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‘Pro-Life’ Theater, Open White Nationalism, and Virility Fear — Day 3 of NatCon

By Annika Brockschmidt and Ben Lorber

…d opt out of banning abortion, and he portrayed the Biden administration’s reproductive freedom stance as genocide: His is an administration that is not just pro-abortion. It lives and breathes abortion. It is their religion—they want to take us out. They want to take out our children. The abortion drug states could fight against the abortion drug, but the abortion drug is promoted by the United States Postal Service that is under federal jurisdic…

Why Don’t White People Show Up For Juneteenth The Way They Showed Up For George Floyd?

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…ghtered sons, daughters (and vice versa). It’s Black folks celebrating freedom… or at least being “free-ish.” That, I believe, is at the root of the Juneteenth conundrum; the difficulty of seeing and accepting Black Joy, not Black Excellence, not Black Girl Magic, or any other formulation of Blackness that requires Black folks to exhibit superhuman levels of suffering or perseverance in the face of oppression. Simply the human emotion of joy. So,…

Death With Dignity: Combatting Religious Opposition to Physician-Assisted Suicide

By Krista Kapralos

…doctrinal statements from Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists and a good number of other traditions, but individuals may not feel those are binding, or they may feel their circumstances are exceptional,” he said. The Catholic Church hasn’t shifted its policies regarding end-of-life care, said Dierdre McQuade, and she explained that the difference between palliative sedation and physician-assisted death is intent. Even in the case of increasing m…

New Anti-Gay Snake Oil for Religious Right

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ination against lesbian and gay people, so the possibility of recruiting a representative sample of prospective lesbian mothers was even more unrealistic than it is today.” The researcher for the new study, Mark Regnerus, isn’t free from his own bias, however. As Freedom to Marry points out in a press release on the study, Regnerus, ”is well known for his ultra-conservative ideology and the paper was funded by the Witherspoon Institute and the Br…

U.S. Bishops Reject Pope Francis’ Priorities

By Patricia Miller

…apidly declining number of priests and nuns) and, of course, religious freedom (Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who arranged Kim Davis’ meeting with Pope Francis, received two standing ovations from the bishops.). Then the debate turned to the USCCB’s quadrennial “Faithful Citizenship” voting guide. The bishops had voted earlier to revise the 2007 edition prepared for the 2008 election, which was the last time the guide was completely overhauled, r…

When God and Gender Mix: New Book Examines the Southern Holiness Movement

By Colin Chapell

…ge how they understand their own identity. If academic achievement and the number or type of initials after your name is the most important thing in the world to you, then it will change how you view your own masculinity and femininity. Similarly, if having children matters most to you, then you can only be truly “manly” or “feminine” if you have kids. Is there anything you had to leave out? Historians always want to include every interesting anec…

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

…oked. There are ghosts and graves in the yards of my neighborhood, and the number of skeletons—reclining on lawn chairs, sprouting up from the ground, beckoning from the shadows—has transformed the suburban landscape into a set for a George Romero film. In addition, and beyond bland suburbia, monsters, ghosts, skeletons, vampires, and other playful dead inhabit stores and sell products, entertain across the television dial, and instill a dreadfull…

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

By Andrea R. Jain

…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 Iyengar’s physical state. It did. Iyengar…

Will Iowa’s Abortion Ban Respect Religious Freedom?

By Christine Ryan

…ight to control one’s body depend on proof of one’s religious commitments; reproductive freedom is a right that depends on one’s humanity, not one’s religious beliefs. That said, attacking the status quo incrementally proved to be a winning strategy for the anti-abortion movement. And forcing that movement to occupy a defensive posture neutralizes the legal force it’s exerted since Dobbs. Most importantly, people motivated by religious beliefs to…