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Renovating Marriage, One Gay Couple at a Time

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ose marriage equality on religious grounds. For them, I point to a growing number of religious leaders who also understand that gays and lesbians can do a lot to “redefine” marriage in beneficial ways. Rev. Ed Bacon, who leads the 4,000 member All Saints Church in Pasadena, Calif., told Oprah Winfrey this past weekend that marriage would be “enriched” by same-sex couples. I’ve never had a straight couple come to me and say, ‘My marriage is in trou…

Sacred&Profane: The Living Dead

By Gary Laderman

…campaign, previous presidents who seem to speak from the grave as we get closer to voting day—Lincoln, as usual, but also Depression-era and wartime leader Franklin D. Roosevelt, and another American icon likely to grow in ghostly stature through the ages, Ronald Reagan. John McCain’s experiences as a POW during the Vietnam War surely speak to heroism and adversity under horrible pressures, but they do not erase memories of body bags, fallen comr…

Pop Culture Yogi B. K. S. Iyengar Dead at 95

By Andrea R. Jain

…r and siblings to various illnesses, and was afflicted himself with tuberculosis, typhoid, and malaria. Already decrepit at the age of sixteen, Iyengar went to the Karnataka city of Mysore to study yoga with his brother-in-law, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, who was said to have constructed a yoga system meant to strengthen the body through sequences of onerous postures and breathing exercises. The hope was that Krishnamacharya’s yoga would improve Iy…

Will Iowa’s Abortion Ban Respect Religious Freedom?

By Christine Ryan

…on it, and honestly, my solution at that point was not to let my children lose their mother.” Others described being guided by religious obligations to oneself. A seminary student in New York explained that her abortion was inspired by her belief that “if it is not the right time or the right circumstance to have a baby, a pregnant person has the inherent spiritual authority not to call that particular future into being. Religious freedom law pro…

Mormon Rejection of Trump Embarrassing for Evangelicals?

By Neil J. Young

…ts in the second and third most Mormon states, Idaho and Wyoming, where he lost to Cruz by 18 and 59 points, respectively. To add insult to injury, a recent poll conducted by the LDS Church-owned Deseret News found Utah would vote for a Democratic candidate in November over Trump. Utah hasn’t sided with the Democrats since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide election in 1964. Why have Mormons rejected Trump? As Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins explained over the w…

Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

By Lisa Miller

…e characterized by change, and heaven, by tradition, is characterized by changelessness. How does that work? How does the human, who changes minutely every second, exist in a changeless eternity? The church father Augustine solves this by saying that in heaven time has no meaning, but that declaration doesn’t satisfy rational-minded people like me. More to the point: With bodies in heaven, we can do all the things that bodies do. We can eat, drink…

An Unholy Holy Week: Is the All-Male Rule of the Roman Catholic Church Self-Destructing?

By Anne Eggebroten

…and procession to find a few confused and pitifully human old men at microphones still trying to send out impressive puffs of smoke. Within 20-40 years, we will have women priests ordained with the blessing of canon law (not outside canon law as at present). This will happen sooner than previously expected because each act of abuse or cover-up weakens the power of the male hierarchy. Their convoluted reasons for why only men can represent Jesus C…

The Faith Outreach Canard

By Sarah Posner

…t to religious voters was not heeded, thus causing the election losses, a closer look at the numbers fails to demonstrate a causal link. At the Huffington Post, pollsters Robert P. Jones and Daniel Cox of Public Religion Research write: Faced with significant Democratic defeats, however, some activists who advise Democrats on religious outreach are succumbing to the temptation to claim that the GOP victories are entirely attributable to a lack of…

This Year in Satanism

By Joseph Laycock

…alism that Harvard has traditionally espoused. JUNE In June, Greaves did a number of interviews taking aim at Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and his efforts to ban gay marriage and limit access to abortion. A native of Detroit, Greaves called Snyder “an idiot governor.” He discussed campaigns that would invoke the free exercise clause to challenge Snyder’s legislation, including the assertions that gay marriage is a Satanic sacrament and that Satan…

55% of Utah Mormons Believe LGBT People can “Change”

By Joanna Brooks

…studied and understood. Any doctrine that would be used to exclude a good number of the earth’s people from full equality before the law and God should be very carefully examined. When it comes to gay issues, most Mormons have only the muddiest understanding of what life is like for gay people or about the doctrinal reasons their LDS leaders say and do the things they do. In fact, most Mormons have only the muddiest understanding about what their…