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How Long Does It Take a Man of God to Admit Child Rape is Wrong?

By Joanna Brooks

Today, the Los Angeles Times published a front-page story reporting that Archbishop Roger Mahony of Los Angeles sat on reports of felony-level sexual abuse of children by priests for almost 15 years before he took action, and that the Los Angeles Catholic diocese waited at least 14 years before reporting abuse to law enforcement. The LA Times report was based on letters written by Mahony in 1986 and 1987 recently entered as evidence in a civil su…

Conventional Wisdom: RNC/DNC Giving God a Bad Name?

By Peter Laarman

…nd (as we used to say on the farm), you don’t miss the water till the well runs dry. No amount of posturing, no airbrushing over the reality of an atomized society, can change this. I’m not counseling despair here. I think our stores of positive social capital can be replenished. If nothing else, the climate crisis will soon cause us to re-think our devotion to the unofficial American religion of acquisitive individualism. So will the frustration…

Mitt Romney’s Best-Known Mormon Critic Tells it All. One Last Time.

By Joanna Brooks

…out how the press found you. Judy Dushku: I’ve had calls from all over the world—newspaper outlets, public television, NPR, panels, morning talk shows. People want me to talk about how I knew Mitt when he was the leader of my congregation. And he was. My bishop and stake president. Because he held those roles, it meant that I should be respectful and welcome him when he came to my home and that I should accept callings (church service assignments)…

Toward a Non-Malignant Faith: An Interview with Brian McLaren

By Peter Laarman

…ging an energized and equipped lay priesthood to minister to the suffering world outside the church doors. I’m worried about how little time we have to get all of these changes firmly rooted. You? We should all be worried. A Native American sage once told me that the world cannot survive 500 more years of Christian domination. It may be more like 50 years. Until we feel that our toes are already hanging over the edge of the precipice we have not t…

Can We Ask Mitt About Mormonism’s Racist Past?

By Darron T. Smith

…d the contentious subject of American racism would likely bring unwanted scrutiny to the candidate who could become the first white man to unseat the nation’s first black president. The remarks earlier this year by now-former BYU professor, Randy Bott, that African Americans had been banned from the priesthood because they weren’t yet ready for it, brought unsolicited attention to the LDS faith’s racist past, causing a swift reaction from Church…

Two and a Half Men Child Star Calls Show “Filth”

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…k people” in an insultingly reductive and fatuous way. Black people of the world! Angus Jones LIKES you! He wants a church where there is a FULL SET of you, because he wants the COMPLETE BLACK PEOPLE CHURCH EXPERIENCE! My GOODNESS! Are you not FLATTERED? No no no. No more of that, please. Mr. Jones, you are not a college student, your dorm room is not your church, and “black people” are not the flokati rug from TJ Maxx that will really tie the r…

Virgins and Vampire Worship: The Religion of Twilight

By Linda Kay Klein

…ience. I went to opening night of the last film in the Twilight franchise, Breaking Dawn: Part 2, for, ahem, “research purposes.” Packed into a sold-out theater in one of New York City’s busiest neighborhoods, I raised my head above the mayhem to get a look at the crowd. Much to my surprise, I didn’t see a single “Bite Me: Vampires Only Please” t-shirt. There were no creepy vampire contacts; no corsets; no capes; even the eyeliner was tastefully a…

Secure Borders? Not a Chance, Senator

By Ira Chernus

…rs around our nations. For most of human history —and for many humans even today—religions have offered elaborate structures to guide, encourage, and sacralize the process. When border lines have religious sanction they feel permanent and inviolable, and so does our sense of orientation. But that is only part of what religions do, Tweed claims. He titled his book Crossing and Dwelling because (as he demonstrates at length) religions also guide, en…

Rev. Sun Myung Moon Dead at 92

By Sarah Posner

…on should be scrapped in favor of a system he calls “Godism”—with him in charge. The man crowned “King of Peace” by congressmen once said, according to sermons reprinted in his church’s Unification News: “Suppose I were to hit you with the baseball bat to stop you, bloodying your ear and breaking a bone or two, yet still you insisted on doing more work for Father.”…

The Papal Prayer Machine

By Peter Manseau

…ring mystics were perhaps not so different from the hopes of Twitter users today beaming their prayers toward the Vatican: to gather and amplify pious intentions, and to transform belief into a tangible force. “For better or for worse, Twitter is a wonderful medium for prayer,” Modern says, “allowing individuals to achieve self-worth, a felt sense of community, and leverage upon the world.” And like the one-way conversation all social media can a…