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Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue

By Cody J. Sanders

…iolence and bullying exist without the anti-gay religious messages that support them. These messages come in many forms, degrees of virulence, and volumes of expression. The most insidious forms, however, are not those from groups like Westboro Baptist Church. Most people quickly dismiss this fanaticism as the red-faced ranting of a fringe religious leader and his small band of followers. More difficult to address are the myriad ways in which ever…

The American Media’s Longterm Ambivalence About the Papacy

By Peter Manseau

…the year of three popes. The deaths of Paul VI and John Paul I provided opportunities for coverage much like Time had offered decades before. And then came the clergyman the newsweeklies seemed born to cover. A former actor and athlete, charismatic, indefatigable and handsome, Pope John Paul II may have been an unknown quantity to many in the Church, but he was an immediate hit on the newsstand. Excluding U.S. presidents, Pope John Paul II earned…

This Year in Satanism

By Joseph Laycock

…alism that Harvard has traditionally espoused. JUNE In June, Greaves did a number of interviews taking aim at Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and his efforts to ban gay marriage and limit access to abortion. A native of Detroit, Greaves called Snyder “an idiot governor.” He discussed campaigns that would invoke the free exercise clause to challenge Snyder’s legislation, including the assertions that gay marriage is a Satanic sacrament and that Satan…

Special Hell: Progressive Catholics Reckon With the Rise of Trump

By Patricia Miller

…’t recruit prominent Catholic backers the way that Obama did and skipped important Catholic outreach opportunities like a Saint Patrick’s Day event at Notre Dame when the campaign decided it didn’t need to focus on Catholics. Clinton paid the price in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania. “Hillary would have won Michigan if nine more Catholics per parish had switched votes,” Krueger noted, citing his own calculations on the impact of the Catholic…

More Than Big Hair and Money: Jim, Tammy Faye and the Media “Holy Wars” of the 80s

By John Wigger

…American religion and culture, which meant that they had no shortage of supporters and critics on either side, particularly with regard to the prosperity gospel. What alternative title would you give the book? My working title was Pressed Down, Shaken Together, which comes from one of the favorite Bible verses of prosperity preachers at the time, including Jim Bakker. But my editor thought that it was too obscure for most readers and I’m sure she…

Glenn Beck’s Salvation Army

By Peter Montgomery

…faith through a prism of American nationalism? Not to mention the growing number of Americans without any religious commitment? Beck tells us, “you must fall to your knees and you must reconnect with God. He is not asking you. He is commanding us as a people to get behind Him. He will right the wrongs. We will have to pay a price because we lived outside of His laws. We will have to pay a price, but every day we don’t get behind Him, the price ge…

An Unholy Holy Week: Is the All-Male Rule of the Roman Catholic Church Self-Destructing?

By Anne Eggebroten

…e of the problem: canon law, which does not require cases of abuse to be reported to the police. Instead, a culture of extreme secrecy has prevailed, codified in Vatican norms issued in 1962 requiring secret investigations and prohibiting any report to civil authorities. Will Pope Benedict XVI set in motion any change to canon law? Will he step down or ask any complicit bishops to resign? Will he even order a Church-wide investigation? Unlikely. I…

Orthodox Jews Begin to Reckon with Sexual Abuse

By Paul Berger

…ss prevalent in the Orthodox community than anywhere else; but there are a number of peculiarities to Orthodox Jewish life that have made the reporting of abuse less common than in society at large. “I think the subject of abuse is probably the same in any religious community,” says Michael Salomon, a Long Island psychiatrist, who has just finished working on an as-yet-unpublished book about sexual abuse in the Orthodox world. “Different religions…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…ce and more persecution of minority beliefs. The Freedom of Thought 2012 report, which bears a portrait of a manacled Alber Saber on its cover, draws attention to the role of digital and social media in particular, noting that even Facebook “likes” and re-tweets have drawn the attention of some authorities: The trend of prosecuting “blasphemies” shared through social media is most marked in Muslim-majority countries. For example, in addition to th…

My Business, Myself: Piercing the Corporate Veil

By Howard M. Friedman

…ed by businesses like Annex challenge the ACA’s contraception mandate on a number of grounds. The most significant challenge invokes the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, claiming that the insurance coverage mandate imposes a substantial burden on the free exercise of religion. Annex Medical lost its claim because the court concluded that the mandate does not impose a substantial burden on religious exercise and in the widely-publicized H…