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Catholic Bishops to Use Mass to Lobby Against Health Care?

By Frances Kissling

…ring to debate health care reform legislation. The Catholic bishops of the United States strongly support genuine health care reform that protects the life and dignity of all, from the moment of conception until natural death. However, all current bills are seriously deficient on abortion and conscience rights, and do not yet provide adequate access to health care for immigrants and the poor. In your pews/bulletins today, you’ll find a special fli…

Methodist Clergy Pledge to Defy Church in Blessing LGBT Unions

By Pamela R. Lightsey

…r commitment. Now, I wonder, with our denomination losing members in large numbers daily, how we will fare as we begin to see the groundswell of clergy facing trial and having their orders defrocked for their commitment to justice? Of course, I know the Church that is the body of Jesus Christ will not fail. I am not so sure that our denomination, The United Methodist Church, has not entered a juncture where it can continue much longer as it now is…

Conservatives Stoke Fear of Fifth Column

By Sarah Posner

…organizations were identified as unindicted co-conspirators in a case the United States brought against the Holy Land Foundation, which earlier this year was found guilty of illegally financing Hamas. In 2008, the government introduced a document as an exhibit to a brief — contrary to Department of Justice policy — publicly identifying these alleged “unindicted co-conspirators.” The policy is not to publicly identify unindicted co-conspirators be…

The Most Ridiculous Responses to the Vatican’s Call-out of the Catho–Christian Right

By Patricia Miller

…cause, well, there are lots of churches in the U.S.: In point of fact, the United States is one of the most religiously diverse and pluralistic countries in the world, far more than any European nation, a fact of which the authors seem woefully ignorant. Christians make up over 70 percent of the population, and while the largest single group is the Roman Catholic Church, there are literally hundreds of other Christian denominations as well as the…

American Supports Ugandan Anti-Gay Bill

By Michael Wilkerson

…people with homosexual lifestyles,” he preached. Still, as he does in the United States, he insisted that homosexuality harms society: “We are trying to restrain an agenda that is going to hurt the nation and hurt families.” In addition to homosexuality, Engle preached against abortion and child sacrifice and repeatedly praised Uganda for its piety. “I think that Uganda is beyond the U.S. in their stand for righteousness,” Engle commented to repo…

As Transition Looms, Jewish Studies is Mired in Controversy

By Shaul Magid

…rent moment as an inflection point in the history of Jewish Studies in the United States. Kletenik and Neis’ intervention raises important points that have been at the contested center of Jewish Studies in recent decades. What is the aim of Jewish Studies as an academic disciple? Where do its allegiances lie? These are questions that shaped the institutionalization of the field in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. To offer some context, be…

What Netanyahu Learned from Texas

By Sarah Posner

…Texas classrooms into training grounds for “biblical law” enthusiasts. The United States has a Constitution; nothing in it declares America is a Christian nation (or, in the Texas SBOE parlance a “Judeo-Christian nation”). Barton’s claims that the Constitution in fact codifies a “Christian nation” doesn’t make it so. In contrast, though, Israel does not yet have a constitution, and the bill declaring it the “nation-state of the Jewish people”—if p…

Who is Mat Staver, Counsel for Anti-Gay Activist Against Suit from Uganda?

By Sarah Posner

…try will no longer be the United States of America but instead will be the United States according to Massachusetts, California, or Vermont.” The posting included a letter written by Lindevaldsen, asking for prayers and help for “Lisa Miller—my client, my friend, my sister in Christ.” The letter, dated September 22, 2008, claimed that Miller “is one of thousands across this nation who have left the homosexual lifestyle through the redeeming power…

A New Book By Esteemed Sociologist Robert Wuthnow Struggles to Show ‘Why Religion is Good for American Democracy’

By Peter Laarman

…government. Studies of late twentieth-century legislative decisions in the United States did show—unsurprisingly—that they favored the interests of the wealthy. The studies did not demonstrate, however, that these decisions threatened democracy, just that they went against public opinion on certain issues such as estate taxes and support for a minimum wage. Again: Hunh?? And not a word here about Citizens United or about the rivers of dark money t…

America’s National Conversation about Christianity is ‘Fundamentally Unserious’ — But Not in the Way You Think

By Chrissy Stroop

…true. If we want to have a serious conversation about Christianity in the United States, we must consider the ways in which Christian hegemony harms others, including through its normalization of Christian extremism. Instead of systematically silencing the voices of leavers, nonbelievers, and religious minorities in discussing Christianity and “religious freedom,” any serious discourse on these matters must include us as stakeholders in hashing o…