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Methodist Church’s ‘Dismantling Racism Initiative’ Excludes Some Black Lives

By Pamela R. Lightsey

…re matter, are members of the LGBTQ community? How serious can Black LGBTQ United Methodists take this new initiative that doesn’t contain a clear stance against homophobia and transphobia? Have our denominational leaders not yet learned Black Lives Matter means ALL Black Lives Matter, including members of the LGBTQ community? It was not too long ago that many of us sought to make this point at the denomination’s 2016 General Conference. About 150…

Jose Antonio Vargas’ Coming Out and the Power of Stories over Religious Remonstrances

By Sarah Posner

…ion in the Senate.) As I read Vargas’ piece, I could not help but think of Peter Laarman’s excellent essay here, in which he makes a serious and thought-provoking case for why liberal religious arguments fail. In a nutshell, Peter maintains that religious advocates should stop arguing by reducing the Bible to a soundbite, and start telling stories, “because gathering to share our stories clearly does have such impact it’s that much more surprising…

What Netanyahu Learned from Texas

By Sarah Posner

…l of the Jewish state, that grants the right of way to “Jewish” aspects of policy and secondary status to democratic principles, that opens the door to deporting non-Jews, in particular African asylum seekers, and to depriving Arabs of rights and privileges, and to neutering the Supreme Court as the last vestige of a check and balance to a clown car of a government, a government determined to see how far you can get if all you have is a gas pedal…

Talking Prop. 8: Of Rites and Rights

By Peter Laarman

…endment, whose first section reads: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person withi…

The Quiet Passing of Fundamentalist Mormon Prophet Lynn A. Thompson Suggests Polygamy Recognition Remains a Distant Hope

By Cristina Rosetti

…o continued the controversial marital practice. According to the Apostolic United Brethren, they were charged with continuing the “fundamentals” of the faith—namely polygamy—after the LDS Church essentially brought an end to the practice in 1904. Over the past two years, the legal and criminal status of polygamy in the US has once again been at the center of public attention. At the start of the 2020 Utah legislative session, Senator Deidre Hender…

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

By Hollis Phelps

…omise of psychedelic medicines.” While most of the existing centers in the United States take narrower approaches, either choosing to focus on the scientific study of psychedelics or training clinicians and chaplains in psychedelic-assisted therapies, the ECPS promises to take a more holistic approach, combining scientific research with clinical experience and application. As the ECPS’s website puts it, the center seeks to: “leverage an active and…

From Christian Temperance to D.A.R.E. — The War on Drugs Has its Roots in White Christian Nationalism

By Andrew Monteith

…g religious within its content, yet a conservative Christian reader in the United States today is likely going to see religious significance in the article nonetheless. Protestants consuming media about substance use a century ago similarly saw significant religious implications whether journalists wrote about it that way or not. The antidrug campaigns of Rear Admiral Richmond Pearson Hobson, an influential Prohibitionist, short-term congressman,…

RDBook: Whither the Religious Left?

By Bill Berkowitz

…executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State; Peter Laarman, head of Progressive Christians Uniting; Carlton Veazey, president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (and a member of RD’s Advisory Council), Debra Haffner, director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing, and Marshall Ganz of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The afterward was written by Jeff…

A Tea Party Leader Hates Christians

By Sarah Posner

…as “little more than the first Church of Karl Marx,” was incensed that the United Methodist Building (known to locals as “the God box”) on Capitol Hill had a sign supporting the DREAM Act. (h/t Religion News Service). “After all,” Phillips adds, “what can you say about a church that considers Hillary Clinton to be a member in good standing?” Phillips goes on to call the church “the religious arm of socialism” because it supports “illegal immigrati…

Christian Nationalists Aim to Dismantle this Core Freedom

By Andrew L. Seidel

…ively protecting the wall: the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the ACLU, American Atheists, the Center For Inquiry, the American Humanist Association, and others. The wall of separation is crumbling, though not from neglect. It’s being attacked. The Trump administration is rife with Christian nationalists attempting to rewrite the Constitution by revising American history and declare this…