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

By Tony Keddie

…itutional rights.” There are, as with most of Reed’s biblical analogies, a number of basic textual and historical problems here. To scratch the surface: Roman citizenship would have been rare among the earliest followers of Christ; Paul probably was not a citizen himself (this detail appears in the romanticizing later narrative of Acts of the Apostles, but not in Paul’s own letters); and, the “emperor’s household” in Philippians was a reference to…

The Story Behind the Catholic Church’s Stunning Reversal on Contraception

By Patricia Miller

…uide Catholic thinking about contraception for the next 1,500 years as the Augustinian doctrine was gradually codified by the church. In 590, Pope Gregory the Great decreed that married couples who mixed pleasure with procreation in sexual intercourse “transgressed the law.” The first church legislation forbidding contraception appeared in the 600s in a canon that specified a penance of ten years for any woman who took “steps so that she may not c…

American Jewish Leaders Get Gaza Wrong

By Sarah Posner

…by the Al Qassam Brigades). Yousef Munayyer provides some history of the numbers from Gaza at Open Zion: For example, in 2011, the projectiles fired by the Israeli military into Gaza have been responsible for the death of 108 Palestinians, of which 15 where women or children, and the injury of 468 Palestinians, of which 143 where women or children. The methods by which these causalities were inflicted by Israeli projectiles breaks down as follow…

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…

The Demographic that Should Keep Rove Awake at Night

By Katherine Stewart

…continues to erode—from 21 percent in 2007 to 19 percent in 2012—while the number of the religiously unaffiliated is rising—from 16 percent to 20 percent over the same period. In other words, “nones” and evangelicals are equivalent in numbers. One explanation for this change in America’s religious complexion is that white Christians are aging: 72 percent of voters over 65 are white Christians, compared to only 26 percent of voters under 30. Pew al…

Episcopal Conference Lives Up to Episcopal Jokes

By Julie Ingersoll

…emselves are most fond): One day, after a Rite II service, an older female parishioner walks up to a friend and asks, “Did you hear about the new priest over at St. Bart’s?” Friend: “No. What about him?” Parishioner: “He’s gay.” Friend: “Thanks be to God! They’ve been needing to remodel that place for years!!!” And: How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb? At least ten, since they first need to hold a debate on whether or not th…

Reactionary White Buddhists Have Joined The Fight Against Critical Race Theory

By Ann Gleig

…red with anti-critical race theory laws being passed for K-12 schools in a number of Republican states and further bills aimed at higher education proposed. What many will perhaps find more surprising is that the rhetoric being used by Campus Reform and their ilk is far from new to me or fellow researchers working on racial justice in American Buddhism. Rather it echoes some of the white Buddhist backlash to racial justice work. A number of white…

Let’s Get Lost: Mapping Religion in the 21st Century

By Spencer Dew

…map (as compiled by Salatomatic, an Islamic guide to mosques) compiled the number of mosques per state, while the second, using U.S. Department of State data, charts the number of refugees arriving in each state (from October 2014-July 2015), and the third offers “a compilation of Islamic terror activity by state” pairing the names of organizations with U.S. cities (for instance, Boca Raton, Florida, is flagged for “Al Qaeda”). The source for this…

Can The Religious Left Be Effective Again? Longer Answer: Quizás

By Daniel Schultz

…gh participation rates are increasing among these types of churches, they represent a small percentage of all churches. Fulton explains that a lot of this increase is due to the debates over immigration reform; but even factoring that in, Hispanic churches are becoming more politically active. The number of congregations might be few, but they may also be larger communities, representing a substantial number of people. In any case, the trend will…

Oklahoma Bill Would Violate Basic Freedoms, Rewrite the Ten Commandments

By Andrew L. Seidel

…the many differences between various Jewish and Christian sects in how to number and interpret these different sets of commandments. All of this I explain in my book, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American. Seemingly small differences are magnified because Christianity has historically claimed to possess ultimate truth, so any deviation from an absolute truth is significant. Minor variations are further magnified by, as James…