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Will the Pope’s Woman Problem Alienate Young Catholics?

By Patricia Miller

…on the church and sex.] The participants, many of them long-time social justice activists, were generally grateful for Francis’ strong language on economic inequality and environmental degradation. However, they decried the pope’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 Cho…

New Mormon Anti-Gay Policy Sparks Mass Exodus From Church; Christian AID Workers in Africa Refuse to Help Gay Refugees; Ukraine Rejects, Then Accepts EU-Required Gay Rights Law; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ey were condemned for the ban of the Nikšić Pride and police violence against Istanbul Pride. Concerning legal gender recognition, the report on Montenegro welcomes the adoption of a new protocol for legal gender recognition, whereas Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia are criticized for the absence of such procedures. Turkey is criticized for the excessive requirements for gender recognition. … Daniele Viotti MEP, Co-President of the Intergroup on…

Debunking the Myth That Democracy Is “Incompatible” With Islam

By Asma Afsaruddin

…mental incompatibility between democracy and Islam. The social anthropologist Ernest Gellner, for example, regarded Islam as peculiarly resistant to secularization since in his view the religion provides a rigid and unchanging blueprint for life incapable of adaptation to modern, secular society, and therefore inherently resistant to democratization. The French Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida similarly depicted Islam as “the other of democrac…

Risky Business: The Pitfalls at the Corner of Church & Wall Street

By Elizabeth Drescher

…d in sight for the disenfranchised majority. In the words of a brief manifesto posted on an Occupy Wall Street website created by “various radicals”: If you agree that state and corporation are merely two sides of the same oppressive power structure, if you realize how media distorts things to preserve it, how it pits the people against the people to remain in power, then you might be one of us. Though massive crowds that might have garnered susta…

‘Heretics’ or ‘Atheists’? A Response

By Rachel Ozanne

…ian, so it was easier for me to tell them that I was “searching,” or at least agnostic, rather than atheist. Additionally, I wasn’t sure that the label applied to me. Finally, now, as a historian of religion, when I introduce myself to strangers, they inevitably ask me about my religious commitments. When I explain that I have none, I often sense a series of judgments about who I am, just by admitting my unbelief. I struggled long and hard with my…

Review: Is the Religious Right Dying?

By Laura R. Olson

…hristians have been elected to school boards, city and county government posts, and state legislatures. Conservative Christian activists also hold enormous sway over many state- and local-level Republican Party organizations. The apparent waxing of the religious left and waning of the religious right is a reflection of the cyclical nature of American politics. In the mid-twentieth century, the religion-politics relationship in the United States wa…

The Role of Faith in the Lives of Abortion Providers

By Sarah Posner

…“Dr. Tiller’s murder really affected me,” Sister Donna Quinn, a nun, feminist activist, and former clinic escort (or as she describes it, “peacekeeper”) at a clinic on the south side of Chicago, told me this week. “To think that he was murdered inside a church really brought it home to me.” Doctors and other staff at clinics are heroes, she emphasized, “making sure women are at peace with this decision, making sure they know what they are doing, a…

The World is (Always) About to End, No Zombies Required

By Kelly J. Murphy

…l. The course stems from the knowledge that pop culture and monsters interest students, even if ancient biblical texts don’t (at least, not often and not at first). Yet it was also born out of a desire to show students that ancient texts matter, and that these texts continue to live on all around us, whether we know it or not. Sometimes these afterlives are beautiful and inspiring; sometimes these afterlives are awful, created out of fear and some…

Ministries of Presence: A Report from Nepal

By Cathleen Falsani

…emplation of my own, I decided I still should go as an independent journalist. I understood my mission (in the spiritual and every other sense) to be simple: to be a witness, to do whatever I could to help in whatever way I was able, to listen, to hold space for people who were suffering, and to tell stories. I pushed back my original departure by four days, and as the time to head for the Himalayas drew closer, so did a growing sense of anxiety a…

Restoring Dignity: The Employee Free Choice Act

By Peter Laarman

…ble views of unionization than white Protestants, in part because of the vast number of Catholic immigrants to the United States who benefited significantly from their union membership but also because of the impact of Catholic and Jewish social teaching. White Protestants (my peeps) have too often tended to cling to a by-your-bootstraps ethic of individual achievement, joined to a suspicion that there is something slightly sinister and foreign ab…