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UN Human Rights Council Creates LGBT Watchdog; Orthodox Council Affirms Traditional Teaching on Family; Pope Francis Says Church Should Apologize to Gays; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…26. The Russian Orthodox Church, which represented about 2/3 of the world’s 250-300 million Orthodox Christians, pulled out days before the convening. After a week of deliberations, the Council released an official message on Monday. The message encourages dialogue with non-Orthodox Christians for the purpose of helping them “know more precisely the authenticity of the Orthodox Tradition,” while stating that the dialogues “never imply a compromise…

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

By Peter Laarman

…nationally on February 14—Valentine’s Day. The campaign will also offer on-the-ground organizing support to existing advocacy groups both inside and outside of denominational lines. Extravagant Welcome While some 40 million mainline Protestants in seven denominations form the primary target audience of Believe Out Loud, the campaign’s viral outreach is also expected to attract the attention and involvement of significant numbers of Roman Catholic…

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

By Peter Laarman

…say “I’m not with them”? You witness the Terri Schiavo madness, the loony 9-11-related comments of Falwell and Robertson, Ralph Reed’s embrace of Jack Abramoff, the Ted Haggard melodrama—who wouldn’t cringe in embarrassment? Who wouldn’t want to have another religion, or no religion, rather than be identified with the Christers? The second point deserves some discussion. Frances Kissling posted a fine piece in this magazine earlier on the god-awfu…

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

By Frederick Clarkson

…me as the old playbooks, advises legislators to engage in political sleight-of-hand in the framing of legislation, the CPCF’s about page remains unambiguous about their intentions. Their mission, they say, is to unite “government leaders at local, state and federal levels, as well as everyday citizens” to restore “Judeo-Christian* principles to their rightful place.” To carry this out, they say, “We support legislators who promote policies that up…

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

…s, probably not; or whether “it is written.” As we work our way to the fade-to-white-light finish and the final answer, we become less and less persuaded that randomness, cheating, or even his personal brilliance drives Jamal’s story. Dev Patel plays Jamal as a fairly modest, ordinary guy: street smart and resilient, but not a genius. Despite the presence of primarily Muslim main characters, there doesn’t appear to be a particularly Islamic vision…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…secularist, atheist, and humanist organizations including the Washington DC-based Center for Inquiry and the London-based International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). Full disclosure: I have worked with both organizations and consulted on the report, titled “Freedom of Thought 2012: A Global Report on Discrimination Against Humanists, Atheists, and the Nonreligious,” which was released on December 10, Human Rights Day. The IHEU report observe…

The Only Common Denominator of American Conservatism is Anti-Blackness

By Yannick Marshall

…d nothing more. They, it’s believed, have long renounced the apartheid, pro-slavery and ethno-state dreams of earlier generations, but see no need to throw the baby out with the bath water. The fact that anti-Black white nationalist organizing during Reconstruction “was necessarily secret since open opposition of any kind would be considered rebellion,” however, should mean that no declaration of a ‘coming to Jesus’ moment on race by today’s conse…

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

By Christopher D. Cantwell

…gton’s famed Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, wherein he laid out his four-part description of evangelicals noted above. This view became the field’s prevailing paradigm, as the remaining reprints of the book’s first part make clear. An old Noll article on social survey data, a recent etymology of the term “evangelical” by historian Linford Fisher, and a roundtable commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Evangelicalism in Modern Britain fro…

Modern Vampires: Your Neighbors and Spouses

By Joseph Laycock

…here a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? Yes, The Re-Enchantment of the West, Volumes I & II by Christopher Partridge. I first discovered Partridge because he has written on the modern vampire community. The term “re-enchantment” appears with increasing frequency, but it is usually invoked rather than defined. Partridge convincingly argues that secularization has actually created the conditions for new and meaningful forms o…