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‘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…

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

By Andrew Aghapour and Stephanie Gaskill

…r people in prison. As I’ve talked with people, it has become clear that a number of other factors play a role: their position within the criminal justice system, their personal experiences with law enforcement, their relationships with incarcerated people. I’ve met people who were staunch supporters of a “tough on crime” approach until one of their loved ones got locked up. I’ve met people who were somewhat indifferent to criminal justice system…

Does God Want Jeremy Lin to Win?

By Jay Michaelson

…ether in terms of kindness, or humility, or following their dreams, or any number of other positive values—just as it’s at its worst when it takes agency away. The particular myths that Tebow or Lin happen to believe in are secondary (and of course, I mean ‘myths’ in the sophisticated sense of stories that give meaning to human life, not false tales). What’s primary is that they believe, despite ample reasons not to do so, in the possibility of hu…

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

By Michael Schulson

…sheer size of its central temple, and many of its satellites. There’s the Santa Cena hajj, each August, during which hundreds of thousands of pilgrims overflow the temple and fill the streets of Hermosa Provincia, dressed in white. There’s the outsize father figure of Samuel—just available enough to be venerated, just absent enough to be mysterious, and favoring flashy suits. The Church backs up this spectacle with genuine material support, and g…

Global LGBT Recap: Catholic Polling, Religious Violence, International Advocacy

By Peter Montgomery

…logger Blabbeando reminds us that during Brewster’s nomination process, “a number of religious leaders the Dominican Republic criticized the nomination of an openly gay man for the diplomatic post. Leading the charge was Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez who called the then-nominee a ‘faggot’ on national television.” Last month the Cardinal urged church goers to show respect for the new ambassador, but some people aren’t willing to let g…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…ada, and the United Kingdom. In Jalisco earlier this month, Gov. Aristotle Sandoval participated in Guadalajara’s Pride celebration and wrote about it on his Facebook page: Today, along with thousands of families, I participated in the march of LGBT + pride. I shared with them to recognize diversity, and by example, to call on society to collapse together all the taboos and to overcome discourses of hatred and discrimination. I am certain that in…

Conservative Christianity and Its Discontents

By Karl Giberson and Randall J. Stephens

…gn still generates about as much excitement as the winter sport of curling—Santorum is holding onto the spotlight long enough to put religious populism front and center. Santorum’s red-hot religious enthusiasm is a big part of his success. Sure, there have been enough gaffes on the hustings to make Dan Quayle blush. But… one person’s gaffe is another’s bold truth. And few have been as bold as the former Pennsylvania senator. When not attacking pre…

American Sin: Why Pope Francis’ Mercy is Not Our Mercy

By Kaya Oakes

…cy is not something we discuss very often. Our rates of incarceration, the number of states utilizing the death penalty, our obsessive clinging to the Second Amendment along with its deadly consequences, ICE raids on immigrant families fleeing even worse violence in their home countries, drone strikes, the environmental violence of fracking, deforestation and coal mining, and the daily threats faced by women, LGBTQ people and people of color are a…

Hold Your Applause: Potential Changes to Roles of Catholic Women and LGBTQ+ People May Just Be Vatican Breadcrumbing

By Mary E. Hunt

…erstandably praised the move. There’s also a provision to change the usual number of 10 men from religious congregations who can vote in synods to five women religious and five men religious. Why they’re somehow in a different category than other lay people remains unclear, but this counts as progress. Nathalie Becquart, a French woman and a member of the Congregation of Xavières, was named an undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops making her the…

The Catholic-Evangelical (Non-)Coalition

By Patricia Miller

…of trends, 40% of Catholics supported same-sex marriage in 2001 with that number increasing to nearly 60% by 2014. By contrast, only 13% of Evangelicals favored same-sex marriage in 2001 and just 23% approve of it today. Writing in The Atlantic, PRRI’s Robert Jones gets at the truth behind these numbers: “there is more support for official Roman Catholic Church positions among white evangelical Protestants than among Catholics.” But, as he notes,…