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Discrimination on the Taxpayer’s Dime? The Fight To Curtail the Overreach of RFRA

By Sarah Posner

…sion was later ruled moot because HHS had changed its policy and did not renew the USCCB’s contract (provoking the Republican accusations of anti-Catholic bias), the ACLU maintains the legal reasoning still applies. If it does, the ACLU argues, the bishops’ claims that the new Prison Rape Elimination Act regulations violate RFRA would not prevail, since RFRA cannot trump the Constitution. “It’s a stretch to argue, as they do, that they are entitle…

McCain’s VP Courts Conservative Evangelicals

By Kathryn Joyce

…ife Group members to become mentors themselves, and finally disciple other new converts. Religion scholar Alan Wolfe at The New Republic‘s Plank blog imagined Palin’s religion a libertarian-infused Western evangelicalism: toting guns, having taken drugs once, naming two children after witches, vetoing a ban on domestic benefits to gay couples. These were things Wolfe imagined could complicate her reputation with more straight-laced Southern Baptis…

The Visceral Vote: Obama-as-Sojourner v. McCain-as-Mythic-Hero

By Ira Chernus

…political benefit from attacking cultural symbols of “the sixties.” Every new round brings new symbolic issues, however. In 2004, much media attention was focused on social issues like abortion and gay rights. In fact, though, more careful post-election studies found that the key to Bush’s success was the voters’ fear of terrorism. Yet for the many churchgoers who voted Republican because they were still seeking the spirituality of dwelling, the…

Trump Order A ‘Death Sentence’ For Some LGBT Refugees? Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…e Eidskog Church at the stroke of midnight on Wednesday, the moment that a new marriage liturgy for same-sex couples took effect after winning approval by the Church Synod the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church. According to The Local, “The ceremony marks a new milestone for gays and lesbians in Norway, which like its Nordic neighbours is at the forefront of gay rights in Europe. Civil marriage and adoption have been open to gays since 2009 and…

How Robert Bellah (1927-2013) Changed the Study of Religion

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…around the world, but when he first wrote “Civil Religion,” it was a bold new idea and an innovative way of thinking. This was when I first knew Bellah, in Berkeley in the late 1960s, when I was a graduate student and later his colleague in the religious studies program. I saw how influential Bellah was on generations of graduate students—not only in sociology but also in religious studies. During those days he frequently reigned over the religio…

Ground Zero is Sacred Space, But Not Just Because of 9/11

By Randall Balmer

…into the fact that the loudest critics of Park51, notably Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, are not New Yorkers and represent a political movement not generally associated with the rights of minorities. The most ringing defense of the proposed Islamic center came from Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York and a Jew. “We would betray our values—and play into our enemies’ hands—if we were to treat Muslims differently than [sic] anyone else,” the ma…

Why Isn’t Ferguson the Start of a New Civil Rights Movement?

By Rebecca Sager

…ion. Perhaps in the wake of the tragedy in Ferguson there will be a renewed vigor from progressive churches that will help repair old coalitions, build new ones, and tell a new story about who gets to speak “for religious people.”…

Will Women Priests Change the Church?

By Mary E. Hunt

…sts (womenpriests is all one word) movement, whose mission is to create “a new model of ordained ministry in a renewed Roman Catholic Church.” But there are many models of women’s leadership in Catholicism; I think it is important to frame the film in the context of the larger movement for change that characterizes 21st-century Catholicism, lest viewers are left with an incomplete picture. Part of the movement is indeed focused on women’s ordinati…

‘Open Mosque’ in South Africa Receives Threats; ‘Blood Test’ for ‘Degeneratism’: Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…upcoming Synod of Bishops on the family. Elisabetta Povoledo wrote in the New York Times that “in Francis’s new, more forgiving church, these otherwise familiar domestic arrangements were not considered an impediment.” No same-sex couples were included. Vatican watchers said the public marriages, the first by a pope since 2000, were meant to send a message, something Francis has done previously to soften the church’s image on social issues. Durin…

Krapp’s Last Tweet: The Rise (and Fall?) of Privilege in the Digital Economy

By Kevin Healey

…ward pressure that social media places on the quality of online content, a number of news articles did manage to connect the dots between Ferguson and the discriminatory housing policies put in place after World War II. As I have argued before, new technologies tend to augment existing systems of privilege. Yet there is reason to hope that digital media may yet catalyze a more just future. Dear Prudence Before jumping from his capsule, with all ey…