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Doubt v. Predator: A Vatican II Parable

By Gabriel Mckee

…ch the stability, the certainty, that his death took from her. After years in her order she’s beginning to see the cracks in the foundation. She’s irritated by the lack of discipline reflected in Father Flynn (and with him the post-Vatican II church), but she’s even more frustrated by the conclusions she’s reached about her place in the hierarchy. She needs the structure, but it’s turning against her. The character is exceedingly complex, at once…

Republican Party: You Are What You Are!

By Jonathan L. Walton

…aking their heads in embarrassment and shame prior to Senator McCain’s ill-worded rebuke. I admit now that I was just plain wrong. The “Obama Bucks” distributed on the Chaffey Community Republican Women of California newsletter [ironically created to parody the ideology of the people who ultimately took it seriously] and the “Waterboard Barack Obama” posting on the official Web site of the Sacramento Republican Party have pushed me over the cliff…

The Story Behind the Catholic Church’s Stunning Contraception Reversal

By Patricia Miller

…de devices—all of which were common and widely used in the early Christian world to frustrate conception. The first formal theological condemnation of contraception was made by St. Augustine in the early 400s, when he declared that it is “a procreative purpose which makes good an act in which lust is present,” and that married people who contracept “are not married.” It was a proclamation that would guide Catholic thinking about contraception for…

A Pair of Christian Colleges Quietly Cracking Down on LGBTQ Acceptance

By Chrissy Stroop

…ould be considered a form of harassment,” and she claims to have documentation placing APU administrators on the record agreeing that the ban does indeed constitute harassment on the basis of sexual orientation. Given the outsize influence that right-wing, anti-LGBTQ evangelicals have under Trump, it’s critical to keep efforts like Green’s in the public eye. Her struggle, and that of other students and alumni of evangelical educational institution…

Clergy Shouldn’t Be Able to Steal Funds for Grindr or Dolls

By Andrew L. Seidel

…t “as much as 95% of fraud within churches goes undetected or unreported.” Headlines reflect this truth. One Catholic priest in Michigan embezzled about $5.4 million from the diocese. A Catholic priest in Connecticut admitted to stealing $1.3 million from the church. Sadly, though not unusually, the diocese forced out employees who uncovered the fraud for exposing it publicly. Another Connecticut priest also stole $1.3 million, some of which he sp…

Persecution, Betrayal, and the Zero Sum Fight for Global Domination — Day 1 of NatCon 2024

By Annika Brockschmidt and Ben Lorber

…erative Kevin Lynn repeated the familiar far-right maxim “import the third world—get the third world,” and slammed “the cabal running immigration policy in the Biden administration” before brainstorming ways to end birthright citizenship. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies (an anti-immigration think-tank founded by a eugenicist and a White nationalist), suggested that asylum be abolished, and that women visiti…

The Religious Motto That Isn’t Religious: How ‘In God We Trust’ Remains Constitutional [Part 2]

By Andrew L. Seidel

…o be walled off from one another, judges have essentially declared that entrusting this world to God is not a religious sentiment. This proclamation is itself religious. Imagine if these same judges had declared that the ubiquitous John 3:16 or praying the rosary have “no theological or ritualistic” importance because they had been so often repeated. The Christian nationalists’ outrage would, for once, be justified. What American Christian would l…

What If Donald Trump is Just as Christian as Evangelicals?

By John Stoehr

…here is no such thing as abuse of power when one has been chosen by God to rule. There is no such thing as obstruction of justice when God alone decides who is worthy of justice. Since God chose Trump, only God can end his presidency, and any attempt to impeach and remove him is, by consequence, a sinful attempt to obstruct God’s will. That white evangelicals genuinely believe this to be true should not in any way be mistaken for religious sentime…

How ‘The Seven Missions’ of the ‘Doomsday Couple’ Connect Them to the Larger LDS Prophecy Subculture

By Christopher James Blythe

…ion is to “ordain individuals to translation as the camps begin.” In other words, they would officiate in a ritual that would make select people immortal. The selection of these translated persons relates to Joseph Smith’s understanding of the Book of Revelation’s 144,000. Smith believed this body would be a missionary force that would be sent out at the time of global cataclysm “to bring as many as will come to the church of the Firstborn.” (D&C…

There’s no Legal Reason for Churches to Receive Quarantine Exceptions

By Chrissy Stroop

…most vocal Americans defying the public health measures recommended by the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and implemented to varying degrees by state and local governments across these United States. Alas, our country is #blessed with a clunky federalism that exacerbates our ongoing crisis of democracy, and the lack of quick and consistent federal and presidential guidance on responding to the COVID-1…