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Trayvon Martin and American Exceptionalism

By Anthea Butler

…even have the courtesy to check Trayvon’s phone for his mom and dad’s telephone numbers because it’s just a black criminal’s body to them. While Zimmerman the trigger man slept in his bed, the police ordered a drug and alcohol test for Trayvon’s lifeless body. A black body that was representative of evil against the whiteness of George Zimmerman. I hesitated to write about this story, because there are many good stories about Trayvon and his pare…

Recovering From Rejection: The Second Coming of Ted Haggard

By Wendy Norris

…e skeptics. His exegesis simultaneously taps into evangelical anxieties about persecution and lambastes its harsh authoritarianism, a foil for the self-styled apostle banished from his secular and spiritual kingdom for committing modern American evangelicalism’s cardinal sin of homosexuality. The teachings of Paul play a starring role in Haggard’s personal and professional resurrection following the 2006 sex and drugs scandal that led to his abrup…

“You’ve Never Met a Muslim”

By Hussein Rashid

…e of our religion by those who, claiming Islam, have nothing to offer the future but barbarity. Ameena Meer_________ I was born in India, but raised in America. The great advantage for us growing up in the United States was the ability to develop our own identity. I was brought up an Indian Muslim. There were so few of us Indians in the U.S. then that if you saw a woman in a sari on the other end of the shopping mall, you went running over to in…

“Giving Godhead”: A Bloody Vision of Religion’s Deepest Influence

By Spencer Dew

…ering such statues more uncanny, even transcendent. A neat trick, not without an eerie beauty: wooden and stone faces battered into mirrors. Krieger is part of this broader formal tradition: she gives us the rustle of a snake in the grass and urges us to consider our shudder, shows us our nakedness in the garden and times how quickly we snatch for a fig leaf. Krieger is after the codes that get ingrained, that run in the background, that make us t…

Yes, It’s Worse To Be Gay in Russia

By Chrissy Stroop

…ay gay” law. According to the Levada Center poll, which asked Russians about a series of recently passed authoritarian laws infringing on rights officially guaranteed by the Russian constitution, only 59% of the respondents were aware of the law banning the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” among minors before being informed about it by the pollsters. That low level of information aside (it was actually higher than for any of the o…

Swiss Priest Sacked for Blessing Lesbian Couple; Mormon Equality Advocate Excommunicated; Pope-Backed Anti-Gay Referendum Fails; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…hat Anwar had been acquitted of charges under the anti-sodomy law in 2012 but that prosecutors refiled them almost immediately. “I maintain my innocence,” said Anwar, 67, inside the courtroom, according to the Associated Press. “This to me is a fabrication coming from a political conspiracy to stop my political career.” Rupert Colville, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, also criticized the verdict. “We are disappointe…

Clergy May Soon Find Taxes Soaring As Result of an Under-the-Radar Ruling

By Patrick Hornbeck

…b’s order of December 13 declared the housing allowance exemption unconstitutional, but the judge stayed her own ruling pending appeal. It’s likely that the case will eventually find its way to the Supreme Court. In retrospect, it’s surprising that the housing allowance rule has lasted as long as it has. The provision carves out a significant benefit that applies to clergy and no one else—to the tune of some $700 to $800 million in lost tax revenu…

Vatican Reverses Anti-Liberation Policies in Mexico

By Ruth Chojnacki and Jennifer Scheper Hughes

…f the bible and the theology they inspired. His relations with government authorities who prosecuted Argentina’s “dirty war,” largely conducted in secrecy, continue to be scrutinized along with his apparent ambivalence toward priests working in liberationist-inspired solidarity with the poor. As a result of the dismissal of sympathetic hierarchs and the dismantling of progressive wings of the institution conducted in a climate of suspicion, libera…

Milquetoast Liberal Religion Won’t Challenge Conservative Values: A History Lesson

By Sheila D. Collins

…ocial order, the stage was set for the triumph of the business counterrevolution with its ruthless privatizations, its wholesale destruction of democracy and the environment, and a return to the days of the Poor Law. In the progressive era the banner for economic justice had been carried by the Social Gospel movement with its belief in the redemption of the sociopolitical order, a message inspiring enough to set the stage for some of the most sign…

Religious Exceptions Not So Exceptional According to New Study

By Patricia Miller

…rities agencies across the country.” While most Catholic health care institutions have accepted the accommodation, a number of the nation’s 260 Catholic institutions of higher learning as well as Catholic nonprofits are seeking a broader exemption that would in effect bar their insurers from providing contraceptive coverage as specified under the accommodation designed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The Supreme Court is scheduled…