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Synod ‘Fight for Soul’ of Catholic Church, Flap On English Translation of Key Report; Anti-Gay Law Advances in Kyrgyzstan; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…would punish “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” with up to a year in jail. According to Reuters, “The new bill proposes to slap fines or prison terms of up to one year on those “forming a positive attitude to untraditional sexual relations” among minors or in mass media. The US embassy is Kyrgyzstan released a statement critical of laws that limit civil society and harm democracy. It said in part, “No one should be silenced or impris…

“Mitt Romney Style”—A Virtually Religion Free 2012 Contest?

By Joanna Brooks

…d gap” between religious and non-religious voters has shrunk this election year. In fact, it’s smaller than the gender gap for the first time since 1960. That means, voters are more likely to split according to their gender (women strongly prefer Obama) than they are according to whether they attend church. Or could it be as well that the late twentieth century LDS effort to push past nineteenth-century stereotypes of Mormons as seditious, dupli…

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

By Patricia Miller

…that would guide 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…

Evangelical Pastor Argues for Full LGBT Inclusion: “I Think It’s Inevitable”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…in this direction and that will develop into a stream. Certainly, in five years, I think we’ll see that. I like how you use divorce as an example of how radically the church has changed in regards to moral issues. In our time, we forget that divorce, after World War II, was huge issue for the church. My father was a Southern Baptist minister and when he divorced my mother, he never held a pulpit again. It used to be a very big moral issue, but ov…

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…

‘Cult’ Is an Inaccurate, Unhelpful and Dangerous Label for Followers of Trump, QAnon, and 1/6

By Catherine Wessinger

…the Second American Revolution. Instead, people were shocked at the loss of 168 innocent lives in the bombing. As a result, the militias that had formed, especially after the aggressive handling of the Branch Davidian community by ATF and FBI agents in 1993, became quiet until Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. Over the past few years, as demands for the removal of Civil War monuments from public spaces have increased, people in the Euro-…

The Progress of Christ in Commercial America: A Review of Chris Lehmann’s The Money Cult

By Peter Laarman

…delights in surfacing little-known factoids. These include the remarkable number of commercial hucksters who were preachers or else preachers’ kids (e.g., Richard Bolles of What Color is Your Parachute? fame—a former Episcopal priest) and the equally remarkable number of notable preachers who had strong commercial instincts and/or commercial roots (ranging from 18th-century superstar evangelist George Whitefield to 19th-century revivalist giant C…

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

By Kaya Oakes

…s Francis pushed open at St. Peter’s when he declared the beginning of the Year of Mercy. Every diocese and significant shrine is eligible to have a special door during the Year of Mercy, and when pilgrims pass through it, they’re granted an indulgence—time off in Purgatory. Unlike the stately and magnificent Vatican door, the American Mercy doors demonstrated a wild range of architecture, from glass sliding doors like those of a shopping mall, to…

Naked Jihad

By Kate Blanchard

…ld soon be feeling the need to leave her home country. Not surprisingly, a number of Western women felt moved to show their support for Amina. An international movement called Femen staged bare-breasted protests in European cities, in which the writings on their chests echoed Amina’s, along with “Freedom for women” and “Fuck your morals.” (Be warned: photos contain nudity and strong language.) But Femen did not have the last word. Almost immediat…

Is Army’s New “Humanist” Designation Just Semantic Hooey?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ounseling and gathering spaces for Humanist groups. It also means that the numbers and distribution of Humanists in the military can be tracked along with those of other religious groups, potentially inviting a reshaping of the military chaplaincy, which critics complain is inappropriately weighted in favor of Christian, and specifically Evangelical Christian, denominations. A study by the Military Association of Atheist and Freethinkers (MAAF)—t…