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Conservative Christians Insist the Toxic Theology Portrayed in the Duggar Family Doc is ‘Fringe’ — But is it Really All That Different?

By Caroline Matas

…exas governor Rick Perry, former mayor of Indianapolis and deputy mayor of New York City Stephen Goldsmith, and current U.S. Representative Daniel Webster (R-FL). Past members of the IBLP’s Board of Directors and Advisory Board include billionaire and part-owner of the San Antonio Spurs James Leininger, former Congressman Sam Johnson (R-TX), and Georgia State Senator Ralph T. Hudgens. Gothard’s foundational beliefs—the eponymous “basic life princi…

Catholic Church is Lucky it’s Just Same-Sex Marriage

By Marian Ronan

…mpanies now include defined benefits for sex reassignment surgery, and the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and the National Association of Social Workers, have declared the denial of such benefits discriminatory. And intersex conditions are likely to increase, since some of them, at least, are related to the use of pesticides. It seems that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is already aware of—and opposed t…

Supreme Court Rules Religion is Special… This Time

By Katherine Stewart

…“no logical difference in kind” between a religious group—such as The Good News Club, an after-school program of religious instruction for children that spends much of its time praying, singing hymns, and learning the evangelical gospel—and a soccer team. The same logic was applied in a set of rulings that, at least for a time, required that New York City schools opened to the community after-hours should make themselves available as rent-free hou…

The Threat to Democracy Runs Deep, But Mathematics Could Address the Abominable State of Representation and Voting

By Ismar Volić

…ting Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Serbs, swept the election and formed the new seven-member presidency. The dream of Bosnia as a multicultural, multiethnic model of tolerance and coexistence for the rest of Yugoslavia—and Europe—had started to unravel. On June 25, 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia. A brief military intervention in Slovenia and a full-scale war in Croatia quickly unfolded. The military campaign was in…

A Queer Atheist In the Heart of Mormon Country

By Chris Stedman

…t hope that the act of encounter with someone who is unfamiliar will bring new ways of thinking to light. After all, support for marriage equality more than doubles among people who know a gay person. The Pew Research Center reports that of the 14% of Americans who went from opposing to supporting gay marriage in the last decade, 37% (the largest category) did so because of “friends/family/acquaintances who are gay/lesbian.” The second largest cat…

Obstacles for Secularists

By Sarah Posner

…ment for the Guardian. Waldman observes: But it won’t be easy for secular Americans to become better organized as a political force, even as they increase in number. The major impediment to that kind of organization is the fact that it is very difficult for secularists to conceive of themselves in tribal terms. Most tribes, whether of nations or ethnicities or sports fandom, can easily demarcate their membership—it’s the people who look like us,…

“One of Us”: Rick Santorum and the Politics of (Very Big) Family

By Kathryn Joyce

…now that they need to have more children, because their death rates are outnumbering their births rates, and they’re in crisis,” Michelle Duggar told Christian news network CBN last week. “My Body is Not My Own” It’s not only on the campaign trail that the Quiverfull playbook is enjoying a wider audience. Amid all the discussion in recent months about the new fight over contraception—a development that seemed to take much of the mainstream media…

Christian Epistle on Islamophobia

By Haroon Moghul

…tonight and [for] your perspective on things. In many ways I feel that the American attachment to sensationalism, half truths and fear makes your perspective all the more important. I work with internationals at WSU and lately have made some friends among the Islamic community. I have studied side by side with some of these guys and compared the Bible with the Koran and continue to be amazed with the similiarities that I never knew existed most my…

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

By Jay Michaelson

…ization, I thought, was to contribute something specifically Jewish to the American progressive religious scene, the American social justice movement, and so on. Closeting the organization’s Jewishness seems like a weird way to do that. I do, however, like their new video (though I worry about some of its implications): As a strong answer to a question I recently posed in The Forward – why should American Jews care about social justice? – the clip…

Can the Catholic Church Survive Trump?

By Patricia Miller

…the highest profile culture warriors like Baltimore’s Archbishop Lori and New York’s Cardinal Dolan, they helped steer the more confrontational posture of the U.S. bishops’ conference. Byrnes argues that it’s foolish for any religious institution to tie itself too clearly to any political party for the simple reason that parties are “ephemeral political institutions,” always in the process of decay and rebirth: …one can well imagine a bishop deci…