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Do Atheists Belong in the Interfaith Movement?

By Chris Stedman

…nt and CEO of the Center for Inquiry, an organization I have worked with a number of times (I recently accepted an invitation to join their Speakers’ Bureau) and whose “Living Without Religion” campaign I greatly admire. In his blog, Lindsay wrote that “it’s nice that some politicians are finally willing to acknowledge our existence, but are we so desperate for acceptance that we’ll allow others to condescendingly misdescribe us as adherents of a…

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…

Why Even Progressive Christianity Must Own Its Complicity in Anti-LGBT Violence

By Layton E. Williams

…, self-harm, and suicide among LGBT youth and adults. Of course, a growing number of churches and denominations today have rejected such a destructive understanding of human sexuality. Religion Dispatches recently compiled a list of the official positions on LGBT issues currently taught by various Christian denominations. According to this list, mainline Protestant denominations such as the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church claim th…

Will the Pope’s Woman Problem Alienate Young Catholics?

By Patricia Miller

…’s blind spots when it comes to women, fearing that they will perpetuate a number of injustices and lead to an exodus from the church—particularly among millennials. The forum, convened by Call To Action, Catholics for Choice, CORPUS and nine co-sponsors, was especially appropriate coming in the midst of a robust discussion of Pope Francis’ relationship to women in the Catholic Church. Writing in the American Prospect, Adele Stan argued that if Fr…

‘It’s a Gay Problem,’ and Other Myths From the Catholic Church’s Sexual Abuse Crisis

By Joelle Casteix

…re that tolerates them. In reality, the allegedly disproportionately large number of gay priests may be related to the problem, but it isn’t the cause of it. As Robert Mickens wrote in July, and as others have noted for years, the pathologizing of queer sexualities has driven many men to the priesthood, as the vow of celibacy offers what appears to be a safe haven from negotiating a forbidden path. As a result, although he’s careful to point out t…

As Psychedelics Experience a Renaissance, Emory’s New Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality Seeks a Novel Approach

By Hollis Phelps

…sion, PTSD, and substance abuse disorders—as well as in palliative care. A number of prominent institutions in the United States currently host centers devoted to studying the mechanisms, effects, and efficacy of psychedelics, including NYU’s Center for Psychedelic Medicine, Johns Hopkins’s Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, and UC Berkeley’s Center for the Science of Psychedelics. In addition, and anticipating the legal and socioc…

Two Women and a Mosque: A Convert Community Grows in Panama City

By Aliyya Swaby

…I grew up in a household with bookshelves that wobbled from the weight of books in both Arabic and English: copies of the holy book, scholarly Qur’anic interpretations, volumes and volumes of collected advice from Prophet Muhammad. I grew up Muslim in a series of mosques in New York. As a child in Brooklyn, I was surrounded by families like mine: black, Muslim, converts. But when my family moved to the suburbs, that support system fell away. I ha…

Rick Warren Busts a Gut Over Cultural Revolution

By Rob Shryock

…ng funny without offending someone these days in our PC society etc.” The number of supportive and sometimes racist posts outnumber those who advice caution. I can’t suspect such hideous posts are all from Saddleback membership. I’m sure quite a number are. It’s as disturbing as it is disgusting. Warren commented on Tsang’s article, “Thanks so much for teaching us! It was removed instantly.” However, Warren did not get around to posting a form…

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

By Catherine Wessinger

…, I define “charisma” as when followers believe that the leader (or sacred book, or sacred place, or sacred object) has access to an unseen source of authority. Therefore followers attribute charisma to leaders whom they regard as being prophets or messiahs. The leader’s charisma is socially constructed, and followers can withdraw their faith at any time. Trump was seen by participants in the New Apostolic Reformation as being anointed by God to c…

The Harlot Shall Be Burned with Fire: Biblical Literalism in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

By Sarah Sentilles

…the occult. We’re running out of creative ways to kill women in movies and books, it seems, and the biblical passages trope hasn’t been used too often. We’ve become used to seeing dead women on screens. I asked my “Art, Society, and Mass Media” students to watch one hour of television, to count the number of dead bodies they saw, and to keep track of who those bodies belonged to. On television, the dead bodies were women’s; on the evening news, th…