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A New Book By Esteemed Sociologist Robert Wuthnow Struggles to Show ‘Why Religion is Good for American Democracy’

By Peter Laarman

…dy’s. To his credit, Wuthnow does take note of the way in which, during the 1980s and 1990s, the focus of traditional Catholic discourse around human dignity was increasingly transferred from concern for the dignity of the poor to concern for the fate of the “unborn.” He also takes note of how the language of victimhood—the endless whining about alleged anti-Christian persecution—became a central feature of Religious Right rhetoric during these de…

America’s National Conversation about Christianity is ‘Fundamentally Unserious’ — But Not in the Way You Think

By Chrissy Stroop

…at survey gathered data from 33,987 respondents, 3,421 (10.1%) of whom were 18-24 years old at the time they took the survey. The new report’s title, “The Tipping Point Generation: America’s Nonreligious Youth,” points to one of the major social shifts of our time, sometimes referred to as “the rise of the nones” (i.e. the religiously unaffiliated) and to the significance of this shift for the Democratic Party. In yet another example of Christian…

The Most Ridiculous Responses to the Vatican’s Call-out of the Catho–Christian Right

By Patricia Miller

…about sex to the legalization of same-sex marriage, people seeking a state-sanctified “traditional” morality haven’t been on the winning side of history for some time. More and more it seems he only way they can get the society they want is through a theocracy, through the appointment of right-wing judges, legislatures that create new definitions of “religious liberty” that allow for the marginalization of LGBT people, and through various means o…

Conservative French Catholics a ‘Rightwing Patriarchal Bunch’?; Indonesian Prez Decries Anti-LGBT Discrimination; Romanian Prez Warns Against ‘Religious Fanaticism’; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…” Laurent Bouvet, a political-science professor at Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines university, says. “They never really accepted the Revolutionary notion that individual freedom should supersede the moral authority of the priest or the family head. They are a rightwing patriarchal bunch wary of the concept of equality.” Netherlands: Anti-gay religious flyers distributed in Amsterdam Amsterdam police received more than 20 complaints about an a…

Why Religious Exemptions Matter

By Sarah Posner

…comment is the way the USCCB operates; rarely if ever does it issue an off-the-cuff assessment. But the USCCB’s allies — other groups that oppose the contraception mandate — have wasted no time in lambasting the new rule as an inadequate protection of their constitutional rights. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a legal group that has led the charge of litigation against the rule, claimed that the rule “leaves religious Americans at risk.”…

Can Mormon Glenn Beck Unite the Christian Right?

By Kathryn Joyce

…e tax laws encourage large families, and the government encourages a family-and-faith-centered legal system, which repeals “witch-hunting” child abuse laws that restrict parental discipline as well as no-fault divorce; imposes penalties for unmarried cohabitation; and reconfigures Social Security to provide support on a family, rather than individual basis, so that women are recognized not for their work as independent employees but for their role…

Creationist Theme Park Gets $43 Million in Tax Rebates

By Lauri Lebo

…ities between their Tarbosaurus specimen and tyrannosaurs, including the “D-shaped” cross-section of the teeth and the distinctive two-fingered tiny forearms. It is therefore very probable that both these creatures, though granted separate “species” names by virtue of having been found on separate continents, nevertheless were part of the same tyrannosaurids that were one of the “[beasts] of the earth” created to reproduce “after [their] kind.”4 N…

Commies, Blacks, Jews, the UCC and Other Threats to America

By Daniel Schultz

…my denomination scare Glenn Beck, that’s a good thing. It means they’re off-balance. Same goes for the ever-execrable Mark Tooley, writing the same hack piece for the 40,000th time at the Weekly Standard. He strains at gnats because ultimately he has nothing else to fall back on, no compelling ideology, no good news for anyone who hasn’t been following his worn-out shtick for thirty years. So, good if they’re afraid of the religious left. It means…

What Caused the Catholic Church Child Sexual Abuse Crisis? Blame the Sixties.

By Joanna Brooks

…used children. (The report also attempts to discount abuse of children aged 11-14 as pedophilia, claiming instead that it technically qualifies as “ephebophilia”—the abuse of pubescent children—and thus it is inaccurate to characterize abusers as “pedophile priests.”) Not surprisingly, the report was met immediately with dumbfounded disappointment and disbelief. The sixties? Really? Really? Bob Hoatson, an ordained Catholic priest, abuse survivor,…

Gambian Voters Reject Anti-Gay Strongman Jammeh; Activists Ponder Trump Impact on LGBT Human Rights; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…s of religions and beliefs aggravate the situation as part of the political-cum-cultural challenge. The classic case is the variety of laws in a number of countries derived from the colonial era which still criminalize same-sex sexual conduct, even when and where the colonizing power discarded such laws a long time ago. On another front, while care, kindness and consideration are at the heart of religions in their common humanity and linkage with…