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UPDATED: Oklahoma Personhood Bill Not Dead…

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…e for their unwillingness to put their reassurances in writing, proposed a number of amendments. So did other legislators, such that by the time SB-1433 was scheduled to be voted on, it was groaning under the weight of amendments. But the real turnaround came when Speaker Steele proposed an amendment to an amendment that, in essence, would have given teeth to the reassurances that the Oklahoma bill would do no more than the Missouri language. Tha…

Dispatches from the Workplace: Postville: Ground Zero for the Intersection of Immigrant and Workers’ Rights

By Kim Bobo

…like most he interviewed, did not really understand what a Social Security number was. He certainly wasn’t trying to steal someone else’s credit. He was supporting his children, wife, mother and sister. When interviewed, he wept. The day after the arrests, Postville was in chaos. Families took refuge at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church. A third of the elementary and middle-school children were absent from school, traumatizing both immigrant children…

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

…tside the church will bring their children to Sabbath school and a growing number of openly gay students will attend Adventist academies and colleges. Like the SCC’s black members in the 1960s, gay Adventists will be able to hold their faith community legally accountable for any discriminatory responses. And, as was the case with segregation, the church will find itself once again in a losing battle against social change unless it learns from its…

An Extravagant Welcome For All: Believe Out Loud, a Faith-Based LGBT Campaign, Launches

By Peter Laarman

…h is also expected to attract the attention and involvement of significant numbers of Roman Catholics and younger evangelicals. Part of the idea is to remind individual Christians who totally embrace LGBT equality that there are millions more like them—a genuine “cloud of witnesses,” to use the biblical expression. [Full disclosure: I was significantly involved for over two years in the early development of this project; my agency was paid for its…

American Sin: Why Pope Francis’ Mercy is Not Our Mercy

By Kaya Oakes

…cy is not something we discuss very often. Our rates of incarceration, the number of states utilizing the death penalty, our obsessive clinging to the Second Amendment along with its deadly consequences, ICE raids on immigrant families fleeing even worse violence in their home countries, drone strikes, the environmental violence of fracking, deforestation and coal mining, and the daily threats faced by women, LGBTQ people and people of color are a…

A Post-Christian America? Not Quite—Though Devoutly to be Wished

By Peter Laarman

…say about Jon Meacham’s Newsweek piece on the fairly sharp fall-off in the number of Americans self-identifying as Christian (in the newly-released ARIS survey), this bloghead initially demurred. I mean, the amiable and well-informed Meacham said what I would have said: on balance, it’s a good thing that the various and dangerous forms of grievance associated with “Christian nation” thinking should now recede. It’s a good thing that more have come…

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

By Frederick Clarkson

…negative publicity, advising, “If any legislator opposes this, it will be helpful to get him or her on the record against this heritage and freedom.” This is just what they did to Minnesota State Senator John Marty (D-Roseville), who was cast as part of an “anti-faith movement” that seeks to “suppress” religion and “wipe it out of government.” (They underestimated Marty, however, who stood up to them on Fox News—and the smear campaign stopped.) C…

After More Mass Shootings It’s Time to Call Out White Supremacy in the Pews

By Peter Laarman

…n culture is “exceptional”—exceptional in its toxicity, that is. A growing number of truth telling historians are eager to help us discover these deeper roots if we are willing to listen. Here I’m thinking mainly of scholars like Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Gerald Horne who focus on the connections between settler colonialism, white supremacy, and an unparalleled level of gun violence. To me the question that grows more acute daily is how to amplify…

Life as a Game Show: Reading Slumdog Millionaire

By Paul Courtright

…ery Indian film faithful to the Bollywood aesthetic formula. It produces a number of rasa, “tastes,” in the viewer: heroism, humor, disgust, eros, fear, and tranquility. The final dance scene on the train platform pays homage to the familiar Bollywood genre. The musical score crackles with energy. There are any number of reasons why Slumdog has emerged as one of this year’s favorites among American audiences. Perhaps the Oscar nominations reflect…

Catholic Leaders Offer Criticism, Support to Boxer Pacquiao After Anti-Gay Comments…

By Peter Montgomery

…is is being performed after they successfully launched the propaganda in a number of other countries, hence accepted by religious leaders and groups in these countries. We oppose this sexual deviation being called marriage. In Islam marriage can be only exist between a man and a woman in accordance with the teaching of noble religions, under which the terms and conditions have been stipulated. New Zealand & Polynesia: Anglican Church Group Propose…