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In Historic Vote, Presbyterians to Allow LGBT Clergy

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…al way because of their sexual orientation or marital status. This is an amazing moment in the life of the PC(USA),” Michael Adee, the director of More Light Presbyterians, told RD. More Light has been working since 1974 for full equality for LGBT people in the denomination. The Associated Press reports it was “the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area, based in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., [that] cast the deciding 87th vote Tuesday night. Sixty-…

#SorryNotSorry: What U.S. Christian Denominations Teach About Homosexuality

By Stephanie Russell-Kraft

…e homosexuality should be accepted by society. American Baptist Churches USA (Mainline Protestant) Members (as of 2009): 1,310,505 In 1992, the American Baptist Churches USA General Board affirmed a one-sentence resolution on homosexuality: “American Baptist Resolution on Homosexuality”: “We affirm that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” In 2005, the board added the same language to its official identity stat…

I Would Also Like a Splinter Scouting Organization, Please

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…s health issues which some people deal with. 3) Learned about some other GSUSA connections they took moral exception to, like individual GSUSA Councils’ partnerships with local Planned Parenthood affiliates; some GSUSA materials which contained a generally-positive reference to a play (“Simply Maria,” by Josefina Lopez) that voices criticisms of patriarchal religious tradition; and some other sexual health materials that were more graphic than the…

Why 9/11 Changed Everything Nothing

By Paul Harvey

…h that allowed the heroes of Gettysburg, North and South, to cry together, USA! USA! Americans cried that together during the great national reconciliation of the Spanish-American War, when, as the press widely reported, “blues” and “grays” came together to rid the hemisphere of the last vestiges of the decayed evil empire of the Spanish. National exultation over the rapid victory (akin to the same national feeling after the invasion of Afghanista…

‘Manufactured’ Smear Campaign Attempts to Intimidate Church ‘Fasting From Whiteness’— It Didn’t Work

By Frederick Clarkson

…g smear The smear began with a report and a related video by Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a Trumpist group founded by Chicago native, Charlie Kirk, who is currently on a national “Saving America Tour” of churches. (Baptist ministers Brian Kaylor and Disciples of Christ minister Beau Underwood, who attended an event, found that “Kirk’s jeremiads are filled with half-truths, indefensible denials, and downright lies.”) Nevertheless, Turning Point’s pos…

Theology Fail in Christian Statement on Israel, Judaism, Palestine

By Adam Gregerman

…l the pastors and theologians of the German Confessing Church who opposed Nazism…” Christian resistance to Nazism (itself a much-debated historical topic) is an unsuitable parallel to mobilize Christian opposition to Israel. As a whole, this statement illustrates a troubling trend in recent Christian statements about Israel where political critiques of the state bleed into religious critiques of Jews and Judaism. In order to rebut arguments that m…

Are School Districts Getting the Message on Government-Sponsored Prayer?

By Lauri Lebo

…e message that violating the Constitution comes with a hefty price tag. In northern Indiana, a school district voted to end an elementary school Bible class after their lawyer told them they were bound to lose a lawsuit over its constitutionality. In Tennessee, after the Freedom From Religion Foundation filed suit on behalf of students, a school district agreed to stop broadcasting prayer over loudspeakers before home football games because the su…

Refusing the Monsters on Maple Street: A First-Person Commentary from the Mass Hysteria at JFK

By Marion Grau

…planation offered for the panic was that the cheering of Olympics fans for Usain Bolt’s performance in the 100 meters sounded like gunfire. In an episode titled “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” from the The Twilight Zone‘s first season, aliens discover that they can conquer Earth most easily by using flickering lights to infuse paranoia and fear in its human inhabitants. They found that communities thus charged would turn on each other and…

Invited by Allah

By Amina Wadud

…r about waiting for the visa and how NOT being optimistic was driving me crazy. She said, “Trust in God and don’t worry.” She said, “You can’t have both: either it’s the trust or it’s the worry.” So I let go, for just a minute. Yesterday was magnanimous! It had been two weeks since the tour company received my passport by express mail when they told me I had to choose, apply for the visa or go to Berlin. They said then, the embassy says it will ta…

An Open Letter to CEO Jeff Smisek On United Airlines’ Blasphemous Safety Video

By Austin Dacey

…entirely to make way for the announcer’s voiceover—“Please make sure your phone and all electronics are switched off and stowed”—as a single chord hovered to a simple four-beat pulse in the fashion of light pop radio. Gone were the jaunty, urbane syncopations that will forever mark the arrival of the jazz idiom—and with it the bluesy sinews of the American soul—to the hallowed halls of Western art music, smothered under a featureless musical goo…