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Don’t Call It “Prayer Shaming”: Our Moral Failure Exposed

By Willie Dwayne Francois

…ure of death-dealing. Defenses of prayer can be just another guise for the Right’s unrelenting and long-tenured defense of guns. Andy Parker, father of Alison Parker, the Virginia news anchor who was murdered in August while reporting live, suggested that these invocations of prayers and positive thoughts are code words for deliberate political inaction by elected officials. The theological commentary on this shooting is what my grandmother would…

Demonized and Demonizing No More.

By Joanna Brooks

…to identify myself within a queer narrative was the fact that there were a number of different narratives available to me. Identifying as an atheist, I went through a similar process, but there weren’t the same range of narratives. And I kept meeting other atheists who felt the same way I did—who felt like their identities and their stories weren’t represented in the most dominant atheist narratives. How would you characterize narrative American…

Hobby Lobby: Key to a More Liberal and Less Religious America?

By Rebecca Sager

…y. By pushing religion into the public sphere, the religious and political right is unintentionally pushing religion out of people’s private hearts and minds, and moving people out of the pews across America. The number of nones (people with no religious preference) is on the rise, with over 20% of all Americans claiming this status, and many point to the increased politicization of religion as the cause. This trend of legal victories will, in the…

Fasting and Faithy Friends of Convenience

By Sarah Posner

…d the 2008 election; as I’ve argued before, he gained support across the a number of demographic groups, and it’s difficult to make the case that Obama won because he finally shed the Democrats’ (imagined) hostility to religion. If you’re a religious person whose faith compels you to favor government programs to support the less economically blessed among us, pulling the lever for McCain-Palin probably wasn’t in the cards. To add insult to injury…

A Question for Hobby Lobby Supporters…

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…from the act, where previously they had been complicit? If so, what’s the number? How long does the list of possible uses have to be to assuage the employer’s conscience enough to let the employees use their compensation for things the employer finds morally repugnant? See, here’s the thing I’d prefer not to believe—because I actually don’t like being cynical, despite how well it often plays on the internet. I’d prefer not to believe that employe…

YOU Are Spiritual But Not Religious: The Secret Spiritual History of the Choose Your Own Adventure Books

By Daniel Silliman

…ndividual agency and responsibility. This core belief made him exactly the right person to hear about Packard’s idea for a new kind of kids’ book. Packard, a lawyer from New York City, spent the end of the 1970s trying to get publishers to show some interest in his book. By his account, he had grown lazy while making up a rambling, multi-part bedtime story for his children. When he began to ask them what they wanted the character, a shipwrecked bo…

Pope Francis Has Painted Himself into a Corner on Women Deacons

By Mary E. Hunt

…s” conundrum Parallel to the diaconal growth is the steady increase in the number of women engaged in ministries of all sorts. Whether in campus ministry or prison work, in parishes where they now outnumber priests in the U.S., in religious communities or religious education, women around the world do an increasingly large share of the Roman Catholic Church’s ministry without being ordained or having decision-making power. No wonder it occurred to…

Fox News Controversy on Yoga and White Supremacy Reveals Problem of Yoga Discussion

By Andrea R. Jain

…alism, patriarchy, Islamophobia, and homophobia. Modi works closely with a number of allies to wed yoga to right-wing causes. Yogi Adityanath (Hindu nationalist and chief minister of Uttar Pradesh) responded to some Muslim protests of Modi’s International Yoga Day efforts with the suggestion that those who refuse to perform the sun salutations known as Surya Namaskar are traitors who ought to drown themselves in the ocean or leave India; Baba Ramd…

‘It’s a Gay Problem,’ and Other Myths From the Catholic Church’s Sexual Abuse Crisis

By Joelle Casteix

…re that tolerates them. In reality, the allegedly disproportionately large number of gay priests may be related to the problem, but it isn’t the cause of it. As Robert Mickens wrote in July, and as others have noted for years, the pathologizing of queer sexualities has driven many men to the priesthood, as the vow of celibacy offers what appears to be a safe haven from negotiating a forbidden path. As a result, although he’s careful to point out t…

Scott Walker Loves Jesus. That’s Nice

By Peter Laarman

…er Herbert Kohler—pushed through a greatly weakened contract for the small number of Local 833 members still employed in Wisconsin. I say all this to make the point that American business and its “business-friendly” sock puppets like Gov. Scott Walker will stop at nothing—nothing—to roll back worker rights and worker security. So it is simply wrong to view the current Wisconsin putsch with the eyes of “on the one hand… and on the other hand.” It’s…