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Religious Differences Are Real (and Tolerance Can Be an Empty Virtue)

By Stephen Prothero

…cause of) our differences. What’s the most important take-home message for readers? The main argument is that the world’s religions are climbing different mountains with very different tools and techniques. One perspective that new atheists and liberal multiculturalists share is that the religions are essentially the same (false and poisonous on the one hand, and true and beautiful on the other). I think this view is dangerous, disrespectful, and…

Why We Should Teach Theology in the Public University

By Jonathan Sheehan

…awlsian political theory), not in order to produce a modern Aristotle or a new To the Lighthouse, or a new Justice as Fairness. Rather, we teach them in order to jump-start discussions about values and virtues, to open students’ horizons, and to give them tools to evaluate their world in critical and measured ways. One engaged student might end up hating Aristotle; another loving him, and the same would be true for Woolf, or Rawls, or any of the o…

Pope Francis Says Teaching Gender Is Nasty; Far-Right Religious Groups Helping Mexico’s Anti-Equality Movement; Colombia’s Peace Deal Killed by Anti-LGBT Campaign?; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…sident Juan Manuel Santos to ask lesbian Education Minister Gina Parody to run the “Yes” campaign at a time when she was already being targeted by conservatives over a controversial teaching handbook. Sensing opportunity, opponents of the FARC agreement began to argue it was another effort to undermine conservative ideas of gender and family. Articles and blogs surfaced arguing that the historic inclusion of gender and LGBTI status in the peace de…

The Forgotten Struggle Over Gender and Bigotry in Christianity

By Stephen J. Patterson

…y, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 147–48. 5. Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Introduction (New York: Crossroad, 1983). 6. Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994)….

Distant Churches and the Isolated Poor: Lessons from Katrina, Ten Years Later

By R. Drew Smith

…vestment, ideological hostilities, and social marginalization. And as was true in New Orleans during Katrina, where those left behind were almost completely devoid of institutional support on which to lean, the urban poor in various contexts have suffered from what has also been a scarcity of institutional supports—including churches. The social storms that have ravaged vulnerable urban contexts have also impacted church life. In neighborhoods whe…

A Tiny Little Mecca for
the West

By Haroon Moghul

…dowment established this mosque had no children of his own, and saw this structure as his legacy for the world. We’re used to monumentalism in sacred spaces, the deployment of largeness for the purposes of producing epiphanies. There is however a sustained tradition in Islamic aesthetics of smallness cultivating and sustaining piety, incorporating tiny gestures, subtle symmetries, and easily overlooked details, whose full effect is to cause us to…

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: The Disgusting Religious Defense of Roy Moore

By Daniel Schultz

…g the nasty, so to speak, was only one element of virginity in the ancient world. As Elizabeth Johnson argues in Truly Our Sister, virgins weren’t so much people who avoided the contamination of sexuality as those who gave up their desire in order to maintain a single-minded focus on serving God. It’s only later, as the monastic emphasis on rigorous purity sets in, that virgins became those who have never taken part in vaginal intercourse. Even so…

‘Welcome to the War’: What a Creationist Conference Can Teach us About Evangelical Vaccine Resistance

By Caroline Matas

…nge from day to day, but whose goal is always the downfall of Christianity and Christians. Why was I the only person wearing a mask at the Answers in Genesis conference? Because this sophisticated web of evangelical multimedia has trained its attention on masks and vaccines as “the world’s” newest attempt at isolating, weakening, and ultimately defeating Christians. For those who are constantly encouraged to believe that the world is out to destro…

Make Aeronautic Jobs, Not Jihad

By Haroon Moghul

…a very different kind of Muslim world, the real, dynamic, flexible Muslim world, which is part of the wider world, not angry but eager, not oppositional but contributory. So I picked two news stories that should bring a smile to an economy desperate for good news. Boeing, the US’s largest airplane manufacturer, has won two jumbo deals involving the Muslim world. Both will help them compete with European Airbus while sustaining or creating thousan…

Ron Paul’s New Place in the GOP

By Julie Ingersoll

…ll his years of being the proverbial “voice in the wilderness,” Ron Paul’s world is about to change. A new Rasmussen poll finds that 74% of Americans strongly favor a plan to audit the Federal Reserve, something Paul has advocated for years. He plans to push such a plan as the new chair of the House Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee that oversees the Fed and its monetary policy. Reportedly Republican leaders had planned to put someone else in…