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Catholic Voters No Longer Beholden to Bishops and Abortion

By Mary E. Hunt

…in which abortions are necessary, the context that needs to change if the number of abortions is to be reduced. This larger context constitutes “gravely moral reasons” why a Catholic could, some might say should, vote for Obama over McCain despite their respective positions on abortion. Theologians and other Catholic scholars have led the way on this approach. Pro-choice Catholic scholars have long argued that one can favor legal abortion from a…

‘Murder Among the Mormons,’ Latest True Crime Doc From Netflix, Highlights Issues of Faith, Skepticism, and Authenticity

By Benjamin E. Park

…were hotly contested, and often personal, as the stakes over historical research never seemed so high. In September 1993, six prominent intellectuals were excommunicated, followed by several others in the proceeding years. The entire community seemed at battle, the lingering embers of the Hofmann fire. Ironically, two of the most outspoken critics of the LDS tradition, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, were also some of the first to openly wonder in 1984…

$50 Billion Fundamentalist Free Fall

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…an the tip, the system is, if not quite secure, then stable at least. When numbers of new investors decrease, as is inevitable in a finite universe, the seismic shocks ensue. What triggered this now is the overwhelming feeling of crisis on Wall Street and throughout the country. Simply put, a number of Madoff’s investors needed their money (even the very wealthy are feeling pinched in this downturn), and he was confronted with the impossibility of…

Growing Up Cult: A Memoir of Life with Sri Chinmoy

By Brittany Shoot

…ate from mainstream society. My personal definition of a cult focuses on a number of key characteristics that cults share. The first is that a cult is centered around a single individual or a small group of leaders that possess total and complete authority over the members. The members cannot question, doubt, or criticize the leader. If someone does question the leader’s authority, that person is singled out and punished. Perhaps what is the most…

‘Religious Freedom’ Rally Sets Stage for 1st Amendment Collision

By Sarah Posner

…peddled by the Catholic Bishops and their supporters. Nettina claimed the number of abortions increase with greater access to contraceptives, a trope commonly used to assert that contraception fails and therefore does not decrease the number of unintended pregnancies. This claim echoes statements made by the Bishops themselves, as well as anti-contraception groups, that birth control doesn’t work and is harmful to women’s health. Hagen recommende…

Can The Religious Left Be Effective Again? Longer Answer: Quizás

By Daniel Schultz

…gh participation rates are increasing among these types of churches, they represent a small percentage of all churches. Fulton explains that a lot of this increase is due to the debates over immigration reform; but even factoring that in, Hispanic churches are becoming more politically active. The number of congregations might be few, but they may also be larger communities, representing a substantial number of people. In any case, the trend will…

The Quixotic Task of Debunking David Barton

By Paul Harvey

…futations of Barton’s bogus empiricism. I’ve considered these questions a number of times recently in observing historians struggling to deal with the popularity of figures such as David Barton, who bowdlerize history but get the kind of attention few actual historians receive for their work. To What Effect? These debates go back a long way. When I was in college at a Baptist denominational school in Oklahoma, the biology professor, a man about…

Prisoners In the Hands of an Angry God: A Conversation About Religion and Reform

By Andrew Aghapour and Stephanie Gaskill

…ind this Newsweek article? Stephanie Gaskill: As with other survey-based research into religion, the methodology determines the findings. Researchers usually isolate a particular religious variable that they think relates to a specific political viewpoint, and then they conclude that those two things are connected. Asking people whether people believe in a punitive or forgiving God seems to be a popular research topic. The problem, though, is that…

Warships, Animals, Pubs Eligible For Blessings From Church of England, But Not Same-Sex Couples; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…f and is believed to have supported the arrest, detention and torture of a number of people on suspicion of homosexuality by the country’s National Intelligence Agency. While Barrow has so-far espoused a far more democratic and human rights based approach than his predecessor, his views on homosexuality have never been publicly expressed, until now. His reported comments do not quite suggest that he is planning to decriminalise homosexuality, but…

What do the January 6 Commission, Covid Deaths and Gun Massacres All Have in Common? God’s Chosen

By John Stoehr

…commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection; the disproportionate number of Covid deaths in states run by Republican governors; this week’s shooting massacre in San Jose, Calif., and every other one like it; and, let’s see, what else? Well, feel free at the end of this piece to add your own examples. There are plenty more. All have in common the political concept that God divided the world between the elected and the unelected, that is, b…