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Spiritual McCarthyism and the Catholic Vote

By Bill Berkowitz

…tive.’ He has not replied. Donohue’s statement continued: It would appear, then, that the group no longer exists. It is not hard to understand why. After being criticized by the Catholic League, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City rebuked one of Obama’s Catholic advisers, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius: she was instructed not to present herself for Holy Communion (she is a rabid defender of abortion). At about the same time, radical Chic…

Exclusive: Columnist Jonathan Merritt on his Sudden Departure From Religion News Service

By Kaya Oakes

…o “one person, either a staff member or a columnist who’s happy there.” RNS, he says, is now “run by a publisher of questionable character and an editor in chief who by all accounts has no idea how to manage a team.” Asked what he plans next, Merritt says that given the disarray at RNS, “perhaps it’s time for a new religion news outlet.” There are “plenty of competent religion writers” who could work for “an organization built for the 21st century…

Behind a Recent Stunt in Idaho Lies a Dangerous Theocratic Movement

By Chrissy Stroop

…organizer Alicia Abbott, who works with an initiative called Reclaim Idaho, in a phone interview with RD. An entrepreneurial professional home builder and remodeler, Abbott focuses her advocacy on issues like Medicaid expansion and improving education rather than on candidates or parties. While she’s quick to point out that she’s not a journalist, Abbott feels compelled to do what she can to observe, document, and raise awareness of the extremist…

Gay Marriage Supporters Rally People of Faith for Washington’s November Vote

By Nicole Neroulias

…not home or not interested. After an hour working the phones, Scott Holley, 33, cheerfully noted that he had become “unfazed by rejection” during his two-year Mormon mission in Chile. “There are people out there that are ready to hear your message. You just have to find them,” he said, of both experiences. “There are people who have been preparing to become accepting, and it’s now time to harvest.” In his own faith community, a bisexual relative…

On Pi Day, Puzzling Over the Most Famous Transcendental Number

By Ilana E. Strauss

…hat goes back to the history of clay tablets that’s still studied seriously, 4,000 years later.” Pi draws attention not just on its own, but inside equations. For instance, it’s is an essential part of Euler’s identity, eiπ+1=0, an equation which commonly tops “greatest equations ever” polls. Euler’s identity combines the two most important transcendental numbers with i, which equals the square-root of -1. Leonhard Euler was an 18th century Swiss…

Belize Overturns Sodomy Law Defended by Religious Right, Ugandan Officials Will Continue to Suppress Gay Groups, And More on the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…w of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people faced little threat from the police, who were focused on other matters and largely ignored what happened at house parties or bars in Cairo’s crumbling, bohemian downtown. The crackdown began in earnest when a military curfew imposed after the removal of Mr. Morsi ended in fall 2013, said Scott Long, a human rights activist who lived in…

American Jewish Leaders Get Gaza Wrong

By Sarah Posner

…y caused 55 Palestinian deaths and 257 injuries. Among these 312 casualties, 61, or roughly 20 percent, were children and 28 were female. 209 of these casualties came as a result of Israeli Air Force missiles, 69 from live ammunition fire, and 18 from tank shells. It is important to note that these figures do not represent a totality of Israeli projectiles fired into Gaza but rather only Israeli projectiles fired into Gaza which cause casualties….

Do Atheists Belong in the Interfaith Movement?

By Chris Stedman

…it may present to the religious, is wanted in interfaith work. The question, then, is: will we take up the call? Or will we sit on the sidelines listing off reasons why we don’t belong? An atheist blogger I really admire, Blag Hag author Jen McCreight, recently wrote that she has a problem with “the interfaith people who say the debaters and the intellectuals need to shut up and just sing kumbaya with religion.” Those people may exist, but I haven…

Argue-by-Number: A Suggestion for the Church

By Mark D. Jordan

…they are not easily cast out—in ourselves or in others. All the more reason, then, to put away the joke book. Repeating the clichéd arguments doesn’t begin to touch these deeper motives—doesn’t address the impulse to quarrel about something, anything, rather than listen again to the demands of the book we keep quoting. It is not a joke book, and it is not meant to be cut up into proof texts for smug citation. If we contenders want to number things…

Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

By Patricia Miller

…The number of baptisms has declined from nearly 1 million to just over 700,000, and the number of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will en…