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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

…olic and Orthodox churches. In fact, it’s only been an official part of Catholic teaching since 1854. While the Eastern churches agree with Catholics that Mary was free from personal sin, the fact that the Eastern church has never accepted Augustine’s teaching on Original Sin means that the doctrine is superfluous for Eastern Christian theology. The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is also one of the most hotly contested theological issues in…

Glenn Beck’s Salvation Army

By Peter Montgomery

…ool prayer would be one indication that the nation had indeed restored its honor. The prayer Lee cited had been composed by New York state officials to be read in public school classrooms at the start of the school day. Lee said the prayer “is not an establishment of any particular religion, but an acknowledgment of a truth, and a debt we owe God.” The Supreme Court, with only a single dissenting vote, disagreed. The Court’s decision appealed to t…

Orthodox Jews Begin to Reckon with Sexual Abuse

By Paul Berger

…s with the rabbis. And if the recent case of Yosef Kolko, a 36-year-old Orthodox schoolteacher, is any guide, the Orthodox world still has a long way to go. Kolko, of New Jersey, pleaded not guilty earlier this year to charges that he sexually abused a boy at a Jewish summer camp. Rather than supporting the alleged victim, the community rallied to Kolko’s defense. Historically, abuse victims and their families have often been urged—and then bribe…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…key. In some of these cases, the governments even threatened to prosecute those who commented on, or “liked” or re-tweeted, the offending comments. In May, the Pakistan government went so far as to block all access to Twitter in the country because of objections to “blasphemous content.” The IHEU reports being contacted by an increasing number of secularist groups organizing on Facebook, including groups in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia,…

My Business, Myself: Piercing the Corporate Veil

By Howard M. Friedman

…reat controversy, as many non-profit religious organizations, including Catholic hospitals and religiously-affiliated colleges, have objected to offering birth control services through their insurance plans. The narrow exemption in the original rules, which were not broad enough to cover Catholic schools like Notre Dame, is undergoing a reevaluation. However, in addition to objections by religious non-profits, more than a dozen for-profit small bu…

Dear White Evangelicals: A Black Square Ain’t Gonna Cut It

By Jhas Williams

…has been a slap in the face—especially for me as a Black woman. During my childhood and early adolescent years, I had the misfortune of attending several evangelical white Christian schools. As I neared the 8th grade, the last school where I was enrolled (which for the record had a quota of how many black students it would accept) proved to be the most damaging to my psyche. For the subsequent three years, in a million PTSD-inducing ways, I would…

Jesus Christ and Super Stars: How The Holy Rolled Mainstream in Pop Music

By Alana Massey

…worse, a religion. Bieber is also a notable member of Hillsong NYC, the SoHo House equivalent of Christian congregations in the city. Why then, does he insist against identifying as religious? To a generation brought up in the aftershocks of the Moral Majority and no strong public religious figures that didn’t come armed with brutal social agendas, “religion” and “organized, politicized religion” have become synonymous. For younger generations fa…

Debate Heats Up Over “Francis Effect”

By Patricia Miller

…than in the darkest days of the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal, which had Boston at its epicenter. That’s a pretty low bar, but of course no one denies that Francis is a change for the better. As Jon O’Brien, head of Catholics for Choice, told The Guardian, Francis isn’t so much “a breath of fresh air as someone who has gone into the Vatican with an oxygen tank strapped to his back. He’s got the church out of a very difficult spot.”…

The Best the Largest Progressive Jewish Org Could Come Up With?

By Jay Michaelson

…on I recently posed in The Forward – why should American Jews care about social justice? – the clip succinctly highlights a century of Jewish social justice concern. It’s compelling viewing. At the same time, both the clip and Bend The Arc’s new website situate this narrative in a Jewish immigrant experience that is hardly universal. Sephardic Jews, Jews from the former Soviet Union, Israelis living in America, Jews by choice, most Jews of color,…