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Turkish Police Move Against Activists Who Defied Pride Ban; And More in Global LGBT Recap

…s and we cannot be open in public anymore.” The proposed bill emboldened a number of radical nationalist movements and, according to activists at Labrys, a gay activism group in Kyrgyzstan, led to a near 300 percent increase in attacks against the community. Activists fear things will get worse once a Russian-style anti-gay “propaganda” bill gets its final reading in parliament and becomes law; a restrictive definition of marriage was placed into…

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The Next Big Religion Issue: Immigration

Judging by the number of items on the subject carried by Faith in Public Life’s news reel, immigration is the next item on the progressive faith agenda. Personally, I’d rather we kept an eye on financial reform as it shapes up in Congress, but nobody asks me. All the the churches are excited about immigration: you can’t go over to Sojourners without stumbling across at least one immigration-related story. Leaders of the Disciples of Christ and th…

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“As Orthodox As They Come”: A Backstage Conversation With Rob Bell

…re so fantastic—brought the idea that the whole thing is static. I think a number of people picked up over the past three hundred years that space is empty, we move things around in space, and there are levers and pulleys and buttons. I think for a number of people, atheism is simply the rejection of somebody sitting on a cloud somewhere with a beard who might intervene from time to time. I think quantum physics, the little I know, it just intuiti…

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Episcopal Conference Lives Up to Episcopal Jokes

…the height of the battling, that it was all not such a big deal, that the number of dissidents was actually quite small and that he thought his church would be better off once they were gone.   Indeed, according to Wikipedia there are over 7,000 Episcopal congregations in the US with over 2 million members, though the significance of that number is unclear since, as the priest in the church where I was baptized once teased me: “when you’re baptiz…

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Despite Conflation of Israel with Judaism, Anti-Zionism is More Kosher Than You Think

…ditional readings of the Torah, it even goes back to God himself. Indeed a number of biblical books go beyond merely denouncing or delegitimizing Israel’s “right to exist.” At the time of the original covenant, God threatens that, if Israel disobeys His teaching, the people of Israel will “flee in defeat before your enemies; you may make a unified stand against them but you will run away in every direction; and you will become a horror to all the…

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Can The Religious Left Be Effective Again? Longer Answer: Quizás

…gh participation rates are increasing among these types of churches, they represent a small percentage of all churches. Fulton explains that a lot of this increase is due to the debates over immigration reform; but even factoring that in, Hispanic churches are becoming more politically active. The number of congregations might be few, but they may also be larger communities, representing a substantial number of people. In any case, the trend will…

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The Suppression of Sin in Evangelical Abolitionism: The Wilberforce Problem

…that Mexican police have arrested more than 1,000 people in a city on the Texas border in connection with “human trafficking and sexual exploitation.” According to Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (whose book, Half the Sky, has become the definitive work detailing the horrors of modern slavery and other forms of oppression against women), several important developments in the last couple of decades have increased the spread of sexual slavery. T…

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How a Ruling for Masterpiece Cakeshop Could Embolden White Nationalists

…or even federal—protections aimed at combatting discrimination against any number of marginalized populations. “The cultural and political prominence of religious freedom as an American ideal draws people to it,” Wenger said. “The reason people appeal to it for all sorts of purposes is because it’s so culturally, politically, and legally powerful.” Indeed, as Wenger’s book documents in deep historical detail, the bedrock American principle has alr…

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The Religious Case Against Religious Discrimination in Cakeshop Case

…like Phillips’s. But, as survey after survey has demonstrated, substantial numbers of Catholics, and to a lesser extent evangelicals as well, are not following their denominations’ leaders down this particular road, and there is a growing number of religious institutions that have embraced marriage equality and advocated for LGBTQ+ rights in the public square. Cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop make it clear that the boundaries of a national settleme…

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Proposition 8—the Rematch?

…promotion of the homosexual agenda.” As might be expected, however, AFA’s number one achievement was the passage of California’s Proposition 8—the anti-same-sex marriage constitutional amendment. ++++++++++ RD Tidbits Wycliffe USA’s “The Last Languages Campaign”: A donor that wishes to remain anonymous has given $50 million to the ministry to be used for “The Last Languages Campaign,” an effort aimed at “translating the Bible into the remaining 2…

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