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The Next Big Religion Issue: Immigration

By Daniel Schultz

Judging by the number of items on the subject carried by Faith in Public Life’s news reel, immigration is the next item on the progressive faith agenda. Personally, I’d rather we kept an eye on financial reform as it shapes up in Congress, but nobody asks me. All the the churches are excited about immigration: you can’t go over to Sojourners without stumbling across at least one immigration-related story. Leaders of the Disciples of Christ and th…

Mike Johnson isn’t Just Your Average Christian Right Avatar — He’s Influenced by Fringe Movements Unfamiliar to Most Political Analysts

By Annika Brockschmidt

…spearhead the right-wing takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1970s and 1980s. The School never opened its doors. Creating special rights for anti-LGBTQ Christians One of the experts who did not have to Google Johnson was journalist and former RD staff writer Sarah Posner, who first interviewed Johnson in 2007 about his work with the ADF. Posner told RD: “I interviewed [Johnson] about [the ADF’s] ambitions to reverse decades of Supre…

Turkish Police Move Against Activists Who Defied Pride Ban; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…,” reports AP. Some 50,000 men were convicted under the legislation between 1949 and 1969. At Handelsblatt Global, Barbara Woolsey examines why marriage equality has not yet been achieved in Germany, beyond the personal opposition of Chancellor Angela Merkel, the daughter of a Lutheran pastor. Woolsey notes of the post-war government in West Germany kept paragraph 175 of the criminal code, which criminalized homosexuality, in place: The party bloc…

The Incredible Shrinking Catholic Church

By Paul Gorrell

…ogy of Benedict, many Catholics are already being encouraged to take their spiritual business elsewhere. We have seen an increase in the number of American politicians who are asked to remove themselves from communion lines and, recently, priests have even denied parishioners communion if they vote for a political candidate who favors abortion rights. This exclusion from the sacrament is essentially a form of excommunication. Dogma Over Diplomacy…

Is Twitter Doing Enough to Remove Extremist Content? An Ex-Employee Weighs In

By Sofi Hersher

…other social media sites to suppress extremist content from public view, a number of questions arise. Some are practical: how many Twitter employees speak or read Arabic or Urdu or Farsi, etc.? Should these requests be given preferential treatment over other offensive content like child pornography or threats of rape? Who makes that decision? How many people can a company be expected to employ to review these requests when they have other legitima…

Now That ‘Serial’ is Over: 2014’s Best Podcasts about Religion

By Andrew Aghapour

…just wrapped up its first season. Over twelve episodes Serial untangles the 1999 murder trial of Adnan Syed, a 17-year-old Baltimore Muslim who was accused of killing his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee. Serial probes pre-9/11 American attitudes towards Islam, which played a significant role in Adnan’s unjust imprisonment. We at RD became obsessed with the podcast, and even live-tweeted the finale. If you haven’t listened to it, go do it now. I’m not go…

What do the January 6 Commission, Covid Deaths and Gun Massacres All Have in Common? God’s Chosen

By John Stoehr

…es Congress created such commissions after the Oklahoma City bombing in the 1990s and the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Along with being good for democracy and patriotism, a commission of this kind is the right thing to do. If the Republicans do not explicitly see themselves as God’s chosen, they act like it implicitly—in that they have decided, as a political party over a number of years, that only Republicans can rule legitimately. Th…

Warships, Animals, Pubs Eligible For Blessings From Church of England, But Not Same-Sex Couples; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…e law allowing same-sex couples to get married will go into effect on March 1. A group called Aito Avioliitto (True Marriage or Real/Genuine Marriage) had gathered more than 100,000 signatures to force the vote; the organization called the vote a disappointment but not a surprise and said the new law will “artificially obscure” what the group calls “fundamental truths” about marriage and families, “but does not actually change them.” Aito Avioliit…

The Religious Right’s Apocalyptic Visions of an Obama Presidency

By Bill Berkowitz

…er be licensed to deliver babies at hospitals in any state”; overall, “the number of abortions have increased dramatically.” Everywhere in America, men, women and children are likely to be confronted by, or exposed to, pornography. When the Federal Communications Commission lifted all “restrictions on obscene speech or visual content in radio and television broadcasts,” it freed television programmers to show “explicit portrayals of sexual acts” a…

Prisoners In the Hands of an Angry God: A Conversation About Religion and Reform

By Andrew Aghapour and Stephanie Gaskill

…r people in prison. As I’ve talked with people, it has become clear that a number of other factors play a role: their position within the criminal justice system, their personal experiences with law enforcement, their relationships with incarcerated people. I’ve met people who were staunch supporters of a “tough on crime” approach until one of their loved ones got locked up. I’ve met people who were somewhat indifferent to criminal justice system…