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Of God, But Not God: A Methodist Minister Speaks About Church’s Refusal to Open Its Doors to LGBT

By Joel Pitney

…le, when my dad and mom were moved to the Methodist Church in Wahiawa [Hawaii] in the late 1940s, the church-owned parsonage was in a section of town that Japanese-American people were not allowed to enter. It was right after World War II, and my parents refused to live in that house. They would only live in a house that was accessible to everyone in their church community. Wow. I didn’t know that. That’s the story I grew up with, a story from my…

Where Polls and Surveys Fall Short: A Conversation with Robert Wuthnow on “Inventing American Religion”

By Andrew Aghapour

…ion and renew the democratic process by relentlessly quantifying popular opinion. According to the polls, for example, evangelicals love Donald Trump. Recent polls also indicate, somehow, that they don’t like him at all. 29 percent of Americans believe President Obama to be an adherent of Islam, a religion that nearly one in three Iowa Republicans thinks should be illegal. (Perhaps because those Iowans took notice of this poll, the results of whic…

The March for Life: Grassroots Movement or Agitprop?

By Patricia Miller

…k down on abortion; an article questioning whether the march can heal the divide in the anti-abortion movement over Trump; a piece from John Gehring about how the march will show that pro-life doesn’t stop at birth; and an article about thousands assembling for the march. For comparison, this photo is from the 2017 Women’s March in DC. Neither the beginning nor the end of the crowd is visible and there’s no space on the sides. From the New York Ti…

From Shofars to Hammers: The Spiritual Warriors of MAGA are ‘ReAwakening’ to Political Violence

By Mark Clatterbuck

…16 US cities, drawing sold-out crowds at every stop, with regularly priced tickets ranging between $250 and $500. It is arguably the dominant brand of today’s Republican Party. For good reason, a growing number of expert observers have begun sounding the alarm. I suggest it’s time we hit the panic button. The rally featured plenty of repugnant elements—from the relentless attacks on transgender youth consistent with fascist scapegoating, to the st…

The Trouble With Francis: Three Things That Worry Me

By Mary E. Hunt

…the ordination of women, the Church has spoken and said no. Pope John Paul II, in a definitive formulation, said that door is closed.” Just what is it that the media see as so promising here? Or, is it the case that what happens to Catholic women does not really matter much? Given that more than half the world’s poor people are women and children, this gives me pause about praising too soon. If one cannot act justly toward those nearby and similar…

Argue-by-Number: A Suggestion for the Church

By Mark D. Jordan

…e just can’t tell a joke. Some days I wonder whether we shouldn’t adopt a similar system for church arguments about homosexuality. Not the raucous laughter (though there are plenty of causes for it), but the numbering. Instead of reciting the familiar arguments once again, we could simply call out the numbers to cue support from those on our side. Number 1 could be “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Number 2: “God doesn’t discriminate.”…

The Sacred and the Dead: Operator, Can You Help Me?

By Maren Haynes

…e with the sonic clarity of being in the same room. A special series on religion and culture produced in collaboration with the Office of Religious Life at the University of Southern California Though initially only accessible to the very wealthy, the telephone soon proliferated, and with it, a promise of relational immediacy—no longer did a person need to wait days or weeks to communicate by exchange of letter or telegram. The telephone promised…

In the Aftermath of the “Himalayan Tsunami”

By Luke Whitmore

…of the north Indian state of Uttarakhand. Their destinations include the divine sources of the Yamuna and Ganga rivers, the abode of the god Shiva in Kedarnath, the famous residence of the god Vishnu in Badrinath, and the Sikh site of Hemkund Sahib, associated with Tenth Guru of the Sikh tradition, Guru Gobind Singh. This year in mid-June the monsoon rains came early and poured down upon the Land of the Gods with the sort of unexpected intensity…

“Giving Godhead”: A Bloody Vision of Religion’s Deepest Influence

By Spencer Dew

…homas Simmons of the University of Iowa, it declared that Dylan Krieger’s Giving Godhead “will be the best collection of poetry to appear in English in 2017.” Simmons then went on to describe Krieger’s blend of “the religious with the obscene” as “a new form of the grotesque that marries autobiography to personal and national trauma,” calling the book “easily among the most inventive and successfully performative works to appear in living memory.”…

Trayvon Martin and American Exceptionalism

By Anthea Butler

…merman even calls Trayvon a “F’in coon” in the 911 recording. As of this writing, Zimmerman is not charged with any crime, courtesy of his friends on the Sanford, Florida, Police department reading of the “stand your ground law” which allows one to shoot if they feel threatened. Last time I looked, a pack of Skittles isn’t threatening, nor can it pack a gun. Zimmerman and Trayvon are players in America’s ongoing narrative of racial strife and anim…