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Teaching Love: Soulforce Takes it to the Quad

By Nick Street

…s to change the hearts of those who use religion to justify discrimination against sexual minorities. Most of the 20-somethings in the crowd are participating in Soulforce’s Equality Ride, a semiannual event that shuttles queer young adults and their allies to conservative colleges and seminaries, where they try to engage students and administrators in dialogue around the issue of sexuality. Terry Kimbrow, president of Central Baptist College, is…

Hajj Journal: M & M

By Amina Wadud

…bath with the unscented soaps, make my intentions, niyyah and pray two rakaats, before going to bed. Tentatively, he said, there would be two busloads (full to standing-room only) that would leave for the camps at Mina. The first bus was scheduled for midnight. Mina is only about five miles from Makkah. Give or take two hours for complication, I thought this meant that bus number two would be leaving around 2 a.m. He arbitrarily divided the group…

“Like sunshine in the darkest abyss I’ve ever experienced.”

By Joanna Brooks

…als is that parents—whether Mormon or any other faith—can love and support a child while holding onto deeply held beliefs. RD: The Mormon parent-gay child story most familiar to us is that parents make a terrible choice between holding to the faith or holding onto their child. And I refused to make that choice. If I were ever backed into a corner, I would choose my child, because I know I can still have a relationship with my Heavenly Father and…

Sociologists Slam Regnerus Study in Amicus Brief

By Peter Montgomery

…the “family structures study” by Mark Regnerus as a weapon in their battle against marriage equality, most recently in Illinois this week. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is among several groups that cite the study in briefs before the Supreme Court. The justices are getting a very different take on the study from the American Sociological Association, which filed an amicus brief in the Defense of Marriage Act case. It takes a persuasive wha…

What Does Satanism Have to do With QAnon?

By David Frankfurter

…tem evolving over the past few years may be confused by its references to Satanic rites in which children are supposedly abused. Of course, there’s never been the slightest evidence of murderous, child-abusing Satanic cults, despite extensive forensic investigations (by the FBI, in fact) back in the 1980s and 1990s. But in the world of QAnon conspiracy, Satanism is one facet of—indeed, the motivation for—a vast conspiracy of elites to exploit chil…

What My Christian High School Taught Me About Being a Black Girl

By Carlyn Ferrari

…aggy clothes, I can tell my body hasn’t left childhood behind. I look like a child. I was a child. * When I was fourteen my high school teacher gave me the nickname “Cleavage Queen.” He called me “C.Q.” for short. Here’s how it began. I attended a conservative, private Christian high school. Instead of dances, we had elaborately themed banquets. That year the theme was Robin Hood. I went to a costume store with my mother and we rented a medieval-i…

Argue-by-Number: A Suggestion for the Church

By Mark D. Jordan

…or it), but the numbering. Instead of reciting the familiar arguments once again, we could simply call out the numbers to cue support from those on our side. Number 1 could be “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Number 2: “God doesn’t discriminate.” Number 3: “Sex is only for procreation.” And so on. We could get clever, of course, and assign separate groups of numbers to arguments pro and con or to thematic clusters. I can even imagine s…

Our Lady of Good Hope and Excellent Behavior: Why this Apparition and Why Now?

By Lisa Bitel

…incidents at La Salette (1846) and Lourdes (1858). The Mother of God’s appearances to Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes were followed almost immediately by Virgin sightings across Europe, which have since never ceased (for a good introduction to these phenomena, check out the website of the Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute.) The proliferating apparitions followed an obvious pattern. The Virgin appeared to more women and childre…

How Muslim Civic Activism Helped Pass California’s Prop 47

By Nick Street

…we were doing what some other Muslim immigrants had been doing—we were separated from other communities, even our own Latino community. You’re not in a cocoon! “ Galedary said that advocacy for social justice and human dignity, which is the heart of LA Voice’s interfaith organizing efforts, is also fundamental to Islam. What had initially been a meeting about how LALMA could address insular concerns became a conversation about how a relatively sm…

Spiritual McCarthyism and the Catholic Vote

By Bill Berkowitz

In early April, before the Pennsylvania primary, the Obama campaign appointed a Catholic National Advisory Council—made up of elected officials, scholars, and activists and co-chaired by Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine and several others—to reach out to Catholic voters. Less than a month later, Bill Donohue, the president of the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights (and a…