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Mormons Declare Same-Sex Marriage Apostasy, Deny Baptism to Children of Same-Sex Couples; Colombian Court OKs Adoption Over Church Objections; Franklin Graham Praises Putin’s Anti-Gay Policies; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ng on the extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples in the country. Freedom to Marry President Evan Wolfson, Macarena Saez of American University Washington College of Law in D.C. and Colombia Diversa Executive Director Marcela Sánchez were among those who testified in support of nuptials for gays and lesbians. A representative from the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBT group from the U.S., also took part in the July 30 hearing. Russ…

Fear Not, The IRS Isn’t Colluding With Angry Atheists

By Sarah Posner

…tive legal and religious groups that the agency is attempt to stifle their free speech. Through efforts such as Pulpit Freedom Sunday, pastors openly flout the law. Enforcement of the rule, and the revocation of a participating church’s tax-exempt status, though, could trigger a constitutional challenge to it. The rule against politicking, though, isn’t aimed at suppressing free speech but at ensuring that taxpayers don’t subsidize political activ…

Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates: The Problem with Popularization

By Kathryn Lofton

…hey were just bookish. And they weren’t just bookish, they were nice: “The New England Puritans are not remembered for their sweetness, and yet there was much sweetness in them.” This defensiveness has geek roots. Talking about The Wordy Shipmates, Vowell says her turn to a renewed Puritan was the result of a reader’s respect: “I felt like the Plymouth pilgrims and Salem Witch trial loonies are sort of the only ones who get any attention in Americ…

Why Must Jesus Contain Gluten?

By Benjamin Dueholm

…on, without breaking. What needs it bends for, and how far it can bend to meet them, may or may not be adequately answered by rules for the host. The only certainty is that new needs will arise, new questions will be asked, and the central practice of Christianity will find new ways to adapt….

Worse Than Madoff: Amway Launches Domestic Revival

By Bill Berkowitz

…ed from North America to Europe, South America, and the Philippines, met a number of politically powerful Republican politicians and conservative religious leaders, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Iran/Contra figure Oliver North, and then-Senator Rick Santorum. Religious leaders like Charles Stanley (a former distributor), Dr. Robert Schuller and the late Dr. D. James Kennedy of Florida’s Coral Ridge Ministries—a multimedia, m…

Christianity’s Greatest Counterfeit

By Willie James Jennings

…tle to do with the worship of a marginalized Jew, named Jesus, who came to free the poor and oppressed. This counterfeit Christian community worships power, desires control, and imagines the world revolving around self-sufficient men (and a few women). I call it “Mad Man Religion.” Mad Man Religion looks just like Christianity. It connects religious practices to free market practices like you would connect pieces from a Lego set. And it offers to…

Wiccan Prayer in Iowa House Highlights Religious Freedom Problem

By Joseph Laycock

…utional requirement of neutrality; such a forum need not become a religion-free zone.” Rep. Taylor’s response to last week’s prayer shows why inclusion is not a simple solution. When minority religions give opening prayers, there have been retaliations from the majority in the form of political protests and—in some cases—vandalism and death threats. So the promise of rotating in prayers by minority faiths is less viable in practice than on paper….

Is America Willing to Be Freed from Its Demons?

By Willie James Jennings

…I don’t know if we Americans, especially Christians in America, want to be freed from our demons. The late New Testament scholar Walter Wink defined the demonic as an array of human and supra-human forces aligned to destroy life. The demonic was both individual and structural, personal and collective, sentient and mechanical. Wink’s expansive way of writing about the demonic sought to capture the dynamic interplay of our being oppressed by evil an…

In Praise of Failure: Is Defining Religion Such a Good Idea?

By Ivan Strenski

…ng any distinctive rights or obligations: bye-bye to the establishment and free-exercise clauses of the Constitution, etc. They might as well protect us from the “establishment” of widget and the “free exercise” thereof. Both are meaningless, since neither “widget” nor “religion” point to anything specific. Linker, on the other hand, takes the exact opposite tack: he legislates the meaning of “religion” as those particular referents marked by the…

The Religious “Right” to Denounce Homosexuality

By Sarah Posner

…environment around 2005, when there was a highly noticeable uptick in the number of services, prayer breakfasts, emails from chaplains, displays of crosses, and other evangelical activity that struck her as “excessive.” But what bothered Major Williams most was the Strong Bonds program, which she attended at an Orlando hotel in January 2008. Included in the Strong Bonds conference tote bag was a camouflage box with a New Life Ministries inscripti…