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The War Within: Religion and Our Tangled Relationship with Our Bodies

By Michelle Lelwica

…vement. I also think there are common misconceptions about both health and spirituality that prevent us from seeing the relationship between the two. In the U.S. today, religion and medicine are often seen as separate spheres—mirroring Descartes’ erroneous understanding of the “mind” as independent from the “body.” I like to point out that the etymology of the term “salvation”—which comes from the Latin, salve, which means “good health” and is som…

What Irish Marriage Vote Means for Catholic Church; The Lonely Fight for Equality in Belize; Progress and Backlash in Tunisia; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ecognise that basic equality matters because its absence shrinks the human spirit and diminishes us all. After viewing the unity, solidarity and goodwill generated by the vote in Ireland last weekend I now recognise that gay marriage can be the pivot that shakes loose the shackles of oppression against the LGBT community across the board because it simply recognises us as an ordinary part of society, deserving of the same dignity and freedom as ev…

Restoring Dignity: The Employee Free Choice Act

By Peter Laarman

…ry of brutal union suppression by employers who figured out that it’s much cheaper to take the penalties currently handed out for labor law violations (which are extremely weak and rarely delivered) than to allow workers to unionize without interference in free and fair representation elections. By the Numbers The cold, hard facts are these: Polls consistently report that 60 million Americans would join a union tomorrow if they could, which clearl…

The Incredible Shrinking Catholic Church

By Paul Gorrell

…ogy of Benedict, many Catholics are already being encouraged to take their spiritual business elsewhere. We have seen an increase in the number of American politicians who are asked to remove themselves from communion lines and, recently, priests have even denied parishioners communion if they vote for a political candidate who favors abortion rights. This exclusion from the sacrament is essentially a form of excommunication. Dogma Over Diplomacy…

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…

How to Make Nones and Lose Money: Study Shows Cost of Catholic Sex Abuse Scandals

By Kaya Oakes

…al, leaving the American church with a massive money problem and shrinking numbers of parishioners on the eve of Pope Francis’ arrival. A recent study by Nicholas Bottan and Ricardo Perez-Trugila in the Journal of Public Economics revealed that, unsurprisingly, “a scandal causes a persistent decline in the local Catholic affiliation and church attendance.” “Some Catholics join other religious denominations during the first three years after a scan…

Catholic ‘Soul-Searching’ as Ireland Votes on Marriage; Churches, American Activists Join Kenyan Anti-Gay Group’s ‘Family’ Confab; Indian Mom Seeks Spouse For Gay Son; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…g his recent visit to Jamaica, and includes specific recommendations for a number of U.S. agencies to engage in effective partnership with Jamaican government officials and cooperation with human rights advocates in civil society. Also this week, the State Department confirmed plans for Randy Berry, recently appointed special envoy for LGBT rights, to visit Uganda this summer after trips to the Caribbean, Latin America and Europe. Watch a set of v…

After More Mass Shootings It’s Time to Call Out White Supremacy in the Pews

By Peter Laarman

…what’s going on, but too few seem capable of saying it. We now have a fair number of political and civic leaders who are willing to say the word trauma and talk about the all-pervasive violence in this culture, not to mention the extent of mental disturbance and the fact that American civilians have more assault rifles in their possession than does the U.S. military. All well and good. But we have too few leaders who will talk about the deeper roo…

Distant Churches and the Isolated Poor: Lessons from Katrina, Ten Years Later

By R. Drew Smith

…borhoods, sometimes experiencing significant attrition in their membership numbers and finances, and sometimes choosing to relocate altogether. Even institutionally resourceful congregations that remain in high-poverty neighborhoods have increasingly faced great difficulties in their efforts to connect culturally, interpersonally, and programmatically to their immediate neighborhoods. In a 2003 study of interactions between churches and impoverish…

Growing Up Gay in 666: Fred Phelps in Retrospect

By Scott Blaine Swenson

…ify hate and violence. And while the coincidence of being born under the “Sign of the Beast” in Topeka 666 is still a little unnerving, there are differing opinions about the number’s translation. Some theologians suggest the number should really be 616, in which case, all eyes on Peoria, Illinois….