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Romney Faces Sticky Questions about LDS “Doctrines” on Race

By Joanna Brooks

…es of my faith,” and then using the moment to pivot to a discussion of his service as a lay pastoral leader. For Romney, “doctrines” versus “practices” is a perfectly workable distinction, one that reflects the pragmatic core of modern Mormonism as well as the rather fluid and uneven state of its theology. Mormonism has no professional clergy, no theological-scholarly corps. There is no regularly recited doctrinal creed. For well over a hundred ye…

Baptist Professors Attack McLaren’s New Kind of Christianity

By Jonathan L. Walton

…rch in Baltimore to discuss racial tension in the city. During the worship service, historian Taylor Branch recounts that Vernon Johns sat visibly annoyed as he listened to the white preacher preach on salvation and being “washed in the blood of the Lamb.” When it was Johns’ moment to address the assembly, to the consternation of white preachers and the humiliation of most black preachers in attendance, the ecclesial journeyman went right after th…

RD News Round-Up—September 22, 2008

By Bill Berkowitz

…verage from such likeminded sites as Conservative Grapevine, Catholic News Service, LifeSiteNews, LifeNews, Stop the ACLU, OneNewsNow and many more. The main donor to BornAliveTruth, a 527—an organization allowed to raise money from individuals in unlimited amounts—is Raymond Ruddy, who is described by Kuhnhein as “a prominent anti-abortion philanthropist in Massachusetts who supported Mitt Romney for president in the GOP primary.” ++++++++++ Focu…

Where Are “Religious Liberty” Advocates After Police Raid of Ferguson Church?

By Sarah Posner

…tice. To harass religious communities that engage in such protest violates the fundamental promise of religious freedom. From the religious right, there is often outcry over alleged government overreach in churches, particularly the enforcement of Internal Revenue Service prohibitions on candidate endorsements by clergy whose institutions enjoy the benefits of tax exempt status. This concern with the police action, however, is a remarkable contras…

To Be Atheist, Feminist, and Black

By Sikivu Hutchinson

…es and more traditional churches also provide social welfare and “support” services to residents and parishioners that may not be available elsewhere in poor communities. Consequently, religious practice becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? I think the book will have both niche appeal and broad appeal. Non-believers of color hunger to see themselves represented in secular political discourse. M…

Aasif Mandvi on Islamophobia, Acting, and the Long Shadow of Jon Stewart

By Haroon Moghul

…out? Anything to make a social impact?” I had been on the Daily Show for a number of years at this point, and spoken to a lot of Islamophobes, people who had a lot of misinformation about Islam and Muslims. It was a personal thing to me, and it was an issue I thought I could lend my voice to in a satirical space. Were there any particular misconceptions or fears you wanted to address? There was a lot of stuff about Shari’ah Law, the protests again…

Spiritual (And Jewish), But Not Religious

By Martin Kavka

…worship occurring at synagogues, giving greater support to Jewish arts and service organizations, and loosening (but not breaking) the link between Jewishness and the state of Israel. It may even entail hiring secular leaders to join the staffs of synagogues. The history of Jews in America is a story of decentralization, in which Jews refuse to heed authorities telling them how they must perform their Judaism and/or Jewishness. If Jewish leaders f…

Evangelicals Fire the Future: Rich Cizik’s Resignation

By Robert P. Jones

…cal world last week. Cizik’s abrupt ousting from the NAE after 28 years of service is one more sign of the struggle for the soul of an evolving American evangelicalism. Recent public opinion data points to the need for the current leaders to rethink their certainty about what constitutes “evangelical values”—especially if they care about not alienating the next generation. Rich Cizik has been no stranger to controversy during his long tenure at th…

Holy Father, You’re Not Helping: The Problem with the Pope’s Plan to Consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

By Katherine Kelaidis

…o Orthodox Christianity. The Pope’s decision to carry out the consecration service dates to a series of appearances of the Virgin Mary reported by three shepherd children in the small village of Fatima, Portugal between the spring 1916 and the autumn of 1917. During the appearance, the children received a series of prophecies and requests, among them that Russia (then in the midst of the Bolshevik Revolution) would be consecrated to the Immaculate…

My Congregation Tried to Help a Syrian Family Settle in the US

By Thomas Warming

…might help in their place. I have longed to greet and welcome them to the United States because that’s what my faith tells me to do, and unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we will have the chance to do that. It does make me wonder, though, what would happen if this family got their flight waivers tomorrow and showed up next week. Would they be redirected to Connecticut like the family turned away from Indiana this week? Would they face open host…