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The “Scandal” of the Catholic Vote

By Kate Childs Graham

…express our congratulations on your historic election as President of the United States. The people of our country have entrusted you with a great responsibility. As Catholic Bishops, we offer our prayers that God give you strength and wisdom to meet the coming challenges…” – Letter to President-elect Barack Obama from Cardinal Francis George, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops And some celebrated the gains the Catholic…

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Catholic Voter Guides

By Kate Childs Graham

…to make explicit their commitment to the global common good.” The Bad: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops put out its regular guide entitled Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States. This guide is quite lengthy at 42 pages. They set forth ten policy goals for voters to consider ranging from abortion to same-sex marriage to immigration reform to war…

Methodist Church’s ‘Dismantling Racism Initiative’ Excludes Some Black Lives

By Pamela R. Lightsey

…re matter, are members of the LGBTQ community? How serious can Black LGBTQ United Methodists take this new initiative that doesn’t contain a clear stance against homophobia and transphobia? Have our denominational leaders not yet learned Black Lives Matter means ALL Black Lives Matter, including members of the LGBTQ community? It was not too long ago that many of us sought to make this point at the denomination’s 2016 General Conference. About 150…

Denying Darwin: Another Peculiar American Institution

By Lauri Lebo

…a comparative religions class. The notion that this isn’t the case in the United States is surprising to the British. Unlike in the United States, where evangelicals preach that unless you are washed in the blood of Christ you will perish in hell, the British are less likely to be presented with such a strict religious dichotomy. “To me, they always seemed more like stories,” said Hodgson, who, along with Gordon, is studying human evolutionary be…

Jose Antonio Vargas’ Coming Out and the Power of Stories over Religious Remonstrances

By Sarah Posner

…cusses how his mother and grandparents, knowing that they got him into the United States without proper documentation, believed his undocumented status could eventually be rectified if he married an American citizen. But what they didn’t know was that Vargas is gay. He therefore falls into a category of undocumented immigrants who, unlike straight people, have no marriage-related immigration rights. That is, the American citizen in LGBT binational…

Lila Rose and the Right Resurrect Malicious Child Predator Myth Putting LGBTQ People in Even Greater Danger

By R.L. Stollar

…orizes Anthony Comstock, the man who inspired the 1873 Comstock Act in the United States. According to Steven K. Green, this federal law enabled Comstock “to seize objectionable material and prosecute people for transmitting ‘obscene’ items [like birth control] through the US mail.” The law was finally struck down as unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in the 1965 decision Griswold v. Connecticut—though people like Rose would like…

The Traitor Chaplain Who Gave Government Prayer to America — A 4th of July Corrective

By Andrew L. Seidel

…tion was ratified two years later, in 1789. When Duché prayed there was no United States of America, the colonies hadn’t even declared independence. There was no godless Constitution drawing its power from We the People, rather than a deity. The First Amendment to that Constitution wasn’t ratified for two more years (1791). In short, there was no constitutional separation between state and church. But judges and justices, whose sole job is to inte…

Attacks on Tim Walz’s Lutheran Denomination are Undermined by Reality — I Mean, Is ELCA Even Exciting Enough for Controversy?

By Daniel Schultz

…tors by noting that White evangelical Protestants turned out in far higher numbers for the former president. So perhaps the matter of ELCA support for Trump is simply a matter of perspective. On the other hand, the ELCA vote for Trump was substantially higher than that of Muslims, Jews, or the religiously unaffiliated. Likewise, 32% of ELCA members describe themselves as “conservative,” which is 20 percentage points lower than among Missouri Synod…

Claremont and the Agony of the Seminaries

By Daniel Schultz

…rgy (i.e., Christians, Jews and Muslims): In a terse statement Friday, the United Methodist University Senate announced that it had rescinded a public warning and restored funding to the school, which will remain affiliated with the church. The senate oversees all Methodist-affiliated seminaries. Claremont President Jerry Campbell said the change of heart came after the school managed to allay fears “that we were turning a United Methodist-related…

Sacred&Profane: Wilco Worship and the “Churn” in American Religion

By Gary Laderman

Another survey, another indication that religious life in the United States can no longer be captured by surveys. According to “Faith in Flux,” a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Americans change their religious affiliation at least once in their lives, and the largest-growing group in what the report poetically describes as the “churn within American religion,” is the “unaffiliated”—an amorphous community of former Cat…