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Does Religion Condemn Homosexuality?

By Michael Bronski

…ecially anal sex between men. But Islamic jurists have disagreed both historically and today as to what the proper penalty for male homosexual acts should be. Historically, sex between women seems to have attracted far less commentary by either medieval or contemporary jurists, and little in the way of mandated penalties. In the twentieth century, various Islamic revivalist movements, particularly within Sunni Islam, seeking to be traditional or a…

7 Women Scholars On the Gender Divide in Religious Studies, the Power of Mentors, and Leading While Female

By Rebecca Barrett-Fox

…ociation for the Sociology of Religion, and the Religion Section of the American Sociological Association. Elaine Howard Ecklund examines contemporary American religion and its intersections with science—specifically, how scientists interact with religion and how religious believers make sense of science. She is the author of Science v. Religion: What Scientists Really Think. In her writing, including including Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety and…

‘My Name is Legion’: Sources and Forces of White Supremacy in the U.S.

By R. Drew Smith

…actions) but, rather, between white colonial forces and their subjugated African and Native American contemporaries who were considered “inferiors.” And as historian Perry Miller notes, “encroachments, especially of inferior upon superior” were “never seriously called in question” in New England before 1730. Even in 1730, if anything was called into question it was class distinction—because no serious challenges of race orthodoxies would gain stre…

Religious Leaders Need ‘Empty the Pews’ Which Chronicles the Darker Side of the ‘Nones’ Phenomenon

By Kaya Oakes

…ny of the contributors are queer, which reflects the damage—or “nurtured insanity,” as Frank Schaeffer calls it in his foreword—fundamentalist Christianity has done to queer people just based on the number who have left. But it also demonstrates why Christian denominations that trot out their “welcoming and affirming” credentials may need to do more; they may want to spend some serious time listening to new members who have arrived from a fundamen…

Francis Must Make Changes to Have a Real Effect

By Patricia Miller

…s remained fairly steady in recent decades is “the disproportionately high number of Catholics among immigrants to the U.S.,” which has masked “the large number of people who have left the Catholic church.” According to Pew, approximately one-third of those raised Catholic have left the church and 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics. If you were a business losing one-third of your customers, wouldn’t you want to make some changes? Sur…

The Vatican v. Protestant Free Thinkers

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…, represented was the triumph of a new kind of mathematical science, where numbers and computation were esteemed in a whole new way. Copernicus, be sure to recall, did not yet have access to the telescope, so he was basing a number of his computations on things he could not see. In this brave new world, then, the scientists were also casting their “faith in things not seen.” It’s just that what they “saw” was perceived to run counter to the Roman…

The Anti-Trans Hate Machine’s Conspiracies Don’t Stop at the US Border

By Annika Brockschmidt

…per, Die Welt, escalated the mainstreaming of right-wing talking points. A number of researchers wrote an op-ed, in which they accused the ARD and ZDF, the independent, state-funded TV news stations (the German version of the BBC) of “indoctrinating” kids with “gender ideology” in order to sexualize and “re-educate” them. The article hits all the right-wing bullet points of a shadowy conspiracy at work: The media, driven by secretive “trans-lobbyi…

Mike Johnson isn’t Just Your Average Christian Right Avatar — He’s Influenced by Fringe Movements Unfamiliar to Most Political Analysts

By Annika Brockschmidt

…ite Christian nationalist (and a true believer at that), part of a growing number who see right-wing reactionary Christianity, White supremacy, and authoritarian politics as an integral part of “real” American identity. Those who do not fall under it must submit, or be forced, if need be, through violence. Johnson was elected to the House of Representatives in 2016, after serving two years in the Louisiana state legislature. Before his time in Con…

Anti-Gay Violence Rages in Gambia; Conservative ‘Complementarity’ Confab; Coming Out in Iraq Can Be Death Sentence; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…with the family that looks like mine,” he told the Blade. “My husband’s African American; our son is brown, he’s Latino. I’m white. We have this modern family. My mom’s coming with us. She’s 84. It’s a multigenerational, multiethnic family.” Osius said he has not seen any negative reaction to his confirmation within Vietnam — a picture of him with Clay and their son went viral within the country. Australia: Member of Parliament Comes Out, Calls f…

Religious Kids Are More Selfish: The Stickers Don’t Lie

By Michael Schulson

…searchers control for one confounding variable here: socioeconomic status. Number of siblings? The researchers didn’t address that, even though religious engagement can be correlated with family size (thanks to a Reddit commenter for pointing this out). Amount of exposure to other kids outside of school? Ditto. Parents’ education levels? Missing. Heterogeneity of the surrounding community? Also left out. And so on. More slippery, though, is that t…