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Mormons Prepare to March in Seven LGBT Parades this Weekend

By Joanna Brooks

…s of gay LDS children. Their telling of personal stories has an impact on close-knit LDS communities and kinship networks: when Mormons recognize how many families in their wards and stakes are grappling with LGBT issues, it makes it much more difficult for these issues to be framed in oppositional “us” versus “them,” “Mormons” versus “the world” terms, as it was during the political battles of 2008. Witness this letter sent to me by an LDS Church…

The Catholic-Evangelical (Non-)Coalition

By Patricia Miller

…less politically aligned than is otherwise thought,” with Catholics more closely “aligned with liberal values than Evangelicals.” But these numbers shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has bothered to looked at Catholic opinion polling for the past 30 years. The fact is, on most hot-button, sex-related issues, Catholic opinion has long been about the same as public opinion, and mainstream Protestant opinion, as a whole and significantly mor…

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

By B. Howell Belser

…to date was HPA for the Win in June 2010, during which HPA mobilized huge numbers of online voters from across fandoms and online communities to win a $250,000 grant from the Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook. Then there’s the current “Deathly Hallows” campaign, which centers on the release date of a Harry Potter movie—in this case, The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 on Nov. 19. The Deathly Hallows campaign will run for nine months—the time bet…

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

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ounseling and gathering spaces for Humanist groups. It also means that the numbers and distribution of Humanists in the military can be tracked along with those of other religious groups, potentially inviting a reshaping of the military chaplaincy, which critics complain is inappropriately weighted in favor of Christian, and specifically Evangelical Christian, denominations. A study by the Military Association of Atheist and Freethinkers (MAAF)—t…

Naked Jihad

By Kate Blanchard

…ld 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 writings on their chests echoed Amina’s, along with “Freedom for women” and “Fuck your morals.” (Be warned: photos contain nudity and strong language.) But Femen did not have the last word. Almost immediat…

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

By Kaya Oakes

…t American Catholics are generally full of good intentions, but often at a loss for ways to “regularize this into a commitment and priority.” The American Catholic church, too, is far less homogeneous than the Argentinian church from which Francis’ ideas about mercy evolved. Argentina may be one of South America’s more politically progressive countries, but it remains an overwhelmingly Catholic country with a dominant Spanish influence. With a diz…

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

By Peter Laarman

…delights in surfacing little-known factoids. These include the remarkable number of commercial hucksters who were preachers or else preachers’ kids (e.g., Richard Bolles of What Color is Your Parachute? fame—a former Episcopal priest) and the equally remarkable number of notable preachers who had strong commercial instincts and/or commercial roots (ranging from 18th-century superstar evangelist George Whitefield to 19th-century revivalist giant C…

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

By Catherine Wessinger

…The individual who was posting “Q drops” online hasn’t posted since Trump lost the election to Joe Biden, nevertheless the QAnon conspiracy outlook remains influential. Subsequent to Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election, members of the millennial movement(s) that view him as their savior have reacted in ways that believers in other failed prophecies have reacted. Some have given up their faith in Trump. Trump has rationalized the readil…

Religion and Other Animals

By Paul Waldau

…nsibility. Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) claimed that elephants, the animal “closest to man.” not only recognized the language of their homeland, obeyed orders, and remembered what they learned, but also had been seen “worshiping the sun and stars, and purifying [themselves] at the new moon, bathing in the river, and invoking the heavens.” Today, scholars such as Harvard’s Kimberley C. Patton provide theologically informed readings of many traditiona…

No Conspiracy Theories Needed: Abortion Foes Cry Racism

By Kathryn Joyce

…n part by denouncing her as a bigot and a racist who wanted “to reduce the number of children [born] to the nation’s poorest economic groups, which tend to be persons of color and other minorities.” The Pro-Life Action League made a similar criticism this week against the Guttmacher Institute, claiming that the Institute’s call for publicly-funded birth control “takes aim at the poor by recommending more government spending on programs to reduce t…