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The World is (Always) About to End, No Zombies Required

By Kelly J. Murphy

…years from now, but where is history headed and what is our place in that narrative arc? Perhaps most importantly, how can we make things better in this world when it seems like this world is at its worst? As I teach about apocalyptic texts once again, I mourn for the Strack family. Though they are a family I did not know, I mourn for their lost lives and their surviving relatives, their friends, and community. The end of the world is always and n…

The Catholic-Evangelical (Non-)Coalition

By Patricia Miller

…oppose the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act, when the widespread perception that Catholics were broadly disapproving of it helped gin up early and critical opposition? But it’s the bishops and Evangelicals—at nearly 60% opposed—who are the hardcore opposition to the mandate and who fostered outrage over the supposed violation of religious freedom that has gone all the way to the Supreme Court. It’s a case where the numbers matter,…

The Catholic Apocalypse Cometh

By Patricia Miller

…sidies but saw their health insurance rates rise substantially under Obamacare who are the most dissatisfied with the law. As conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt said on MSNBC Tuesday evening around the time I began gulping bourbon like it was La Croix: I think Obamacare is the untold story here. I think it just clobbered people in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But the psychological impact of the ACC went way beyond just those folks who get their i…

The Fourth of July Is Not America’s Birthday

By Peter Laarman

…ion as the opportunity to impose their religious tenets on the rest of us—particularly as regards abortion, birth control, and homosexuality. We don’t face actual royal power in the form of Redcoat platoons, but we do face an ongoing and brutal struggle against our economic royalists—the possessors of great wealth who are able to purchase political outcomes that serve their interests and thereby suck the life out of a once-vibrant popular democrac…

No ‘Christian Compassion’ in Tony Perkins’ Response to Anti-Gay Bullying, Suicides

By Andrew Marin

…the first time. When social policy, theology, and personally-tied emotions are parted for even the slightest moment, it becomes clear that at a base level no one wants their story or their journey to be labeled invalid; as if their life experiences never actually happened. To agree or disagree with someone else’s outcome is a separate issue to the biblical mandate and human right to dignify the validity of someone’s experience as legitimate to the…

Distant Churches and the Isolated Poor: Lessons from Katrina, Ten Years Later

By R. Drew Smith

…anded at the Superdome and at the airport. He also draws attention to the large number of congregations from New Orleans and elsewhere that rushed in to the city after the storm (ahead of and in spite of opposition from governmental agencies) “to serve as first responders . . . as relief centers and islands of stability and reconstruction for neighborhoods in crisis.” Ten years after Katrina, the poor continue to struggle in New Orleans, and in ur…

How Religion Shapes (or Doesn’t) Our Views on Public Issues

By Daniel Schultz

…yone thinks faith is the most important factor on the subject of same-sex marriage, nearly everyone who does is against and Adam and Steve pledging their troth. An astounding 94% of those who rate religion highest oppose marriage equality. You might think that reflects a dismal failure on the part of liberal clergy such as myself. After all, shouldn’t we be able to make the case that God wants everyone to be bound in covenant relationships? Not s…

Exclusion is Causing Great Harm: A Conversation With Suspended UMC Pastor Rev. Cynthia Meyer

By Joel Pitney

…can keep up that kind of fight while being excluded. The next couple of years are really significant in whether people will stay, and whether the church will remain one church. In the United Methodist Church, like any Christian denomination, there’s a lot of time and energy being spent on attracting more young people. How does the church’s stance on homosexuality hinder their ability to grow and attract new people? The church, in its policies and…

Resurrection of ‘Comstock Laws’ Would Threaten Access to Abortifacients — But Even That Fear Misses Bigger Picture

By Gillian Frank

…es reported how two unmarried eighteen-year-old “Chicago girls are in St. Margaret’s hospital today, severely burned about their legs from lysol disinfectant.” The two women “received their burns in a washroom in Johnny Nichols’ beer tavern,” the article noted, after arriving there in the company of their boyfriends. The vagueness of the report and the context clues it offers, suggests that the young women who badly injured themselves were douchin…

Single, But Married To Jesus

By Anthea Butler

…found that the median wealth for single black women ages 36-49 is five dollars. Five dollars. Damn. The wealth of a single white woman in the same age range is $42,600. If a black woman marries, it doesn’t help that disparity much either. A married black woman’s net worth is $31,500. Married white women: $167,500. This is story, folks, not the lack of marriage for black women. Most of these women don’t have a house either, because they were offere…