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Evangelical Pastor Argues for Full LGBT Inclusion: “I Think It’s Inevitable”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…you to write this book? I had been doing a rethink on this question for a number of years and my convictions had changed but I didn’t know how to process it in the congregation at that stage. I had processed it with the church board and pastoral staff and different leaders. I was doing a lectio divina when I got the idea to write a letter to my congregation. I didn’t want to have congregational meetings to talk about how to handle this because th…

No Conspiracy Theories Needed: Abortion Foes Cry Racism

By Kathryn Joyce

…n part by denouncing her as a bigot and a racist who wanted “to reduce the number of children [born] to the nation’s poorest economic groups, which tend to be persons of color and other minorities.” The Pro-Life Action League made a similar criticism this week against the Guttmacher Institute, claiming that the Institute’s call for publicly-funded birth control “takes aim at the poor by recommending more government spending on programs to reduce t…

Religion and Other Animals

By Paul Waldau

…pirituality. In fact, “religion and animals” themes appear in a surprising number of places—one example is Peter Miller’s article “Jane Goodall” in the December 1995 National Geographic, in which he discusses Goodall’s belief that expressions of awe by chimpanzees at a waterfall site “may resemble the emotions that led early humans to religion.” The debate over whether or not our animal neighbors can be “religious” is but one issue in the growing…

‘Cult’ Is an Inaccurate, Unhelpful and Dangerous Label for Followers of Trump, QAnon, and 1/6

By Catherine Wessinger

…ered. Since losing the 2020 election, Donald Trump has consistently demonstrated that his narcissism, and likely his fear of prosecution, are prompting him to mismanage his charisma by clinging to the role of U.S. president, to the detriment of American democracy, individuals, and families. Additionally, his assertion that he didn’t lose the election is being supported and disseminated by powerful media representatives on Fox News and One American…

The Progress of Christ in Commercial America: A Review of Chris Lehmann’s The Money Cult

By Peter Laarman

…delights in surfacing little-known factoids. These include the remarkable number of commercial hucksters who were preachers or else preachers’ kids (e.g., Richard Bolles of What Color is Your Parachute? fame—a former Episcopal priest) and the equally remarkable number of notable preachers who had strong commercial instincts and/or commercial roots (ranging from 18th-century superstar evangelist George Whitefield to 19th-century revivalist giant C…

What Irish Marriage Vote Means for Catholic Church; The Lonely Fight for Equality in Belize; Progress and Backlash in Tunisia; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…hips. The pope’s brand of mercy suggests that LGBT Catholics should be tolerated by the church, but not embraced with genuine justice. The vote in Ireland shows that LGBT people are seeking to live in communities where they are not merely welcomed and tolerated, but treated with equality. As long as our church leaders continue to say, in effect, “you can come in our doors, and you can even be fed, but you cannot marry here,” neither the bad cop no…

Census Reveals Gay People are Shockingly… Normal

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

According to new census figures, the number of people reporting that they are living with a same-sex partner has risen 52 percent in the last decade. That’s almost 902,000 people who are living all across the United States. Even here in my own incredibly conservative state of South Carolina, the number of same-sex couples increased and a quarter of them are raising children. It’s those kinds of facts that have right-wing media like the Christian…

The Wrong Emperor: Why Ralph Reed’s New Pro-Trump Book Distorts the Bible to Cast the President as Tiberius

By Tony Keddie

…dered the cultural abominations of contemporary U.S. liberals. Tiberius is best-known from an invective crafted by Suetonius, an author born twenty years after the emperor’s death and bent on legitimating the later emperor Hadrian as morally superior to his predecessors, as James Kim On Chong-Gossard has demonstrated. Among other depravities, Suetonius’s perverse version of Tiberius indulges in a game where young boys suck on his genitalia like mi…

“Split at the Root”: Adrienne Rich and (Religious) Identity

By Ryan Harper

…cross, the empty tomb, the via dolorosa. I am not always sure I want to be numbered among Christians; I know there are a number of Christians who aren’t so sure I should be so numbered. My examination occurs alongside my spouse’s examination. She is an ordained Baptist minister who with unspeakable grace regularly braves misogynistic condescension: the assumption among even thoughtful, well-meaning people that her spouse possesses the professional…

Obama Caves on (Another) Contraception Exemption

By Patricia Miller

…red to fill out a form stating them. In the short run it’s likely that the number of employers who seek to duck the contraceptive mandate will be small. But imagine a scenario where a larger number of employers seeks to escape a costly mandate, such as equal access to in vitro fertilization procedures for straight and gay couples, for supposedly religious reasons and hundreds flood HHS with generic opt-out letters that don’t identify a specific in…