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Argue-by-Number: A Suggestion for the Church

By Mark D. Jordan

…d be quite content with a randomly ordered list. I’m confident that such a scheme of numbers would find a large and appreciative audience. After all, something like it is already quite popular. We deploy the more or less arbitrary system for numbering biblical verses in order to invoke whole arguments. Very often in public “discussions” of homosexuality, someone will stand up and begin to call out numbers. “But what about Genesis 19!” “Leviticus 1…

In the Aftermath of the “Himalayan Tsunami”

By Luke Whitmore

…any people have died but the number will probably be in the thousands. The numbers may be low compared to global-scale disasters of recent years, but there is a wrenching poignancy to what is happening in Uttarakhand right now. Many of the forces that frame daily life in South Asia are suddenly on display like a raw wound: the wages of development and globalization, the power of the natural world, divine agency, altruism, self-interest, and the po…

The Sacred and the Dead: Operator, Can You Help Me?

By Maren Haynes

…connection, once burning with possibility and joy, began to cool, as cell phone calls dwindled and numbers eventually changed or were disconnected. As our shared realities drifted apart in their likeness, like Pigpen, I also turned to technologies that promised connection to try to tamp down the yearning and temper that sense of loss. Where Pigpen called up the trusty telephone operator, I did my pining alone, with only the camaraderie of a searc…

“You’ve Never Met a Muslim”

By Hussein Rashid

…t me when guys spat at my sari crossing Canal Street; when people tried to scare a Sikh friend I was with at the Tribeca Grand; when my Christian neighbor told me she was getting threatening phone calls because of her Arab last name; when a Hindu Indian friend told me her kids were getting beaten up on the school bus. The irony of my T-shirt hit me then. I threw it away. I never felt like Muslim values—tolerance, compassion, generosity, honesty—we…

Recovering From Rejection: The Second Coming of Ted Haggard

By Wendy Norris

…s is insanity but I’m gonna to do it.” The fallen pastor’s own Road to Damascus is taking place just off Interquest Parkway in Colorado Springs, a city referred to as the Jerusalem of evangelicalism. Meet Ted Haggard 2.0 “I’m going to teach the Scripture,” Haggard tells me in his living room two days before the service. “But I’m going to teach it first person singular. I’m going to tell you how God has worked in my life and you can work it out wit…

Yes, It’s Worse To Be Gay in Russia

By Chrissy Stroop

…bravery. The law that passed in June—which is, I think, best explained as cheap populist scapegoating—has served to activate and embolden widespread homophobia, which seems to me to have been previously often latent (the homophobia I encountered in Vladimir 10 years ago was none too aggressive). Phenomena like “Occupy Pedophilia” have appeared on the scene. Although it’s hard to say exactly how common anti-LGBT violence is in Russia, it should be…

Trayvon Martin and American Exceptionalism

By Anthea Butler

…even have the courtesy to check Trayvon’s phone for his mom and dad’s telephone numbers because it’s just a black criminal’s body to them. While Zimmerman the trigger man slept in his bed, the police ordered a drug and alcohol test for Trayvon’s lifeless body. A black body that was representative of evil against the whiteness of George Zimmerman. I hesitated to write about this story, because there are many good stories about Trayvon and his pare…

Swiss Priest Sacked for Blessing Lesbian Couple; Mormon Equality Advocate Excommunicated; Pope-Backed Anti-Gay Referendum Fails; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…the host of the “Mormon Stories” podcast was excommunicated following a disciplinary hearing on Sunday. The conflict between Dehlin and church leadership has been brewing for some months; Dehlin wrote in July that he thought he was “being considered for disciplinary action” because of his website and podcast, his pro-LGBT values, and his support for female clergy. Last June the church excommunicated Kate Kelly, a human rights lawyer who advocated…

“Giving Godhead”: A Bloody Vision of Religion’s Deepest Influence

By Spencer Dew

…n—the broken body of the dead man, the virgin writing in labor, plus those scores of angels with swords and prophets who marry whores or eat scrolls and insist the parchment tastes just like the honey of that many-mansioned heaven in the by-and-by sky. Krieger shows us the bodily as both central to and taboo within that tradition. Something two-faced lurks, these poems suggest, in the way we cry out the word God when we writhe like the damned in h…

Milquetoast Liberal Religion Won’t Challenge Conservative Values: A History Lesson

By Sheila D. Collins

…of art, gave concerts, set up theaters throughout the country, ran nursery schools, served over 1.2 billion school lunches to needy children, gave immunizations, taught illiterate adults to read and write, conducted surveys of economic, social and geophysical conditions, collected forgotten pieces of the nation’s heritage like the slave narratives, and wrote state guidebooks—classics that are still in use, providing invaluable material for histori…