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Are We Entering the End Times for Mainline Seminaries?

By Elesha Coffman

…nce existed mainly to train full-time pastors faced reductions in both the number of churches that could support such positions and the number of people eager to take the more challenging, but lower paying, church jobs that remained. Some seminaries shifted their missions to serve the academy or society more broadly, while others trained more part-time, second-career and lay pastors. These shifts were less abrupt than decisions to close or merge a…

RDPulpit: Rick Warren and the Limits of Empathy

By Tom Davis

…Rick Warren signed a statement of concern about global warming, joining a number of the new breed of evangelicals, much to the chagrin of the old guard like James Dobson. The press began to talk about the expanded agenda of the “new evangelicals,” an agenda not limited to the old shibboleths of abortion and opposition to gay marriage. The Five Non-Negotiable Issues Despite all the above, on a number of issues critical to women’s lives, he remains…

Lesbian Rabbi to Lead SoCal Board, Includes Orthodox

By Benjamin Weiner

…bbis pushing for more inclusiveness, and what I assume to be a significant number of modern Orthodox (as opposed to ultra-Orthodox) Jews who have plenty of sympathy for gays and lesbians, and probably number many of them among their friends, but can’t yet see a way to harmonize this personal sentiment with their larger religious commitments. It’s important to bear this denominational scorecard in mind when considering Eger’s appointment, because a…

Scottish Episcopal Church Angers Conservative Anglicans With Embrace of Same-Sex Marriage; and more in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…tation is wrong. Bulgaria: Pride activists, protected by police, vastly outnumber far-right protesters The leader of the neo-Nazi National Resistance planned a counter-protest to Saturday’s Pride march; last week he urged people to bring “brooms and shovels with wooden handles” to “cleanse Sofia from garbage.” Human Rights Watch has some history: Sofia Pride marchers have faced hateful rhetoric and violence in the past, and only tepid police prote…

The Demographic that Should Keep Rove Awake at Night

By Katherine Stewart

…ation. That said, lack of religious affiliation is also common among Asian Americans: while 42 percent of Asian Americans identify as Christian, 26 percent report themselves as religiously unaffiliated, in a significant increase over the general population, and 73 percent of Asian Americans voted for Obama. Like any group of this size, the religiously unaffiliated aren’t monolithic. About a third self-identify as atheists, while the rest say they…

Conservative Christianity and Its Discontents

By Karl Giberson and Randall J. Stephens

…not an illness. It does not require treatment and is not changeable.” The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, along with numerous other professional organizations, have adopted similar stances. But still young people, including those that frequent the clinic run by Michelle Bachmann’s husband, are encouraged to seek deliverance from their condition. The emerging acceptance of homosexuality and gay marriage, claim…

Mormon Leaders Slam ‘Counterfeit’ Gay Families; Vatican Resists Gay Ambassador; ISIS Executes Man for Homosexuality; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…‘family shame’ and violence Reuters’ Alisa Tang reported this week on the number of LGBT people in “largely patriarachal and conservative” Asian countries who are flocking to cities and increasingly leaving their home countries to escape the “family shame factor” and live more freely. Activists say including sexual orientation and gender identity in laws, policies and programs to prevent violence against women and children would reduce family vio…

Great Moments In Bipartisanship: Bible Edition

By Daniel Schultz

…place of Jesus distract from his soteriological agenda. Hearings produce a number of shepherds willing to testify that Jesus was born in a Bethlehem-area stable, but doubters refuse to concede, pointing to a document showing a Nazareth birth three years before the founding of that city. [Luke 6:20]: Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God.” GOP leaders immediately label this socialism. [ John 2:1-12]: Jesus apologizes fo…

Blood and Politics — Christian White Nationalism in the Age of Obama

By Bill Berkowitz

…onomic luck. Instead, they are demographically much like the rest of White Americans, working class and middle class with a significant stratum of middle class professionals—professors, lawyers, chiropractors, etc.—as their leaders. And, these are not a string of disconnected organizations sharing only a common set of hatreds. Rather, this is a single movement, with a common set of leaders and interlocking memberships that hold a complete and some…

The Story Behind the Catholic Church’s Stunning Contraception Reversal

By Patricia Miller

…limited to procreation; that it was acceptable to limit family size for a number of reasons; and that it was licit to use the naturally occurring sterile period to do so. Enter Catholic physician John Rock. By designing a contraceptive that used hormones already present in a woman’s body to mimic the natural infertility of a pregnant woman, he hoped the Vatican would find a theological basis to approve the method. In 1958, when the Pill was alrea…