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Where Is American Christian Outrage on Russia’s Treatment of Jehovah’s Witnesses?

…in’s father Billy Graham, Carl F. H. Henry—founding editor of Christianity Today—and others harshly criticized religious repression in the Soviet Union. Yet Christianity Today has largely been silent on the subject of abuses in Russia and recently named Uzbekistan a poster child for religious freedom. An article describing the 2017 ban on the Witnesses provided theological reasons for evangelicals to “oppose” them, noting the group’s denial of the…

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MN Lawmaker: “How Many Gay People Does God Have to Make?”

…will judge us all very, very harshly. I think the people who vote for this today, and in the future… will on this issue, not be so proud and there may be some justifiable shame there as well.” The attempt to shame marriage equality opponents in the present is a sore point for people like Maggie Gallagher at the National Organization for Marriage who complained they are being painted as a “bigot who is opposed to interracial marriage.” The fact tha…

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The American Media’s Longterm Ambivalence About the Papacy

…eeklies’ born-again fondness for religious authority has not endured until today. Since the explosion of the clergy sex abuse scandals in the media, a curious trend has emerged on the covers of news magazine. In four Time covers—April 1, 2002, November 27, 2006, June 7, 2010, February 25, 2013—the familiar figure of the pope appears, but altered. Unlike the scores of previous covers featuring the Bishop of Rome, the pope now stands either with his…

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Making Fun of Mormonism

…long considered quintessential “outsiders” to mainstream American culture, today find themselves at the center of the American zeitgeist. Yet it is the Mormons’ supposed theological weirdness that is the centripetal attraction. As Joanna Brooks has noted in these pages, the New York Times recently featured Harold Bloom’s musings on how a President Romney would govern a country, and a planet, from which he would in the afterlife depart, becoming th…

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New Patriarch, Same Patriarchy: Despite Glowing Praise For New SBC President, There’s Just One Problem

…of progress. “I’m deeply encouraged by the movement made in the Convention today,” lawyer, abuse survivor and SBC advisor Rachael Denhollander told the Houston Chronicle. “Ed Litton’s character and positions give me hope that significant positive change is possible for the denomination.” Indeed, Litton agreed to an independent audit of the SBC’s handling of sexual abuse issues, a move Southern Baptist author and speaker Daniel Darling lauded in hi…

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Departure of the Queen

…wax a little melancholy as the ending of this auspicious month approaches. Today, I returned to my solitary suhur, then walked beneath the canopy of trees toward the mosque for morning prayer and muraqabah, or meditation. The stars were still shining like brilliant diamonds in the deep dark sky. I did search for a glimpse of the moon, so I could check our progress toward the final day, but alas, he was not visible between the tall trees. Or perhap…

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Why It’s Heresy to Read the Bible Literally: An Interview with John Shelby Spong

…generation of my own children. “The primary issue in the Christian church today is to get away from original sin and to see the story of Jesus not as saving the sinful but as expanding their humanity.” Most of my controversy came from my fight for the rights of gays and lesbians. Once I was convinced of the holiness of gays and lesbians, I ordained the first openly gay man with a partner in 1989. That’s a long time ago in this battle. It was cove…

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Do We Owe Human Rights to the Christian Right?

…rsalism. This popular history underscores continuities between the work of today’s human rights defenders and previous citizens’ struggles for the rights of women, workers, immigrants, and formerly enslaved and colonized peoples, placing Malala Yousafzai shoulder to shoulder with Frederick Douglass and Mary Wollstonecraft. In Moyn’s narrative, human rights are no older than Generation X. The eighteenth century discourse of droits de l’homme or “ri…

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Response to Daniel Philpott: the Politics of Religious Freedom

…tional relations. The book is a study of recent state-sponsored efforts to promote religious freedom, religious engagement, and the rights of religious minorities. It brings together the study of contemporary religion and global politics in a new way, charting the lives of these projects in specific contexts and developing a critique of their consequences. Uncovering and exploring the gap between the religion that is promoted through these efforts…

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Will ‘Pandemic Time’ Save Us From the Inhuman and Destructive Demands of ‘Fossil-Fuel Time’?

…anet is one of the sources of social and ecological ills around the planet today. This “fossil-fueled time,” has literally been constructed over the past century as the mining and use of fossil fuels have sped up the processes of transportation, communication, and production since the time of the Green Revolution after WWII, a period some sociologists refer to as “The great acceleration,” which has now led to the geological time known as the Anthr…

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