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As Florida Attempts to Make it Illegal, an Argument for the Sacred Work of White Discomfort

By Robert P. Jones

…end of a hard practice, One of my most demanding coaches would say, “It’s time to run.” If anyone dared to ask, “How many laps?” or “How long?” his regular response was, “Until I get tired.” Those practices often meant painfully pushing through a wall of fatigue with no end in sight. My best coaches also relentlessly pointed out my individual shortcomings: tactical mistakes, sloppy play, insufficient leadership, and inadequate strategic compensat…

Prosperity Gospel Is Not the Only Problem with Joel Osteen’s Harvey Response

By Brie Loskota and Peter Gudaitis

…ay, but rather that the church may not have imagined itself as a leader in times of humanitarian crisis. Or, if it had prepared for leadership, it did not share those plans in a timely manner. When life gets hard, people often turn to religion and spirituality. To not have a call-to-action or guidance makes the whole operation feel morally bankrupt. Accurate or not, any action the church takes now looks like Osteen’s attempt to save face rather th…

What To Do When Fred Phelps Arrives in Your Neighborhood

By Susan Henking

…in overt ways. Cohocton is a small town, with a population in 2009 of about 800 people. It is in upstate New York. It is not my small town, nor is it likely yours; and yet each of these places is someone’s neighborhood. This time, it is only an hour away for me. Picketing as “The Workingman’s Means of Communication” On March 2, 2011, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in response to a series of prior decisions around Westboro Baptist Church’s pi…

Time is on Our Side

By Amina Wadud

…erstandably one of the first markers humans used for the cycles of passing time. By the time scientists realized, for one thing, that the earth is NOT the center of the universe with the sun revolving around it, the problem with the full solar year needed to be addressed. That is because 12 cycles of the moon, from thin crescent or hilal to full, and back again, still do not complete the earth’s rotation around the sun. That cycle is 11 (and one q…

My Lowest Point

By Amina Wadud

…ace. We’d made plans to meet up in case we got separated and had exchanged phone numbers. In the middle of the tawaf, the call to prayer came. The guards stopped the tawaf. Some people complied and started to form lines. I found a spot between two women, each with their husbands, and sat down on the line. This seemed an ideal spot until a woman in black niqab squeezed in on my left just as we started the prayer. Okay then. Before we had completed…

Religious Hostility to Gay Nigerians; The Pope’s Visit To Africa; Ireland’s Religious Schools Can’t Discriminate Against Gays; Orthodox Church in Georgia Leads Anti-Gay Forces; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…homosexuality in the Africa is important to the future of the church for a number of reasons: It may well be that Pope Francis decided that a six-day whistle-stop tour of Africa was not the place to raise an issue of such delicacy. Debate on the place of gays in the church would require time for a more softer, gradualist approach. But the issue is a double impediment for Francis — and one which he should have begun publicly to address. It is a mas…

In a Time of Irrational Fear and New Media: The Deadly ‘Dance Plague’ at 500

By Ed Simon

…milarly disruptive to the psychic well-being of your fellow citizens? At a time when a disturbingly large number of people believe in the “QAnon” conspiracy; when “pizzagate” inspired a gunman to raid a pizzeria; where “flat-Earthers” have a growing fan-base; or where people ingest Tide Pods; can we really argue that these aren’t as foolish a bit of mass hysteria as dancing oneself to death? Scottish journalist Charles Mackay contends in his 1841…

Are You There God? It’s Me, Donald: A President at Prayer

By Peter Laarman

…een a good conversation. You’ve been great. So great. I’ve always been the best at praying. You know who told me that? Billy Graham himself. He told me, “Donald, you pray better than I do, and I am the most famous Christian in the world.” He told me that last week in a great, great phone call. Oh, and Fred Douglass. I need to get his input, too. Just this morning I told them, the great African Americans who supported me completely, what an amazing…

Lying About Our Religion, And Other Problems With Polling

By Michael Schulson

…ow does not offer constructive suggestions. Polls and surveys are probably best at tracking very specific, narrow trends over time. They’re also stronger when paired with in-depth qualitative research. These kinds of studies are more expensive, and more limited in their aims. Wuthnow is right when he suggests, following a report from the American Academy of Political and Social Science, that “money for polls about religion would be better spent on…

Pastor of Kentucky Church Severed From Baptists Over LGBT Inclusion: Not Activism, Just Honesty

By Mike Greer

…o LGBT inclusion? I’ve been at Crescent Hill seven years. I came about the time that folks from Burma began arriving in large numbers and uniting in membership with Crescent Hill, and much of my time in those early years was spent trying to figure out how in the world we might be able to be a unified body that includes people who don’t speak English, who have a completely foreign background and cultural experience. It took a lot of hard work but w…