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UN Human Rights Council Creates LGBT Watchdog; Orthodox Council Affirms Traditional Teaching on Family; Pope Francis Says Church Should Apologize to Gays; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…e up ‘gay lobby’ Last Sunday, Pope Francis demonstrated his penchant for generating news with off the cuff remarks with reporters aboard the papal plane. Francis was asked about comments made a few days earlier by German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who said the Church had treated gay people in a “scandalous and terrible” way. Reuters reports: In the hour-long freewheeling conversation that has become a trademark of his international travels, Francis w…

Show Me the Way of the Hebrews: The Making of an African American Rabbi

By J. Lester Feder

…another African American there, a man also born Jewish, who was answering phones. Someone stuck their head in the office to ask them to come pray—they were short of the ten Jews required to form the minyan. When they joined the group, the leader assumed the black man was a convert, and asked if he had fulfilled all of the process’s legal requirements. After that incident, she says, “my eyes [were] opened.” Regardless of their devotion to the fait…

An Extravagant Welcome For All: Believe Out Loud, a Faith-Based LGBT Campaign, Launches

By Peter Laarman

…otally embrace LGBT equality that there are millions more like them—a genuine “cloud of witnesses,” to use the biblical expression. [Full disclosure: I was significantly involved for over two years in the early development of this project; my agency was paid for its work but is not directly involved at this point.] Rev. Robert Chase, former communications director for the United Church of Christ and now the head of Intersections International in N…

Exclusive: Christian Right Bill Mill, Project Blitz, Hasn’t Gone Away, It’s Just Gotten More Secretive

By Frederick Clarkson

…book isn’t really new, and simply builds on its original themes, there is one new model bill that bears special attention because it builds out a new dimension of Project Blitz’s religious and political vision, and exposes their view of democratic institutions. Indeed, the bill became infamous months before it morphed into a secret model in the Project Blitz playbook. The “Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act,” introduced by then-freshman Mi…

After More Mass Shootings It’s Time to Call Out White Supremacy in the Pews

By Peter Laarman

…re I’m thinking mainly of scholars like Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Gerald Horne who focus on the connections between settler colonialism, white supremacy, and an unparalleled level of gun violence. To me the question that grows more acute daily is how to amplify the truth-telling and thus speed the reckoning. Houses of worship ought to serve as amplifiers, but for the most part they aren’t helping. I’m a preacher and I can say with near certainty th…

Catholic Leaders Offer Criticism, Support to Boxer Pacquiao After Anti-Gay Comments…

By Peter Montgomery

…oble religions, under which the terms and conditions have been stipulated. New Zealand & Polynesia: Anglican Church Group Proposes Liturgies To Bless Same-Sex Couples This week the Way Forward Working Group has proposed two new liturgies for blessing same-sex couples, which will be considered by the General Synod in Maine. From Anglican Taonga: These liturgies have been designed to allow for the blessing of couples who have been married in a civil…

The Abortion Debate, Texas Style

By Dhawn Martin

…ly you knew the truth” condescension. Yet there have also been, as Chair Jane Nelson of the Senate HHS Committee noted during the SB1 hearing, gestures of care and concern, color-blind gestures. Perhaps these acts were merely tactical, the “kill them with kindness” ploy. Or maybe, these moments, however rare, however fleeting, offer a glimpse of generous and yet-to-be realized coalitions that strive for the common good, whatever that might look li…

The Fretting About Whether Democrats Are “Friendly” To Religion

By Sarah Posner

…ch as Republicans and white evangelical Protestants. But they have also turned more negative among both independents as well as Democrats who are ideologically moderate or conservative. What Pew leaves out of that summary is that among liberal Democrats, the view of their party’s “friendliness” to religion remains unchanged from August 2008 to August 2009 (56% find it “friendly”). But a more important unanswered question is: why should we care? T…

Demonized and Demonizing No More.

By Joanna Brooks

…myself imagining what an atheist ethic of hospitality might look like. Or neighborliness. Yes. Neighborliness and hospitality are crucial components or concepts in Judeo-Christian religiosity, but they’re also humanist moral concepts. What is shifting that may be allowing a new, less defensive presentation of atheism to emerge? The atheist community still exists on the margins even in conversations about faith and values. The spaces where we are…

U.S. Bishops Reject Pope Francis’ Priorities

By Patricia Miller

…e lack thereof). Msgr. J. Brian Bransfield was elected as the conference’s new general secretary. NCR’s Winters, who has been an outspoken critic of the increasingly culture-warrior posture of the USCCB staff, called Bransfield’s election “a first-class disaster” for the conference. As Winter noted, “The sad and regrettable fact is that the USCCB of late has acquired only the smell of the neo-conservative, upper middle class Catholic sheep and the…