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Dialogue or Demonization? Where Gays are Concerned, Focus on the Family Wants it Both Ways

By Cody J. Sanders

…hts to participate, parental advice, and access to ready-made conversation cards and posters, there is scant attention to the meaning of the day’s very title: “Dialogue.” (That is, with the exception of a page dedicated to “Responding to Challenges” students might encounter and the advice to avoid speaking in overused slogans like “hate the sin, not the sinner.”) So in response to this “Day of Dialogue,” we might do well to ask a few fundamental q…

AR-15 Lapel Pins are More Than Political Provocation — They’re Symbols of the Violence at the Heart of White Christian Nationalism

By Annika Brockschmidt

…re on RD. Some Republicans have been posing with AR-15s in their Christmas cards, with their underage kids holding the lethal weapons, smiling. The fascist revels in the fear he instills in his opponents; in those he has singled out for destruction. The jackboot longs for the cathartic act of violence, bathes in the glow of his uniform—be it brown shirts, white robes or khaki shorts—and the fear it instills in those he passes by. Fascism is a spec…

My Congregation Tried to Help a Syrian Family Settle in the US

By Thomas Warming

…pots, pans, plates, silverware, pillows, sheets, blankets, furniture, gift cards and on and on. Friends of the congregation and their relatives wanted to help. A bag of donations showed up on the doorstep unsolicited. We had so many offers to help that I had to graciously turn people down. Collections are relatively easy ministries for a congregation. You go to the store, you fork out some cash, you drop it off at church. Boom. So it was all the m…

LGBT Activists Challenge Church Anti-Marriage Efforts; Gov’t in Belize Creates Church-State ‘Public Morality’ Commission; Opponents Seek To Stop Finland’s Marriage Equality Law Before It Takes Effect; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…nger identify a person’s gender on the front of health care identification cards, and will begin offering the option of an “X” rather than male or female on divers licenses. In British Columbia, all schools, including independent schools, must adopt anti-bullying policies that explicitly include sexual orientation and gender identity before the end of the year. Bolivia: New transgender ID law goes into effect Transgender Bolivians have begun regis…

Festivus, Atheist Santa, and the Invention of Blasphemy

By Anita Little

…ngeles just in time for Festivus, the recent proliferation of anti-holiday cards (the Virgin Mary slept around!) and an atheist billboard featuring an anti-church Santa, one could argue Christmas has become a nationwide exercise in tipping over sacred cows. I recently spoke via Skype with S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate, longtime RD contributor, about how the supposedly “blasphemous” has become the everyday and how new narratives of the Christmas season…

Easter: The Underdog Holiday

By Mary Valle

…Holidays.” It doesn’t really demand that you buy gifts for anyone or send cards—unless you want to. For people with small children, it’s a chance to enjoy a holiday which has remained strictly for children in its childish ways. There are no embarrassing costumes or horrifying office parties. Adults with no children may not even celebrate at all. What does Easter even mean? Apparently the English term for the season has nothing to do with Jesus….

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

By Sarah Posner

…ger chilling effect in the American Jewish world, yes; I’ve gotten so many phone calls and voicemails [from people] who have had something happen to them—this summer I do believe it has gone off the rails.” Yet, Kleinbaum said, “I do think my job is to create a Jewish space in which this discussion can take place without saying this person is not a good Jew and another is a good Jew. That, I think, is a reachable goal for my community.” Many rabbi…

Why Crux‘s Knights of Columbus “Partnership” is Problematic

By Kaya Oakes

…ine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington. In 2005, they printed 800,000 postcards in Canada “in a campaign that [argued] that the redefinition of marriage to include gay and lesbian couples would promote pedophilia, pornography and unsafe sex.” As Marianne Duddy-Burke of the LGBTQ Catholic organization Dignity USA commented in a press release, “The Knights are deeply invested in advancing a particular brand of Catholicism, and I am concerned that C…

Teaching Love: Soulforce Takes it to the Quad

By Nick Street

…w dozen yards of the riders and take pictures of the scene with their cell phone cameras. Traffic on College Avenue begins to pick up. “You’re protesting God!” a motorist hollers when he catches sight of one of the Soulforce banners. Finally a slender young man wearing a “CBC Soccer” jacket ventures all the way to the sidewalk. “I just kind of want to show them I care,” says Jonathan Jacobs, a junior at the college. Jacobs, whose family moved to C…

Pentecostal Prayer Gangs: New Film Documents Religion in a Brazilian Prison

By Nick Street

…ader. What was the culture of the prison? At night, there was one guard for 800 prisoners. In the Rio prison system there’s no real government presence; state control in the prisons is just a façade. The prison gangs are the most powerful presence, but the church exerts a strong influence too. There were about 400 inmates in the gang camp inside the prison, and 40 to 50 in the church camp. The rest were neutral people who kept to themselves in the…