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Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue

By Cody J. Sanders

…19-year-old Raymond Chase. Today, it is very clear to me that profound sadness and stunned silence is no longer a suitable, appropriate, or adequate response. From Lamentation to Indignation My sadness began to change into something different with each successive news story about another gay teen hanging himself, shooting himself, or jumping off a bridge. As I saw the faces of these young victims and imagined the family and friends left to cope w…

This Year in Satanism

By Joseph Laycock

…Gilmore poo-pooed the design, saying it smacked of pedophilia. On Fox Business News, producer Bernard McGuirk suggested that Satanists should be lined in front of their statue and shot. Lawyers from the Satanic Temple demanded an apology. FEBRUARY In February, the media focused on Miranda Barbour, 19, who was accused of killing a man she met on Craigslist. The “Craigslist Killer” alleged that she had been inducted into a Satanic cult at an early…

Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

By Diane Winston

…country? As a cub reporter, I wrote about the greying mainline, their internecine squabbles and financial woes. But thirty years later, they’re still standing. Did we get it wrong or did we just forget to look behind the headlines? What’s it like to be a Lutheran in northern Minnesota? How has Vacation Bible School at a rural Arkansas Baptist church changed since the ’60s? Who are the women behind the biggest Methodist congregation in Cleveland? I…

Special Hell: Progressive Catholics Reckon With the Rise of Trump

By Patricia Miller

…the right to fully and freely practice your religion, as individuals, business owners and academic institutions. I will make absolutely certain religious orders like The Little Sisters of Poor are not bullied by the federal government because of their religious beliefs. And while the Catholic bishops were officially supportive of the Affordable Care Act (once they forced through the abortion restrictions they wanted), it’s not difficult to imagin…

More Than Big Hair and Money: Jim, Tammy Faye and the Media “Holy Wars” of the 80s

By John Wigger

…e and fall were connected. How does deep religious devotion become so entwined with money, sex, and celebrity on a Hollywood scale? A short synopsis might help: Jim and Tammy started the PTL network with half a dozen employees in a former furniture store in 1974. By 1986 PTL had annual revenues of $129 million, 2500 employees, a 2300-acre theme park, Heritage USA, and a private satellite network that reached into fourteen million homes in the US….

Holy Father, You’re Not Helping: The Problem with the Pope’s Plan to Consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

By Katherine Kelaidis

…that Mary was free from personal sin, the fact that the Eastern church has never accepted Augustine’s teaching on Original Sin means that the doctrine is superfluous for Eastern Christian theology. The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is also one of the most hotly contested theological issues in ecumenical dialogue between East and West, right up there with papal primacy and the filioque (the “and the son” part of the Nicene Creed)—two issues…

Glenn Beck’s Salvation Army

By Peter Montgomery

…interpretation of liberation theology, see RD’s interview with scholar Serene Jones by Elijah Prewitt-Davis.) But it is clear that Beck is dismissing the faith of millions when he creates a simplistic label—‘individual’ or ‘collective’—and declares the latter to be un-Christian. For many Christians, says J. Brent Walker of the Baptist Joint Committee, it’s a both/and, an individual decision nurtured by a church community. Max Carter, a Friends min…

Orthodox Jews Begin to Reckon with Sexual Abuse

By Paul Berger

…ually have a single beth din while larger communities, like those found in New York and New Jersey, may have many. These include beth dins that specialize in sexual abuse, though they are few; Rabbi Basil Herring, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America, says there are probably no more than two or three in the country. Perhaps unsurprisingly, beth din rabbis are often reluctant to speak about their work. Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Wein…

My Business, Myself: Piercing the Corporate Veil

By Howard M. Friedman

…o the free exercise of religion are at issue can become ambiguous. Can business owners assert that their free exercise is being burdened when the coverage mandate is imposed not on them, but on their business? Does the for-profit corporation or LLC have religious beliefs of its own? Does General Motors practice religion? If not, do smaller corporations exercise religion? Or are the small businesses really asserting the religious rights of their ow…

Dear White Evangelicals: A Black Square Ain’t Gonna Cut It

By Jhas Williams

…u without a doubt that a start would have been not being able to count on one hand the number of Black children in my entire Christian school student-body. Do Black educators only exist in public schools? Of course not. Why then couldn’t we find more Black scholars to employ when it came to teaching children? I can tell you that I’ll recognize change as genuine when white preachers and ministers stop using Bible verses to pacify their white congre…