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Will the Pope’s Woman Problem Alienate Young Catholics?

By Patricia Miller

…however, that the committed Catholic women at the conference found Francis most lacking, and his failure to make the connection between women, poverty and fertility most confounding. At the heart of Francis’ problematic views on women, according to several speakers, is his insistence on complementarity—the idea that women and men were designed for different (and, of course, complementary) roles. Apart from that, he has called women theologians “th…

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

…onstant attacks, kidnappings, extortion and police harassment. Recently, almo*]}*st a dozen LGBT people were taken by the United Nation’s refugee agency (UNHCR) to a safe house in Nairobi, after they were attacked on a night out. Even that agency – the very group tasked with protected LGBT people – has admitted its own staff are hostile. The deputy head of protection for UNHCR told me that staff have said that as Christians they could not work with, o…

Debunking the Myth That Democracy Is “Incompatible” With Islam

By Asma Afsaruddin

…t Muslim populations desire representative and accountable governments—the most basic understanding of democracy—and regard democratic procedures, such as elections, as the appropriate mechanism for establishing such governments. An extensive multiyear Gallup research study conducted between 2001 and 2007 in more than 35 nations that have predominantly Muslim or substantial Muslim populations (claiming to have surveyed a sample representing over 9…

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

By Elizabeth Drescher

…Square of its dreams, but, after being ignored by the mainstream media for most of the weekend, it eventually snagged global attention—if mainly of the dismissive you-crazy-kids-and-your-protests sort. What Would Jesus Do Now? Aside from a “sermon” from anti-consumerism performance artist and activist The Rev. Billy (Bill Talen), the protests appear to have been unmarked by any consideration of spiritual or religious perspectives on economic justi…

‘Heretics’ or ‘Atheists’? A Response

By Rachel Ozanne

“I heard hundreds of these evangelical sermons—heard hundreds of the most fearful and vivid descriptions of the tortures inflicted in hell, of the horrible state of the lost. I supposed that what I heard was true and yet I did not believe it. I said: ‘It is,’ and then I thought: ‘It cannot be.’” —Robert Ingersoll, 1896 I connected instantly with Kate Blanchard’s May 10 piece, “Coming Out As a Heretic.” I too grew up in a Christian family, and, de…

Review: Is the Religious Right Dying?

By Laura R. Olson

…nstituency in the Republican Party—and that their support arguably was the most important reason why President George W. Bush was reelected in 2004—it is at least somewhat surprising that the presidential candidates most closely allied with the religious right (Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. Fred Thompson, and Sen. Sam Brownback) did not do better in the campaign for the Republican nomination. To be fair, Huckabee attracted a good deal of support from e…

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

…g to accomplish in the classroom is very different from what people think. Most critics assumed that I was teaching students “how to survive the zombie apocalypse.” (I will refer them, now, to the zombie team at Cornell.) Others, because they saw the word “Revelation” in the title alongside a zombie reference, assumed I was teaching my students that there were zombies in the Bible. (There are no zombies in the Bible; the zombie is a creature that…

Ministries of Presence: A Report from Nepal

By Cathleen Falsani

…since that first trip in 2003 she spends five months a year in Nepal (the most allowed by her tourist visa) and the other seven months in California fundraising for Chhahari, the organization she founded that runs a home for about two dozen children in Kathmandu. Most of the children are “true orphans,” meaning both of their biological parents are deceased, while a few have a living parent but he or she is incapacitated. “We raise the money in th…

Restoring Dignity: The Employee Free Choice Act

By Peter Laarman

…ties. The Dutch Calvinists I grew up among—those who worked at Kohler—were mostly strikebreakers. It was a religious conviction among many that the owners should be able to operate their works without union interference. But I am here to argue that at this moment in American life, all clear-thinking people of faith should be rallying around the union banner. If we’re going to draw analogies between Obama’s challenge and FDR’s challenge, we would d…