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Special Hell: Progressive Catholics Reckon With the Rise of Trump

By Patricia Miller

…of Catholic Bishops’ recently-concluded annual meeting, they elected Galveston-Houston Archbishop Daniel DiNardo, an outspoken advocate of immigrant rights, as president, and Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, a Mexican immigrant, and prominent support of immigrants, as vice president. At the same time, says Krueger, the bishops are “acting in a very pragmatic way to develop a relationship with the Trump administration [at the expense of] losing…

What Do ‘The Christians’ Believe? Easter Reflections from a Non-Christian

By Gary Laderman

…at do the Christians believe? We are witnessing what could be one of the most destructive scandals ever in the Catholic Church. A flurry of reports and allegations have been in the news recently of institutional authorities covering up or taking lightly charges against priests who have taken a vow of celibacy and are accused of sexually abusing children and misusing their power. Although it is not yet clear how Pope Benedict XVI will deal with the…

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

By John Wigger

…ion talk show format, which Bakker pioneered with Pat Robertson at the Christian Broadcasting Network in the 1960s, PTL’s private satellite network, launched in 1978, a year before ESPN, and the theme park, Heritage USA. The Bakkers signature television show, the PTL Club, was broadcast live, five days a week, with little scripting. Tammy once did an episode on a merry-go-round. One cast member threw up in the dog costume he was wearing as they sp…

Holy Father, You’re Not Helping: The Problem with the Pope’s Plan to Consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

By Katherine Kelaidis

…re converted; and as we’ve already discussed, in light of the history of East-West Christian relations it’s easy to see this ritual as implying exactly that. And that’s ignoring the fact that consecrating Ukraine and Russia at the same time, because of a prophecy about Russia, is probably less than ideal in the midst of a war in which the independence of Ukraine is at issue. To be clear, there’s almost certainly no ill intent on the part of Pope F…

Glenn Beck’s Salvation Army

By Peter Montgomery

…against adherents to the social gospel as well as a political weapon against the constitutional principle of church-state separation, the bedrock of individual religious liberty. I’m not going to evaluate Beck’s interpretation of liberation theology here. (For a thoughtful response to Beck’s interpretation of liberation theology, see RD’s interview with scholar Serene Jones by Elijah Prewitt-Davis.) But it is clear that Beck is dismissing the fai…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…ntries studied, 32 (16%) have anti-blasphemy laws, 20 (10%) have laws against apostasy, and 87 (44%) have laws against the defamation of religion, including hate speech against religious groups. Pew has consistently documented that such laws, often publicly defended as being motivated by respect for religion, are actually correlated with the suppression of religion. Countries with more prohibitions against blasphemy, apostasy, and religious insult…

Dear White Evangelicals: A Black Square Ain’t Gonna Cut It

By Jhas Williams

…h their black brothers and sisters in Christ” is at best, laughable. At worst it stirs up old trauma that I and others who share my experience have spent small fortunes in therapy and other personal work to undo. And in some sad sense, we’re the fortunate ones. Others have unintentionally internalized this hatred which manifested later in a variety of self-destructive behaviors. It’s the price so many have had to pay for the seeds of self-hatred t…

Jesus Christ and Super Stars: How The Holy Rolled Mainstream in Pop Music

By Alana Massey

…ands like Jars of Clay essentially sang praise anthems while an angstier West Coast nouveau evangelical ethos emerged in bands like P.O.D. On the other side of this spectrum were bands that positioned themselves as anti-Christian, though even their blasphemies came up short. Marilyn Manson scared the daylights out of children and parents alike in his 1990s heyday, but his most controversial album, Antichrist Superstar, was little more than a play…

Debate Heats Up Over “Francis Effect”

By Patricia Miller

Mitt Romney’s delusional 2012 pollsters got nothing on apologists for last week’s Pew Poll that found no real “Francis effect” from the pope’s first year. According to Daniel Burke at CNN.com in a lengthy, mostly anecdotal piece, “there’s more way than one to measure the pontiff’s influence” than, say, actual metrics like the number of people going to mass or returning to the church. According to Burke, you just have to “ask around” Boston to fin…

8: The Mormon Proposition Gets It Right

By Joanna Brooks

…polygamy days of the late nineteenth century and reaffirms some of the oldest and least favorable public stereotypes of Mormons as an insular, secretive, manipulative people. During the campaign season, many of us who were Mormon and supported marriage equality found ourselves in the otherworldly situation of trying to communicate to outsiders the magnitude of what we saw happening inside our Church, only to be met—for the most part—with disinte…