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‘Imagine Better’: Can Harry Potter Change the World?

By B. Howell Belser

…vert hegemonic power as well as to bolster it. Harry Potter is the world’s most popular series of children’s books—and one of the most contentious, coming in at number one on The American Library Association’s list of “Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009.” The film series, the seventh of which was released last weekend, is the highest-grossing series of all time, surpassing both Star Wars and the James Bond films—all 22 of them. Harry Potte…

Pope Denounces Gender Colonization; Indonesian Court Considers Islamist Request To Criminalize Homosexuality; Egypt’s Grand Mufti Says No One Has Right to Harm Homosexuals; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…their lifestyle.” …Homosexuality is not illegal in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, but LGBT people can face stigma and discrimination. Criminalizing sexual activity between consenting adults would be a major backward step for human rights in the country. Experts presented by the anti-LGBT group at a hearing on Tuesday testified that homosexuality was inherently immoral and went against Indonesia’s state ideology. Later this mo…

Is Army’s New “Humanist” Designation Just Semantic Hooey?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…hristian service members make up 70% of the population. Currently no Humanist or Atheist chaplains approved for military service, though MAAF reports that there are a number of Atheist and Humanist chaplain assistants. The DOD’s ruling this week may, thus, have a meaningful impact on the free expression of religious identity for the reported 3.6% of service members who are Humanists and allow more diverse access to resources for spiritual care a…

Naked Jihad

By Kate Blanchard

…ot the source of anyone’s honor,” written on her bare torso in Arabic, she most certainly meant to cause a stir. It is unlikely, however, that at 19 she intended to invite death threats, such that she would soon be feeling the need to leave her home country. Not surprisingly, a number of Western women felt moved to show their support for Amina. An international movement called Femen staged bare-breasted protests in European cities, in which the wr…

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

By Kaya Oakes

…h as a field hospital where “treatment is given above all to those who are most wounded,” and many of his reoccurring anecdotes about mercy have to do with prisons and prisoners. “I have a special relationship with people in prisons,” Francis says, “precisely because of my awareness of being a sinner.” The pope sees imprisonment as a matter of convenience for many nations who prefer to condemn people rather than offer them opportunities: “Sometime…

The Progress of Christ in Commercial America: A Review of Chris Lehmann’s The Money Cult

By Peter Laarman

…that it’s always deep reading and a capacity to write clearly that matters most. His achievement reminds me of other significant historical works by “uncredentialed” scholars : T.J. Stiles on Cornelius Vanderbilt and George Armstrong Custer, James Bradley on racialized imperialism, and (most creditably) Douglas A. Blackmon on the significance of black convict labor. The issues that Lehmann takes on here could not be more urgent for people construc…

‘Cult’ Is an Inaccurate, Unhelpful and Dangerous Label for Followers of Trump, QAnon, and 1/6

By Catherine Wessinger

…s now the United States. In the 1990s, participants in this white supremacist movement that had no name, which I have termed the Euro-American Nativist Millennial Movement, were waiting and preparing to carry out a “Second American Revolution.” When Timothy McVeigh carried out the Oklahoma City Bombing on April 19, 1995, he was hoping to spark the Second American Revolution. Instead, people were shocked at the loss of 168 innocent lives in the bom…

Religion and Other Animals

By Paul Waldau

…s. This refusal is evident in food practices, where many encounter animals most frequently. At the same time, more households in the United States today have companion animals than have children. Polls consistently indicate that an astonishing number of people—in some cases more than ninety-nine percent—hold their dog or cat to be a “family member.” Communities of faith are among the institutions that are most responsive to the complex connections…

No Conspiracy Theories Needed: Abortion Foes Cry Racism

By Kathryn Joyce

…test last April that denounced the “black genocide” of abortion. Among the most prominent names in the movement are Day Gardner, of the National Black Pro-Life Union; Rev. Clenard Childress and Johnny Hunter of the group Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN, at the Web site Black Genocide.org); and Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King. King, the media darling of the bunch, addressed the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 38th An…

Evangelical Pastor Argues for Full LGBT Inclusion: “I Think It’s Inevitable”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…on in the church at all—this idea of “disputable matters”—probably because most denominations were originally defined by a so-called disputable matter, so there is an institutional disincentive to recognize the category. I was looking for a way forward that recognized that there are good people on both sides of this question. Romans 14 was just staring me in the face, but if you look at the issues there—which most people don’t—you find these are f…