders of The Church of Jesus…

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(A)theologies, OMFG, Sex/Gender/JusticeJanuary 15, 2020

Mormon Statement on Feminism is Relevant and Timely… But Only by Coincidence

By Holly Welker

“What is the Church’s stance on feminism?” This is the question addressed in a brief anonymous…

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History/Theology, OMFG, Sex/Gender/JusticeMay 7, 2019

LDS Church Rescinds Hurtful Marriage Policy Without Apology

By Holly Welker

Given the ease with which the discontinuation of this policy was accomplished—two pages, three signatures—it’s worthwhile to ask: why now?

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History/Theology, Sex/Gender/JusticeApril 8, 2019

LDS Leaders Owe Repentance and Apology for Cruelty to LGBTQ People and Their Children

By Holly Welker

While LDS leadership rescinded its prohibition on baptizing children of LGBTQ parents, they bizarrely claim that neither the church’s nor God’s will have changed. You can all but hear them say, “Look, don’t blame us for the fact that God finds your gayness abhorrent! We’re just messengers!” 

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History/Theology, OMFG, Sex/Gender/JusticeJanuary 4, 2019

Changes in Role of Mormon Women Can’t Be Discussed—But Let’s Discuss Them Anyway

By Holly Welker

It’s gaslighting, moral cowardice, and yet another betrayal to deny women’s anger and pain, only to go and make some of the changes women have sought while still explicitly denying that women ever had any sort of legitimate complaint.

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Christian Nationalism, Politics/Law, Sex/Gender/JusticeSeptember 28, 2018

Kavanaugh Hearings Are a Commentary on Mormonism

By Holly Welker

I strongly suspect that what Senator Orrin Hatch found so objectionable about the Kavanaugh hearing was that women were allowed to ask questions of a man.

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Culture, OMFG, Sex/Gender/JusticeSeptember 14, 2018

Mormon ‘Humorist’ Robert Kirby Is Butt of His Own Dirty Joke

By Holly Welker

The problem, he writes, is that he “misjudged how she would take [his] sense of humor.” Really? Does he normally get a good response to asking women he’s just met to pretend they’re prostitutes?

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OMFGAugust 20, 2018

LDS Church Disavows “Mormon”-ism

By Holly Welker

I doubt that Latter-day Saints are any more likely in 2018 to renounce a practice ingrained over lifetimes than they were in 1982.

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Archive, OMFG, Sexuality/GenderJanuary 17, 2018

Meet the New (Straight White American Male) Mormon President

By Holly Welker

On Tuesday, Russell M. Nelson, a 93-year-old retired heart surgeon, was announced as the seventeenth…

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Archive, Books, Culture, Sexuality/Gender, StoriesJuly 28, 2014

When Religion Becomes a Trap Rather Than a Safety Net

By Holly Welker

“My situation isn’t isolated to Mormonism. But to suggest that it doesn’t exist in Mormonism is just bullshit. Abuse of power happens in every religion.”

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