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LDS General Conference in the “Mormon Moment”

By Joanna Brooks

…ave asserted the Christianity of Mormon belief for national audiences, the number one reaction has come from Christians who seek to correct my understanding of my faith and remind me that Mormons are not, in their eyes, Christians. Some assert that they’ll be praying for my mistaken soul (and the soul of my Jewish husband too). Others seek to engage in a friendlier conversational exchange about whether Mormons profess the Nicene Creed. (We do not…

A Debate Rages in India Over Conversion, Secularism, and “Spiritual Violence”

By Murali Balaji

…it is having on the Indian social fabric. It’s a conversation Uganda and a number of African nations have not had—which is having devastating consequences for the their LGBT communities. As scholar and social activist Jim Perkinson has reminded us, countries such as India are only a microcosm of the worldwide impact of missionary activity. “The effect on native people of predatory proselytization is typically cultural alienation, a growing sense o…

Supreme Court Rules Religion is Special… This Time

By Katherine Stewart

…he one thing that they got right in this case. The U.S. has on the books a number of valuable laws against discrimination in the workplace, and all organizations (businesses, nonprofits, schools, governments) are expected to abide by these laws. Except religions, or so it now seems. According to the Tabor ruling, religious groups get a pass on the law when it comes to employees who are considered “ministerial.” The right to the free exercise of re…

The New Age Fantasy of a Celtic Church that Revered Nature and the Divine Feminine Never Existed — So What?

By Ed Simon

…significance of what, after all, is a saint’s day. Fr. Ryan Jones, an Episcopal priest at the Eucharist Church in San Francisco, wrote last year that while he’d long dismissed the holiday as “an excuse for people to get sloshed on green beer or talk about leprechauns and four leafed clovers,” he’s come to see St. Patrick’s Day as a “powerful means of enfleshing the gospel.” For Jones, his appreciation for the saint was inculcated in the community…

“Pregnancy is Not a Disease”: Birth of an Anti-Contraception Rallying Cry

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ement that insurance plans will be required to offer contraception without copay, unless they meet the conditions allowing for a religious exemption. The HHS guidelines follow recent recommendations issued by the Institute of Medicine. Included are contraceptive methods like IUDs and tubal ligations which have a high upfront cost but, when offered for free, may be especially effective in reducing abortions. Despite their promise for preventing uni…

Picasso’s Sacred Monster Eats Chicago: A Mystery Solved?

By Jeremy Biles

…tive interpretation. Multiply ambiguous, it is a strange concoction of any number of animal and human forms, as well as a sphinx; itself a hybrid monster. Moreover, the Chicago Picasso intimates both the Egyptian and Greek sphinxes—an amalgam of cultural styles. An ambiguous, almost inscrutable object, it is an enigmatic icon and the icon of an enigma; its very presence confronts the populace with a riddle. The riddle is not simply what the Chicag…

False Saviors: Trump, Cruz, and the Gospel of the Quick Fix

By Marcia Pally

…nted for 60% of employment in 1979 accounted for only 46% by 2012; and the number of persons not in the labor force is growing. While some are getting richer, the numbers tell us, middle income earners are hobbled by shrinking purchasing power, disappearing job opportunities, and increasingly out-of-reach education. This is problem enough for the many who work hard and can’t figure out why they’re “losing ground,” as Pew wrote. Add to that fears o…

And What of the Non-Jewish Jews?

By Shaul Magid

…ancestry generations ago, a Jewish spouse, Jewish friends etc. In terms of numbers, Jews by religion or no religion make up 2.2% of the U.S. population, but if you add “People with a Jewish affinity” it rises to 2.7%, so that this category of people who are not considered Jews by the Jewish community but identify as Jews is nearly 25% of the Jews by religion or no religion, those we conventionally call “Jews.” The fact that there are so many Ameri…

To Get Through This Time We’ll Have to Shred the ‘Racial Contract’ and Choose Solidarity Over Sacrifice

By Christophe D Ringer

…false one. With well over 100,000 deaths as of publication, more than the number of service members killed in World War I, America is living through an apocalyptic moment. But it’s also an apocalypse in the literal sense of an unveiling or disclosure—an unmasking. The coronavirus has unmasked how our lives are marked by a profound mutual dependence that challenges our self-understanding and political ideologies. It has unmasked a federal governme…

Size Matters According to New Study

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ns of the brain that remain unactivated in the rest of us. There are any number of weird implications and outright contradictions in these sorts of studies. The first is this: do the authors of these studies believe that religious belief or practice has the power to effect the size of the human brain? If so, that would seem to grant an astonishing power to religion to effect real world, and very nearly miraculous changes. Or perhaps the claim i…