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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

…azine that the vote was not a “no” to Catholicism: The vote in Ireland illuminates a dynamic shift on LGBT issues among Catholics and people of faith across the globe. Today about 60% of Catholics in the United States support gay marriage, compared to about 36% a decade ago. In fact, many who voted “yes” on gay marriage did so because of their faith, not in spite of it. One elderly Irish couple put it this way: “We are Catholics, and we are taught…

YOU Are Spiritual But Not Religious: The Secret Spiritual History of the Choose Your Own Adventure Books

By Daniel Silliman

…igion. As Schmidt writes, “journeying across the bounds of traditions, denominations, and institutions has emerged as a familiar, if still creative, course of explorations for many Americans.” Montgomery sought to be creative in exactly this sort of spiritual exercise. Montgomery’s CYOA plots also seems to place him more firmly in the spiritual-but-not-religious rather than secular humanist camp. The point, for Montgomery, was that whatever might…

As Tensions Escalate in the Balkans, the West Could Hand Putin a Valuable Weapon

By Katherine Kelaidis

…your knowledge of history only extends to the last years of the Clinton administration, it might be hard for you to have sympathy for those you associate with genocidaires (i.e. the Serbs) expressing anger toward the former victims of that genocide (the Albanians) for not wanting to look at Serbian license plates any more—but there’s a longer history here. If you only know part of the story, the story seems much more one-sided. This failure to se…

UPDATED: Oklahoma Personhood Bill Not Dead…

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…to donate money. But the personhood’s failure to be open to any such compromise seems, at least in Mississippi and now Oklahoma, to alienate even those who are otherwise staunchly opposed to abortion. With no victories to report—either in Mississippi and Oklahoma, for heaven’s sake!—the personhood movement faces an uncertain future. Others, though, are breathing a sigh of relief. Atlee Breland, of Parents Against Personhood (and past RD contributo…

The War On Terror Is Over

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…e Middle East, and that a positive outcome to the peace process would undermine the militant anti-American jihadi cause. The perception that the U.S. is tied to Israel affects everything else that the U.S. does in the Middle East. In Iraq, for example, when citizens in Fallujah demonstrated against the killing of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin by an Israeli military strike in 2004, the protesters linked the Israeli actions toward Palestine with t…

Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…in the Lakota style, not Navajo, which is the tribal affiliation of a good number of inmates in the Arizona prison system (an amazing fact that is a story for another time). So, even though a non-Indian might be compelled to be put on trial for killing people with his “ceremony,” it is Native American religion which will be the defendant in this case. Consider. James Ray’s defense might be compelled to bring in experts to argue that he did the cer…

Life as a Game Show: Reading Slumdog Millionaire

By Paul Courtright

…alf dollars, it has grossed Fox Searchlight more than a hundred and thirty million, is nominated for 10 Oscars (including Best Picture) and already boasts 60 awards from various academies and guilds. European and American audiences have embraced it, though Indian viewers—in India and abroad—have had a more ambivalent response. Some celebrate the film as a long-overdue recognition of Indian cinema, while others found that the attention to Mumbai’s…

UN Human Rights Council Creates LGBT Watchdog; Orthodox Council Affirms Traditional Teaching on Family; Pope Francis Says Church Should Apologize to Gays; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…lonial-era law criminalizing homosexuality; a petition had been filed by a number of prominent gay individuals. The Court, which had effectively recriminalized homosexuality in 2013 when it overturned a 2009 lower court ruling tossing out the law, sent the measure to the Chief Justice of India, who is considering other “curative” petitions. Rama Lakshmi notes in the Washington Post: Some members of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Par…

Swimming Against the Tide: Religious (Non) Affiliation Might Not Mean What You Think It Means

By Timothy King

…ur decades.” As Pew continues to release its data over the course of the coming year, it might well find more changes than Gallup has in these other measures of religiosity, but the relative stability of these other markers do not make a case for a sudden and swift collapse of Christianity in America. Ed Stetzer, who leads the Southern Baptist Convention-affiliated Lifeway Research has argued that these numbers indicate a redefining of Christianit…

Show Me the Way of the Hebrews: The Making of an African American Rabbi

By J. Lester Feder

…r, but it clearly increasingly challenged Christianity. According to one family legend, a group of ministers in South Carolina put a snake in a house where she was staying as a form of lynching. Increasingly, her beliefs became more and more grounded in the Jewish daily prayer, the Shema: “Hear, o Israel, … the Lord is one.” By the time Aronoff reached bar mitzvah age, Dailey decided the time had come to renounce Jesus. “There was a moment she sai…