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The Internet Is Not Killing Religion, Religion is Killing Religion

By Elizabeth Drescher

…data on the correlation between the number of pipers in a village and the number of butts in local church pews. Across the pond in the American colonies, religion was not faring much better. In his masterful reconstruction of American religious history, Awash in a Sea of Faith (from which the previous anecdote is drawn), Jon Butler reports that Christianity was “in crisis” in the New World: Pennsylvania aside, the Restoration colonies of New York…

Scottish Episcopal Church Angers Conservative Anglicans With Embrace of Same-Sex Marriage; and more in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…tation is wrong. Bulgaria: Pride activists, protected by police, vastly outnumber far-right protesters The leader of the neo-Nazi National Resistance planned a counter-protest to Saturday’s Pride march; last week he urged people to bring “brooms and shovels with wooden handles” to “cleanse Sofia from garbage.” Human Rights Watch has some history: Sofia Pride marchers have faced hateful rhetoric and violence in the past, and only tepid police prote…

How Fitbit Helps a Conservative Evangelical College Monitor Students’ Bodies For Christ

By Jonathan Root

…t the “Aerobics Center,” students filled out a computer card with their ID number, activity number, and the time, intensity, and distance of their workout. The data derived from the cards helped to determine grades. One student who had been forced to enroll in the Pounds Off Program said, “I’m really sad for the school. It has so much potential, so many positive things about it, but you can’t treat people this way… They treat you like you’re not c…

Naked Jihad

By Kate Blanchard

…ld soon be feeling the need to leave her home country. Not surprisingly, a number of Western women felt moved to show their support for Amina. An international movement called Femen staged bare-breasted protests in European cities, in which the writings on their chests echoed Amina’s, along with “Freedom for women” and “Fuck your morals.” (Be warned: photos contain nudity and strong language.) But Femen did not have the last word. Almost immediat…

Evangelical Pastor Argues for Full LGBT Inclusion: “I Think It’s Inevitable”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…sion of evangelicalism which will be inclusive of LGBT people. There are a number of evangelicals that are very open to this and are having the same experience I had of actually knowing gay and lesbian people, so I think it’s inevitable. I think there will be a sector of evangelicalism that will go past mainline protestant denominations, which have more institutional restraints. The more autonomous congregations will outpace them in acceptance. Th…

A Peek Inside the ‘Onion’ of Scientology

By Kristin Rawls

…was the only person in the room. I don’t really know what their membership numbers are right now. However, there is an independent movement of Scientologists that is splintering from the Church. They’re similar to the Protestant reformers who broke with the Catholic Church. Specifically, they are not charging people tremendous sums, which is what the organized Church does, and they’re not being nearly as punitive. I think money and dogmatism have…

PCUSA’s Nod to “Traditional” Marriage Understandable, but Not Accurate

By William E. Smith

…USA might adopt this rhetoric to affirm the position of its fairly sizable number of dissenting presbyteries, but is it really accurate? The word “tradition” tends to connote a sense of fixity and stability, an impression that “this is the way marriage always was,” leaving “gay marriage” to represent a sharp and dramatic historical rupture. Yet this way of thinking is only possible because of a certain historical amnesia. In fact, it would be far…

Good News: Religious Outreach Works On Vaccine Hesitancy. Bad News: We Need It.

By Daniel Schultz

…most liberal segments of society, when it comes to Covid vaccines, they’re right in the middle of the pack. Jews are by far the most likely to be vaccine accepters at 85%, and Hispanic Protestants the least, at 43%. Likewise, while Republicans whose primary sources of news are conservative outlets are more likely to be hesitant or resistant, Fox News viewers aren’t actually the worst on this score. Fans of channels such as Newsmax or OANN fare wor…

As Tensions Escalate in the Balkans, the West Could Hand Putin a Valuable Weapon

By Katherine Kelaidis

…ainst Serbia over Kosovo.” And two weeks ago, International Family News, a right-wing website run by National Organization for Marriage president Brian Brown, ran a piece entitled “Spread the word, resist the ideological colonization” praising Serbia’s violent rejection of EuroPride and framing the Serbian people as heroically standing against the West and its dangerous, sinful worldview. A new Russia, if you will, but made sympathetic to Western…

Catholic Sex Teaching is No Laughing Matter

By Marian Ronan

…upsurge. At the same time that anti-gay violence is growing in Africa, the number of African Christians, including Roman Catholics, continues to increase. Catholics now comprise twenty percent of the population of the entire continent, or 185 million people. It would, of course, be unfair to blame increasing anti-gay violence in Africa entirely, or even primarily, on the Roman Catholic Church, given the pivotal roles played in this crisis by some…