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Exclusive: Christian Right Bill Mill, Project Blitz, Hasn’t Gone Away, It’s Just Gotten More Secretive

…14 of which have passed, according to Blitz Watch. Whether the dip in the number of bills introduced is attributable to Covid-19, the toxicity of the Project Blitz brand, or some other combination of factors is hard to say. In 2020 and 2021, 24 of the bills introduced involved displays of In God We Trust in public buildings or on license plates, while 16 were largely about religious exemptions and state versions of the federal Religious Freedom R…

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Hold Your Applause: Potential Changes to Roles of Catholic Women and LGBTQ+ People May Just Be Vatican Breadcrumbing

…erstandably praised the move. There’s also a provision to change the usual number of 10 men from religious congregations who can vote in synods to five women religious and five men religious. Why they’re somehow in a different category than other lay people remains unclear, but this counts as progress. Nathalie Becquart, a French woman and a member of the Congregation of Xavières, was named an undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops making her the…

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Transgender and Christian: Finding Identity

…exuals represent approximately .25 to 1 percent of the US population. That number does not include the transgender people who haven’t undergone sex 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-dr…

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Along Came a Spider: What the Pope Doesn’t See

…ts” to commence on July 19 of this year, the day devoted to prayer for the sanctification of priests, anything but sanctification is happening. May I suggest the hierarchy of the Catholic Church start anew by taking a page from the Episcopal diocese in Philadelphia? The diocese has deposed Bishop Bennington from office, and rejected a request for a new trial regarding his concealment of his brother John Bennington’s abuse of an underage girl 35 ye…

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RD10Q: The Fight Against Feminism

…nd the fierce denunciations of feminism from the right. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised to see that the book has attracted some attention from a religious audience as well, many of whom said the book was a fair exploration of a lot of questions they’ve witnessed play out in their congregations. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Give them pleasure? Piss them off?     Inform and piss off, I guess. In general, more people need to know about…

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The Religious Case Against Religious Discrimination in Cakeshop Case

…like Phillips’s. But, as survey after survey has demonstrated, substantial numbers of Catholics, and to a lesser extent evangelicals as well, are not following their denominations’ leaders down this particular road, and there is a growing number of religious institutions that have embraced marriage equality and advocated for LGBTQ+ rights in the public square. Cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop make it clear that the boundaries of a national settleme…

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Debunking the Myth That Democracy Is “Incompatible” With Islam

…g no disjunction between religious beliefs and democratic principles. In a number of Muslim-majority countries, the preference was even stronger. In Jordan, for example, 54% of men and 55% of women want Sharia to be the only source of legislation. Interestingly, from a comparative perspective, a 2006 Gallup poll indicated that 46% of Americans say that they want the Bible to be a source of legislation. These findings corroborate earlier studies co…

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Black Churches are Burning: Is It the 1990s All Over Again?

…re were almost 900 reported cases of church arson in the late 1990s—a huge number compared to what we’ve seen in the last two weeks. A second difference is that of public response. In 1995-96, there was a unique alliance of actors creating “perfect storm” conditions. Black churches had long been the targets of racial hatred. But it was when Green Bay Packers player, Reggie White, spoke in an interview during the Super Bowl of 1996 about the arson…

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A Secret History of Satan

…n, in some cases public policy. The book makes the case that a significant number of Americans believe in the same Devil believed in by Puritan preachers and 19th-century evangelists. This cannot be dismissed. Its essential to understand why this is so, what historical conditions gave rise to this phenomenon and what does it tell us about the United States. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? I had several groups in mind, all of…

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The Gospel of Contradiction: An Interview with Mary Gordon

…g that relationship to a community anymore. The form of this book covers a number of different genres, including commentary, exegesis, polemic, and memoir. Was there a model in mind? No, I didn’t have any model. The books about Jesus that I went to were either very, very personal and not analytic at all, or very analytic and not personal at all. I was trying to mesh those two voices. I let the stories steer me. Originally, I intended to do some ki…

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