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Why the Women’s Ordination Question Will Shape the Future of Mormonism

…and a more equitable role for women in LDS Church leadership and service. Today, the global operations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are governed and directed by an all-male organizational chain of command.  Mormon women may participate in some decision-making at the congregational level.  But at all levels most forms of institutional power—from the power to shape the church’s global policies and finances to the power to bles…

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Haiti and the Push for Theological Questions

…k the capital of Portugal on November 1, 1755, All Saints’ Day. Scientists today speculate that it probably registered as a nine on the Richter scale. It devastated the population. Estimates of the number of people killed range from 10,000 to 100,000. At the time the quake struck, worshipers filled the churches honoring their dead. The churches, the worshippers, and the city around them were effectively destroyed. Not long after the major quake hi…

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Prophets of the Environmental Apocalypse

…ghtmares. In somewhat the same way that climate change denialism functions today, the Atoms for Peace campaign merely divided public opinion, allowing some to sleep easy and the most knowledgeable people even more distraught and fearful. Events like the recent reactor meltdown in Northeastern Japan can bring even the sleepers back to the edge of anxiety, and then there’s the persistent fear that a nut job or a terrorist will decide to usher in apo…

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The Sanders Insurgency: A Return to the “Secular Sacred”?

…–the sole concerns of the kind of business unionism that is most prevalent today. They demanded total social transformation, equating “wage slavery” with degradation and a horrible affront to democracy itself. If we can easily see from our perspective how white racism and nativism tainted and fatally handicapped their insurgency, we should also remember how resentment and suspicion of “the other” were consciously and continuously stoked by the so-…

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The Racist Message of Do-Nothing Religion, Courtesy of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick

…placency with racialized religious privilege that has come to characterize today’s Republican Party? It depends, of course, on what (or who) you mean by “America.” And what you mean by “God.” Not to mention what it means to “turn to God,” or to “heal racism.” The devil’s in the details, and paraphrased headlines are often misleading. What Patrick actually said in his Fox News interview is that to address racism in American culture, we need to “cha…

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Perry’s Challenge to Bachmann for Religious Right Vote

…explored in a piece for the Daily Beast in June), particularly his role in promoting homeschooling, Lizza gives short shrift to Rushdoony, who is not only a “prominent Dominionist,” as Lizza describes him, but the founder of Christian Reconstructionism and Titus’ inspiration. And, as Julie Ingersoll has detailed on numerous occasions, “Christian Reconstructionist founder Rousas John Rushudoony is often called the father of the Christian homeschool…

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Religious Freedom Gets Hollywood Treatment

…cided with the Congress’ hurried alteration to the Constitution to expland freedom of belief to include freedom of conscience, Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to the cristero stronghold of Guanajuato state, and a papal flyover (in the presidential helicopter) around the Cristo Rey monument near León. (Mexicans go to the polls on July 1.) The U.S. also stands in need of the film’s message right now, according to Barroso: “The movie is about conscience. No o…

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Pastor of Kentucky Church Severed From Baptists Over LGBT Inclusion: Not Activism, Just Honesty

…the spiritual home for many students, staff, and distinguished professors. Today the 800-member church is a diverse community of faith including people of various races, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientation, and world-views. Refugees and immigrants compose roughly one-third of the congregation. The church is heavily invested in a wide array of social ministries in the Commonwealth, the U.S., and the world. Below are excerpts from a conversation…

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Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World

…“Christ figure.” In the immortal words of Woody Allen, “If Jesus came back today and saw what was going on in his name, he wouldn’t stop throwing up.” It is safe to say that Allen’s comments can be applied to a lot of religious film criticism. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? As with the above point the main audience is, I hope, students. I tried to write this in an accessible way, introducing key themes in religious studies…

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Southern Baptists Embrace Minorities, but Not Gays

Southern Baptists are feeling pretty good about themselves today. Eleven years after the denomination apologized to African-Americans for supporting segregation and slavery, it elected a black man as its first vice president of the convention—“the highest position yet held by an African-American” in the denomination, the New York Times notes. Fred Luter Jr. pastors a largely black church in New Orleans and is apparently an “overwhelming favorite…

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