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For International Human Rights Day, a Snapshot of LGBT Rights from the Vatican to Cape Town

By Peter Montgomery

…poor track record on LGBT issues. C-Fam, the US based organization that is helping to lead an anti-LGBT backlash at the United Nations, attacked a speech by Thai diplomat Vitit Muntarbhorn, the new UN independent expert on violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. C-Fam and allied countries failed earlier this month to block the position, created by the Human Rights Council during the summer. C-Fam’s inter…

Imagine No Religion: Sustaining Morality Without God

By Konstantin Petrenko

…e a sense of empathy and an altruistic urge to cooperate, reciprocate, and help the other. These are the building blocks of morality that allow some form of moral consensus to emerge. Such a consensus would not necessarily resemble a Judeo-Christian ethic or any other moral system familiar to us, but it would nevertheless represent some rudimentary form of a moral order. If evolutionary psychologists are correct, morality did not emerge in respons…

Religion and Science: Busting Assumptions

By Annie Hardison-Moody

…ants argued that a more dialogical education to science and religion could help to develop students’ critical skills in thinking through these complex issues. These examples highlighted the ways that students can become a part of the “story” behind science. Professors stressed the importance of primary texts, and of history. Creative pedagogical models that partner researchers and students were also emphasized. Dr. David Lynn of Emory University h…

Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam

By Mark LeVine

…ve been marganlized by governments and local media. So my hope was I could help put a more normal face on the musicians and scenes I discussed within their societies, as many of them still feel very ostracized. Are you hoping just to inform readers? Give them pleasure? Piss them off? This book is supposed to be positive. I could have written it with the goal, if not of pissing off people, at least of provoking a lot of arguments or starting polemi…

Controversial Mary Statue Weeps Because ‘We’re Killing This World’

By Joseph Laycock

…ply isn’t good enough. At least one woman, who managed to get his unlisted number, screamed at him demanding that he confirm the miracle. While Marian apparitions always bring controversy, this is especially so in urban areas where neighbors rarely appreciate pilgrims blocking traffic and saying the rosaries at all hours of the night. City officials responded by noting that the statue’s enclosure, which was built without a permit, did not meet bui…

RDBook: Whither the Religious Left?

By Bill Berkowitz

…atmosphere of persecution and fear—and out of reach of programs that might help. As for how he fits in the wider constellation of religious leaders, as a disciple of the late guru of modern corporate management Peter Drucker (who taught at Fuller Theological Seminary) he is more about building a religio-corporate empire than preceding leaders of the Religious Right. Drucker was the theorist of the megachurch, applying business principles to the cr…

Why Trump’s Evangelicals Won’t Care About Those Budget Cuts

By Julie Ingersoll

…the help they need from family. If the civil government uses tax money to help the poor it is understood as tyrannically exceeding its biblical authority and effectively stealing money to do so. (They call such misused taxes legalized theft.) You find this position articulated in rather arcane theological form in the work of R.J. Rushdoony and other Christian Reconstructionists, but you also find it popularized in rather mainstream evangelical ci…

Historian: Evangelical Trump Fandom is No Deviation

By Neil J. Young

…t to live, think and work in a nation of corporations. This insight should help to contextualize the present with the past, especially in this election year. White conservative evangelical fandom for a tycoon and top-down authoritarian such as Donald Trump is hardly out of step with how previous born-again Americans wooed business elites who seemed the best champions for their social, economic and political aspirations. It struck me how so many of…

Young Imam Reality Show, Debating Secularism, and More

By Michael J. Altman

…’s Jewishness being used against her? Or, as Joanna Brooks noted, could it help her win over Orrin Hatch? The United Methodist Church has lifted its sanctions on the Claremont School of Theology. Claremont had announced it would begin training Muslim imams and Jewish rabbis alongside its usual Christian pastors. For Daniel Schultz, Claremont’s situations reflects “the agony of the seminary.” Secularization has been a theme this week. The Immanent…

Christian Reconstructionist Legislator Slams Tornado Victims for Praying to “Their God FEMA”

By Julie Ingersoll

…ddition to being insensitive, Franklin’s comment suggesting that accepting help from FEMA is tantamount to idolatry arises directly from a Christian Reconstructionist worldview. In this view, God has ordained three distinctly different spheres of authority (three different governments) with delineated responsibilities: the family, the church, and the civil government. When one of these institutions intrudes on the authority of another it is consi…