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Global Religious Right Asks ‘How Far Can We Get?’; And More in the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ty is “challenging” but will be discussed at this week’s general synod. Norway: Anti-gay Nazi rally planned for the summer The Nordic Resistance Movement, identified by The Nordic Page as a Nazi organization active in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, has applied for a permit to hold a rally in Fredrikstad this summer with “Destroy the homo lobby.” as a theme. The group also opposes immigration and calls for the establishment of a sing…

Transgender and Christian: Finding Identity

By Jori Lewis

…exuals represent approximately .25 to 1 percent of the US population. That number does not include the transgender people who haven’t undergone sex reassignment surgery (a process many people call “the transition”), so the number of transgender-identified people is likely much higher. The term “transgender” encompasses anyone with a gender identity that is different from his or her birth sex. A transgender person could be someone who just cross-dr…

As New Poll Finds “Increased Xenophobic Streak,” Republicans Heighten Anti-Muslim Rhetoric

By Sarah Posner

…sehold word now,” he said, and “I think some of that is playing into these numbers.” Numerous Muslim groups and leaders have consistently condemned ISIS as contrary to Islam. White evangelicals and white mainline Protestants are the most likely religious groups to agree with the statement that Islam is “at odds with American values and way of life” (73 percent and 63 percent, respectively). But the uptick in the percentage of people agreeing with…

Lessons from the Defeat of the Oklahoma Personhood Bill

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…rusion into women’s reproductive decisionmaking. Which is a pretty nuanced way to look at, and it’s not one that is immediately friendly to personhood legislation. Secondly, it raises the question of whether we shall see a more general pushback against national groups picking states as laboratories for their legislation. If Oklahoma Republicans wind up galvanized against Personhood USA and Oklahomans for Life, is it possible that another red state…

The Quixotic Task of Debunking David Barton

By Paul Harvey

…him, do not believe in any Truths of any sort. It’s a case study, in some ways, of recent depictions of the neuroscience of political differences, and in particular the way “righteous minds” conceive of the world. And it’s a perfect example of the thesis that Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson have outlined in The Anointed—the ways in which evangelical experts have created alternate intellectual universes that provide large audiences with a compl…

Turkish Police Move Against Activists Who Defied Pride Ban; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ial hostility toward LGBT people is part of the government’s move to turn away from the West and cement stronger ties with Putin’s Russia: It was never easy being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in Kyrgyzstan’s patriarchal, Muslim-majority society. Nonetheless, in a region where the Soviet past hangs heavily and ossified dictatorship is the norm, the smallest of the Central Asian “Stans” was seen as a relative beacon of tolerance and democra…

Mexico moves toward national marriage equality; Greek govt announces civil partnership legislation; Pope warns against ‘secularism and relativism’; Global LGBT recap

By Peter Montgomery

…e. Australia: Catholic Bishops ramp up anti-marriage equality campaign New Ways Ministry reports that “Australia’s Catholic bishops have launched a campaign for ‘the very soul of marriage,’ employing educators and schoolchildren in Catholic schools as their messengers.” In an 18-page document disseminated through Catholic schools, the bishops call marriage equality a “serious injustice” according to the Goalburn Post. Titled “Don’t Mess With Marri…

Like Azusa Street Baptized into Bureaucracy: Mexico’s Flourishing LLDM Church Loses its Apostle

By Michael Schulson

…LDM’s social service agencies. There’s a church-run hospital a few blocks away. The church bans drinking and smoking. For decades, church members have voted as a bloc for the powerful PRI party, which gives them substantial sway in local politics (though, as Hugo G. and Jean F. Nutini point out in Native Evangelism in Central Mexico, LLDM leadership cultivated a relationship with the PAN in 2000, when they defeated the PRI in national elections)….

A Secret History of Satan

By W. Scott Poole

…t’s the most important take-home message for readers? I hope readers come away with two things. First, that American popular religion and popular culture have tended to influence one another in very strange, but very real, ways. The 1973 film The Exorcist has had enormous influence over how everyone from Pentecostal “deliverance ministers” to Roman Catholic priests understand exorcism. Billy Graham, in a famous sermon in 1974 where he insisted tha…

Black Churches are Burning: Is It the 1990s All Over Again?

By Katie Day

…of the cases in five Southern states and Nevada. In subsequent years, the numbers fell: there were 209 church arsons in 1997 and 166 the following year, according to their annual reports. The last report was issued in 2001. Altogether there were almost 900 reported cases of church arson in the late 1990s—a huge number compared to what we’ve seen in the last two weeks. A second difference is that of public response. In 1995-96, there was a unique…