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For Conservatives, the Future Looks Dim… and Gay

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…of talk that’s turning off younger voters. The College Republican National Committee commissioned its own poll of college-aged Republicans, and what they found doesn’t bode well for the GOP’s future. If young voters primarily thought the Republican Party’s policy plan in 2012 was to prevent gay marriage and to ensure very low taxes for very rich people. . . it’s understandable that a large majority voted the other way. . . . Opposition to gay marr…

It’s The Apocalypse, Stupid: Understanding Christian Opposition to Obamacare, Civil Rights, New Deal and More

By Daniel Silliman

…been a long debate in Christian history about the timing of Jesus’s Second Coming. Would he come to initiate the start of a new millennium, a 1,000 years of peace and prosperity, or would he come at its conclusion? Fundamentalists and most evangelicals believed that Jesus is going to come back before the millennium. From there they determined that there will be signs or indications that tell us we’re approaching the Second Coming. They believe the…

Obama’s Gay Marriage Support Shocks Black Church

By Anthea Butler

…h. Creeping preachers, stunted sexuality, homophobia, and sexual abuse are competing for issue number one in their churches; at many, they are tied at the number one slot. It is high time to for the leaders of the black church to ‘put away childish things’ and to engage in a real conversation about sexuality, same-sex marriage, and the homophobia embedded in the black church community. Pontificating and posturing props up preachers, and does littl…

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….

Religious Leaders On Anti-Muslim Frenzy: “Silence Is Not An Option”

By Sarah Posner

…roups. Richard Cizik, president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, speaking to evangelical Christians engaging in or promoting anti-Muslim bigotry, said, “Shame on you . . . as an evangelical I say you bring dishonor to the name of Jesus Christ.” Many speakers, including Cizik, chided unnamed purveyors of anti-Muslim fervor as antagonists of the First Amendment. Richard Killmer of the National Religious Campaign Against Tortur…

Elaine Howard Ecklund Wants to Dispel Myths Surrounding Religious Resistance to Science

By Sammy Feldblum

…ey about the fallout from the storm and about how religious and scientific communities might be able to communicate more effectively. It seems like a lot of your research is focused on demonstrating that despite the way that they’re generally talked about, science and religion are in fact compatible, or at least that people believe that they are. Is that fair? It depends who you’re talking to and what you mean by science. We surveyed evangelical C…

Conservative Hardliners at Synod Prompt Question: “What Are We Doing Here?”

By Patricia Miller

…communion. He also threw cold water on any pastoral talk of being more welcoming to LGBT couples in committed relationship, which last year’s synod praised as having “positive values”: “There is no basis for comparing or making analogies, even remotely, between homosexual unions and God’s plan for matrimony and the family.” As John Allen reports in Crux, Erdő’s remarks prompted Italian Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli to ask “what are we doing here…

Exclusion is Causing Great Harm: A Conversation With Suspended UMC Pastor Rev. Cynthia Meyer

By Joel Pitney

…still there, but most of them really want to do it. They’re very open, welcoming and affirming. It’s just terrific. People probably wouldn’t expect that. It’s a very low-income, blue-collar, tiny rural town, but folks are not conservative around this kind of issue. They’re loving. They reach out to everybody. I think that’s true of a lot more “people in the pews” than some in the church want to recognize. The primary difficulty in this conference…

Islamic Intellectual Leadership at a Crossroads

By Amina Wadud

…th, for both are part of my devotion to Allah). They do have a substantial number of women included, so I would not complain on that count. But, here’s the thing: there are no women under the category of Muslim intellectuals. Apparently women don’t think. So it is even harder to adjust to the loss of these three men whose intellectual contributions helped to shape the ways we think about and in fact live Islam today; both for women and for men. I…

How Religion Shapes (or Doesn’t) Our Views on Public Issues

By Daniel Schultz

…most important influence on their views.” One wonders where the other 40% comes from. Likewise, social issues come in dead last on a list of voter concerns. It’s not even close. Even more startling, however, just 7% of respondents said that religion is the biggest influence in their thinking about immigration. And only 6% say the same thing about the environment. That’s despite the messages they’re getting from the pulpit: about 1-in-4 said they’…