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Too Hot for Shul: Rabbis Seek Healthy Israel Dialogue After Gaza

By Sarah Posner

…estioning Zionism as central to Jewish identity. Rabbi Brant Rosen, who for 17 years led the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Illinois, recently stepped down from his pulpit, following a summer of protest against the Gaza war with the left-wing Jewish Voice for Peace, on whose Rabbinical Council he serves. (Compared to J Street’s 800-plus-member Rabbinic Cabinet, JVP’s two-year-old Rabbinic Council has just 50.) Rosen told me he…

Pentecostal Prayer Gangs: New Film Documents Religion in a Brazilian Prison

By Nick Street

…each job skills and do Bible study—outnumbered Catholic volunteers by about 15 to 1. Also in the city I was in the vast majority of inmates were from the poorer parts, where there are more Pentecostals. But the main reason for the dominance of Pentecostalism was because they believe in the potential for God to radically change a person’s life. The once-I-was-lost-but-now-I’m-found narrative in Pentecostalism really resonates with inmates. That’s w…

Why Crux‘s Knights of Columbus “Partnership” is Problematic

By Kaya Oakes

…mpaigns in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington. In 2005, they printed 800,000 postcards in Canada “in a campaign that [argued] that the redefinition of marriage to include gay and lesbian couples would promote pedophilia, pornography and unsafe sex.” As Marianne Duddy-Burke of the LGBTQ Catholic organization Dignity USA commented in a press release, “The Knights are deeply invested in advancing a particular brand of Catholicism, and I am con…

How To Talk To “Nones” and Influence People: Rob Bell’s Transrational Experience

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…eligious affiliation by checking “D: none of the above.” Mostly composed of 18-to-34-year-olds, this cohort sees affiliation with a religious institution to be neither necessary nor desirable, even if they are looking to do good work in the world, or to remain “spiritual but not religious.” Rob Bell may not have a building any more, but he does have a space—or rather, many spaces. For this latest book, he’s going on what he calls a “living room” t…

Godly Game or Godless Satire? Countering Biblical Ignorance with Heretical Humor

By Betsy Shirley

…lary would be a swear, we kept it,” explains Caleb. He cites the example of 1 Kings 18:27. “That passage in the Hebrew is saying to them: ‘Your God can’t hear you. He’s off taking a crap in the bushes.’ So we kept ‘shit’ there. But there were other places where we had ‘shit’ because a swear would make it funnier and then we decided to cut that out in those places.” I later consult the Oxford Annotated Bible where a tiny footnote confirms: the Hebr…

A Reforming Tradition Struggles With Change

By Brent Hege

…erge as a result of the votes. As it stands now, one year later, a growing number of disgruntled Lutherans have ignored the Presiding Bishop’s pleas for reconciliation and are taking public steps to leave the ELCA or to remain with certain reservations. A dissenting group called Lutheran CORE (formerly Coalition for Reform, now Coalition for Renewal) met in assembly in September of 2009 to discuss the possibility of forming a new Lutheran church b…

Workers Once Forced the Social Gospel Into Churches—Can It Happen Again?

By Eric C. Miller

…which predisposed them to be skeptical of trade unionism. In the turbulent 1870s and 1880s, as the rank and file, increasingly predominated by the foreign born, repeatedly took its protest to the streets, Protestant leaders called for violent suppression of “the mob.” The Catholic hierarchy was less prone to such nativist excesses and yet harbored deep reservations of its own about organized labor. Even as the Vatican articulated growing support…

Exclusive: Columnist Jonathan Merritt on his Sudden Departure From Religion News Service

By Kaya Oakes

…lete Socolovsky from the email chain. When Merritt’s assistant scheduled a phone meeting with Gallagher to discuss the contract in April of this year, Gallagher never informed Socolovsky about it. When Merritt finally reached Gallagher on the phone in April of this year, he says Gallagher was “placing the blame [for the delay] on Jerome” for not reading Merritt’s emails, which “was all very weird and unprofessional, and it made me uncomfortable.”…

Behind a Recent Stunt in Idaho Lies a Dangerous Theocratic Movement

By Chrissy Stroop

…cticing unrighteous dominion. This speaks to a very specific reading of the 12th Article of Faith and the historic memory of Mormon persecution.” It’s also perfectly in keeping with the extreme Calvinist ideology of Christian Reconstructionism, whose adherents seek Christian dominion over the United States in order to bring it under what they understand to be “biblical law.” University of North Florida Religious Studies Professor Julie Ingersoll l…

Gay Marriage Supporters Rally People of Faith for Washington’s November Vote

By Nicole Neroulias

…ch of Christian denominations working with us now.” Discussions during the phone bank covered the Golden Rule, whether the Leviticus view of homosexuality as an abomination also extended to eating shrimp, and how civil marriage licenses are distinct from religious weddings. Most of the calls lasted mere seconds, with people not home or not interested. After an hour working the phones, Scott Holley, 33, cheerfully noted that he had become “unfazed…