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Mormon Rejection of Trump Embarrassing for Evangelicals?

By Neil J. Young

…ghpoint, but rather as members of a heretical and unchristian faith. For a number of reasons, including Mitt Romney’s presidential run in 2012, those impulses have been largely diminished. But evangelical worries about Mormonism remain. That Mormons have so thoroughly repudiated Donald Trump while American evangelicalism wrestles with its complicated relationship with him only elevates evangelical leaders’ concerns about the strength of their fait…

American Christianity Is Changing Fast: Five Stories to Watch in 2016

By Richard Flory

…en politics, culture and what people are looking for in church, this shift represents a failure on the part of most churches to provide a message and organizational structure that will both attract and retain church members. This will likely continue, but will churches adapt by figuring out what people want in church, or will they continue to stagnate and decline? On the other hand, what alternative forms, if any, of “church” might people be formi…

An Unholy Holy Week: Is the All-Male Rule of the Roman Catholic Church Self-Destructing?

By Anne Eggebroten

…rce of the problem: canon law, which does not require cases of abuse to be reported to the police. Instead, a culture of extreme secrecy has prevailed, codified in Vatican norms issued in 1962 requiring secret investigations and prohibiting any report to civil authorities. Will Pope Benedict XVI set in motion any change to canon law? Will he step down or ask any complicit bishops to resign? Will he even order a Church-wide investigation? Unlikely….

55% of Utah Mormons Believe LGBT People can “Change”

By Joanna Brooks

…rallied around Elder Packer’s hurtful speech than have carefully read the prepared official PR statement affirming LGBT humanity and dignity. Few have absorbed the nuances Church leaders have been hammering out in successive statements about LGBT issues. Many are still thinking like we were taught to in the 1970s, that homosexuality is simply a base perversion, an abomination, and can be changed through repentance and prayer. Not so, say a legion…

Special Hell: Progressive Catholics Reckon With the Rise of Trump

By Patricia Miller

…y wanted), it’s not difficult to imagine them supporting a partial or full repeal of the ACA, and a much less robust replacement of it, if it got rid of the despised contraceptive mandate. Just after his election, DiNardo said he hoped the bishops could “sit down with the administration or meet with them in some fashion, perhaps even in terms of Congress, relative to some pro-life things. I would certainly think some aspects of the Affordable Care…

The Devil is in the Details

By Amina Wadud

…rs checks. They are supposed to be better protected. You can get them 100% replaced if lost or stolen, but only if you first write down each and every serial number. Then you have to keep this information somewhere that’s not the same somewhere you keep the checks. But then they really do NOT spend just like cash—especially abroad where we meet and mix with people in their own places. Such places are not subject to our being guests there. So I do…

What Pence and Kaine Reveal About Divides in Catholicism

By Patricia Miller

…nvincing each other, dialoguing with each other about important moral issues of the day. But on fundamental issues of morality, we should let women make their own decisions. And it’s the evolution of Pence, from Catholic Democrat to conservative Catholic Republican, to evangelical—who puts the holy rite of controlling women’s reproduction at the center of his belief system—that perfectly illustrates the divergent and increasingly irreconcilable pa…

Do Space Aliens Need Baptism? The View From Gliese 581g

By Paul Wallace

…ith every outward step, as our universe and our ignorance grows, so do the number of potential space alien hideouts. So does the belief that there must be someone out there. So every time I read about the discovery of a new Earth-like planet or read about NASA’s upcoming Kepler planet-finding mission or watch a movie like Contact, I grow excited over—and, like Brahe, even a little afraid of—the vast unknown. My mind boggles. What’s really out ther…

Commies, Blacks, Jews, the UCC and Other Threats to America

By Daniel Schultz

Way down toward the bottom of the New York Times‘ report on this past weekend’s One Nation Working Together rally, you’ll find this paragraph: On Thursday [Glenn] Beck warned that the march included Marxist, Communist and revolutionary groups. Among the organizations endorsing the march were the Communist Party USA, the United Church of Christ, Jewish Funds for Justice, the National Urban League, the National Baptist Convention, People for the Am…

Halloween, Evangelicals, and the Macabre

By John W. Morehead

…ism must be evil is ignored; as is that fact that Halloween incorporates a number of elements and influences that have accrued during its journey through various cultures. In truth, some of these elements are Christian, like the feast of the dead that attempted to maintain communion with the saints, both living and deceased. The Roman Catholic Church continues to include this element in its festivities, and thus, as historian Ronald Hutton argues…