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An Extravagant Welcome For All: Believe Out Loud, a Faith-Based LGBT Campaign, Launches

By Peter Laarman

…ndous new movement that will give these conflicted clergy friends better opportunities to raise their voices in support of love, hospitality, and justice for all people.” The Uncertain Middle A major strength of the new campaign is that it builds directly a very large and recent quantitative study of clergy attitudes that was conducted by Robert P. Jones of Public Religion Research. Jones identified roughly 40 percent of mainline clergy in the “un…

A Post-Christian America? Not Quite—Though Devoutly to be Wished

By Peter Laarman

…lar—is extremely well represented on the panel. Moreover, she makes this important observation: …under the Bush administration the views of Council members on these issues were largely irrelevant. President Obama has made these views important as a substantial part of the Council’s mission relates to women’s role and sexual and reproductive rights. So what’s this about? I have a theory, and I admit it’s only a theory, that the Obamans continue to…

Exclusive: Christian Right Bill Mill, Project Blitz, Hasn’t Gone Away, It’s Just Gotten More Secretive

By Frederick Clarkson

…of a second playbook and the unwanted media attention that followed our reports (from The New York Times, Salon, The Guardian, Religion News Service, USA Today, Church & State magazine and many more) the sponsoring Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (CPCF) scrubbed everything under the rubric of Project Blitz from their site. One Ohio state senator went so far as to lie to a reporter about even knowing about Project Blitz—despite being the st…

After More Mass Shootings It’s Time to Call Out White Supremacy in the Pews

By Peter Laarman

…what’s going on, but too few seem capable of saying it. We now have a fair number of political and civic leaders who are willing to say the word trauma and talk about the all-pervasive violence in this culture, not to mention the extent of mental disturbance and the fact that American civilians have more assault rifles in their possession than does the U.S. military. All well and good. But we have too few leaders who will talk about the deeper roo…

Life as a Game Show: Reading Slumdog Millionaire

By Paul Courtright

…lf to the world in ways that allow multiple translations—is powerful and important. Being written—destiny—is not the same as passive acceptance. Jamal’s sense of destiny does not lead him to resignation; it energizes him. His devotion to Latika provides him a polestar that enables him to navigate through the turbulent waters of the postmodern city. As far as the complaint that the movie rehashes a negative image of India, I have to disagree. The s…

U.S. Bishops Reject Pope Francis’ Priorities

By Patricia Miller

…same-sex marriage, which now total nine, changes that National Catholic Reporter blogger Michael Sean Winters notes “clearly are designed to make it lean more to the right and to the GOP.” The final straw was the leadership elections. Four candidates for key posts within the conference were “Francis” candidates—bishops he has elevated since 2014. Despite this, Youngstown, OH, Bishop George Murry, won for the not terribly consequential post of cha…

Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue

By Cody J. Sanders

…iolence and bullying exist without the anti-gay religious messages that support them. These messages come in many forms, degrees of virulence, and volumes of expression. The most insidious forms, however, are not those from groups like Westboro Baptist Church. Most people quickly dismiss this fanaticism as the red-faced ranting of a fringe religious leader and his small band of followers. More difficult to address are the myriad ways in which ever…

When God and Gender Mix: New Book Examines the Southern Holiness Movement

By Colin Chapell

…ge how they understand their own identity. If academic achievement and the number or type of initials after your name is the most important thing in the world to you, then it will change how you view your own masculinity and femininity. Similarly, if having children matters most to you, then you can only be truly “manly” or “feminine” if you have kids. Is there anything you had to leave out? Historians always want to include every interesting anec…

More Than Big Hair and Money: Jim, Tammy Faye and the Media “Holy Wars” of the 80s

By John Wigger

…American religion and culture, which meant that they had no shortage of supporters and critics on either side, particularly with regard to the prosperity gospel. What alternative title would you give the book? My working title was Pressed Down, Shaken Together, which comes from one of the favorite Bible verses of prosperity preachers at the time, including Jim Bakker. But my editor thought that it was too obscure for most readers and I’m sure she…

How the Study of Evangelicalism Has Blinded Us to the Problems in Evangelical Culture

By Christopher D. Cantwell

…gly clear, the majority of those who think of themselves as evangelical support Trump, not in spite of his racism, chauvinism, and Christian nationalism; they support him because evangelicals have long served as one of white supremacy’s greatest allies. Yet for too long the study of evangelicalism has sanitized the political and racial elements of American evangelical history by focusing solely upon its piety and theology. It’s well past time to c…