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Keeping the “Southern” in Southern Baptist Convention

By Paul Harvey

…do that.” But it is precisely in “theology, morality, and ethics” that the official name—Southern Baptist Convention—matches the key role of the SBC in guiding the white South on its long transformation from the era of segregation, through the turmoil of the civil rights struggle, and into the era of Baptist Republicanism. Not a Good Brand? The SBC has considered name changes in years past, apparently dating back (at least) to 2004, when the name…

Emad Effat, Shaykh of Egyptian Revolution, Shot Dead During Protest

By H. al-Zoubeir

…eminent Muslim institution of learning worldwide) and senior figure at the official state body of the Mufti of Egypt has been killed. But the reaction was still unexpected. Among the Azhari shaykhs present in Tahrir Square in January and February, Shaykh Emad refused to see the protests as illegitimate rebellion against a ruler. On the contrary, he considered them a form of calling to good and forbidding the wrong—a Muslim’s duty, according to cla…

Gingrich IA Political Director Resigns after “Cult of Mormon” Comments Go Public

By Joanna Brooks

It’s official: it is no longer acceptable to call the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the fourth largest religious institution in the United States, a church with 7 million members in the US and 14 million members around the world, a “cult.” That’s the message Newt Gingrich sent when he fired his newly-hired Iowa political director Craig Bergman after it was revealed that Bergman had proposed a national crusade against the “cult of M…

Lowes Bowed to Pressure from Man with THOUSANDS OF SUPPORTERS

By Sarah Posner

…people in All American Muslim are not real to him. According to the FFA website, the show “profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks.” The real Muslims, FFA maintains, are “Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.” Caton is a big fan of the shari’ah scare industry, citing Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer on his website. Following the Low…

It’s Time To Ordain Women—Again

By Elizabeth Drescher

…dination mean, and how does it fit into the larger context of ordained and official ministries? For example, well over 90% of deacons serve within what the Roman Catholic Church sees as the sacramental framework of matrimony; this demands serious theological and pastoral reflection, as the Latin Church now experiences again a married clergy. To the questions raised in our current work, we suggest that—regardless of the Church’s position on ordaini…

BYU Skinny Jean Controversy: Sexism, Sizeism, or Standards?

By Joanna Brooks

…our weekly Sunday lessons, our Especially for Youth camps, girls camp, our official church website, church publications, our instructions for 21 year-old female missionaries. It’s starting to feel like a founding principle of our religion. I’d love to see us . . . get back to the good stuff. This is not our good stuff.” Some Mormons emphasize the importance of obedience for obedience’s sake as a key principle. Others ask whether disproportionate a…

Bishops Elect Moderate to Lead Pro-Life Committee

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ley’s recent career, it seems clear that he sets out to uphold and expound official Catholic teaching but prefers—indeed, considers it his calling—to do so kindly, and not to unduly alienate anyone in the process. Amy Sullivan, who wrote about the Burke/O’Malley dustup for Time, recently speculated that O’Malley’s leadership of the Pro-Life Activities Committee would likely be characterized by a “less partisan approach.” Assuming this will be the…

What the USCCB’s New “Religious Liberty” Initiative Took from Evangelicals

By Sarah Posner

…gelicals and Catholics over this supposed “religious liberty” issue became official with the 2009 release of the Manhattan Declaration, hailed by its authors as a glorious “ecumenism” because evangelicals, Catholics, and even some Eastern Orthodox Christians joined hands in protecting their freedom from the scourges of LGBT rights, reproductive freedom, feminism, and secularism. At the time, a handful of Catholic bishops signed the document. Now t…

Scientology: All-American or Aging Hoax?

By Gordon Haber

…urch is, to some extent, a reflection of American values. He also posits a number of broad questions (maybe too broad) about how we define religion in America and about “legal and theoretical issues in the study of religion.” In the interest of objectivity, Urban employs a simultaneous “hermeneutics of respect and hermeneutics of suspicion”—meaning that he takes Scientology’s religious claims at face value while acknowledging its illegal practice…

How the Logic of Law Enforcement Leads to Spying on Muslims

By Haroon Moghul

…, have Islam in common, speaking very broadly. But only a very, very small number of those have engaged in acts of murderous violence. We could on this basis instead look for what, other than Islam, explains such instances of murderous violence, as these acts are not exclusive to Islam (in the 1990s, for example, the Bosnian genocide and the brutal Russian assault on Chechnya.) Instead, we stuck to the monocausal argument, trying to determine what…