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Why Bill Maher Gets a “C” in My Introduction to Religion Class…

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…pages I’ll confine myself to Religulous.) This is the kind of thing a fair number of my students, raised in the Protestant-dominated United States (even Catholics and Jews have assimilated this definition), come to university thinking about religion; the two key components of which are “belief” and “God.” Religion is some cryptic interior, individual thing that exists in one’s own head, and is only understood in relation to a God. I don’t blame my…

White Evangelical Leaders Already Distancing Themselves from the “81-Percenters”

By Neil J. Young

…olls indicated that 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump. That number represented a shocking measure given who Donald Trump is. But it also fit squarely with the patterns of white evangelical support for Republican presidential candidates in all recent elections. Still, some evangelical leaders are challenging these findings. “No, the Majority of American Evangelicals Did Not Vote for Trump,” reads the headline of an article published…

Dirty Money in the Appalachian Church: Six Years After Deadly Coal Mine Disaster, Where Are We Now?

By Michael J. Iafrate

…statement on the issue of fracking, which is also affecting an increasing number of communities in the state, it has not publicized it widely either. The same reluctance to speak loudly and clearly can be seen in the Diocese’s response to worker justice issues. In 2013, during the Fairness at Patriot campaign, when church officials were asked why the bishop was not saying anything publicly in defense of the miners whose pensions and insurance wer…

Trump the Totem: Like Other Fascist Leaders, Trump has Turned from Man to Symbol — And That’s the Danger

By Robert P. Jones

…being indicted for you…. And never forget our enemies want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom. And I’m never gonna let it happen. They wanna silence me because I will never let them silence you. And in the end, they’re not after me. They’re after you. I just happen to be standing in the way. When the leader becomes the totem, no transgression is capable of separating him from his acolytes. A totem can’t li…

Right Wingers Say “Gay” is Out, But Try Putting “Unnatural Vice” On a Bumper Sticker

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…eny minority of people may take away their right to tell gays and lesbians that God will send them to hell for all eternity — out of love, mind you. But, then again, anti-gay Evangelicals have a right to be afraid. After all, researchers say the actual number of Evangelicals may well be “as small as 7 percent of the total adult population.” Which means Evangelicals know just how effective a small number of people can be at taking away the rights o…

Pope Francis Has Painted Himself into a Corner on Women Deacons

By Mary E. Hunt

…s” conundrum Parallel to the diaconal growth is the steady increase in the number of women engaged in ministries of all sorts. Whether in campus ministry or prison work, in parishes where they now outnumber priests in the U.S., in religious communities or religious education, women around the world do an increasingly large share of the Roman Catholic Church’s ministry without being ordained or having decision-making power. No wonder it occurred to…

Are You Rapture Ready?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…of a Broadway show. Jesus is about to make his big entrance only his final number will feature the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Tom Evans, spokesman for Family Radio said their math for setting the return date came from a verse in Luke 17: “As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man.” According to Camping’s prediction, the Rapture will happen exactly 7,000 years from the date that God first warned people about…

Conservative Hardliners at Synod Prompt Question: “What Are We Doing Here?”

By Patricia Miller

…m the first small group discussions held this week indicate that a sizable number of bishops believe that the preparatory document is all doom-and-gloom and doesn’t do enough to celebrate the sizable number of Catholics who are successfully leading a traditional Catholic family life, reports John Allen: The synod’s final report ‘should begin with hope rather than failures, because a great many people already do successfully live the Gospel’s good…

Was Ghana Anti-Gay Scare Just Politics?

By Warren Throckmorton

…ed “to get rid of these people in the society.” Some observers believe the number of sexual minorities may have been inflated in order to whip up opposition to homosexuality which could advance the standing of conservative politicians. Graham Knight, a British blogger living in Ghana, recently wrote that the claim of 8,000 sexual minorities has little support in fact. Knight concluded, in a blog post titled Did Ghana register 8000 homosexuals? The…

Transgender and Christian: Finding Identity

By Jori Lewis

…reassignment surgery (a process many people call “the transition”), so the number of transgender-identified people is likely much higher. The term “transgender” encompasses anyone with a gender identity that is different from his or her birth sex. A transgender person could be someone who just cross-dresses from time to time in private; someone who identifies as gender-queer (that is, neither male nor female); someone who is just taking hormones b…