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Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue

By Cody J. Sanders

…ill never be physically attacked by another human being, all of us know we are targets. A Theology of Anti-Gay Bullying Anti-gay bullying is a theological issue because it has a theological base. I find it difficult to believe that even those among us with a vibrant imagination can muster the creative energy to picture a reality in which anti-gay violence and bullying exist without the anti-gay religious messages that support them. These messages…

This Year in Satanism

By Joseph Laycock

…tional media attention after they announced plans to hold a black mass at Harvard University as part of a series of cultural performances. Conservative Catholic bloggers whipped up a frenzy with speculation that a consecrated host would be desecrated during the performance. The black mass was cancelled at the last minute as 1500 protesting Catholics held a Eucharistic procession down Massachusetts Avenue. Some observers opined that this cancellati…

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

By John Wigger

…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 was right. How do you feel about the…

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

…the light of the now nearly-thousand years of tension (and sometimes open warfare) between Western and Eastern Christendom, a history that’s frequently seen the Catholic Church operate in the role of aggressor or opportunist. This history begins roughly in 1054, the formal break in communion between the Latin Western Christian Church, headed by the Roman papacy, and the four historical patriarchates of the Eastern Church. The split was preceded by…

Glenn Beck’s Salvation Army

By Peter Montgomery

…truck with what seems like a glaring contradiction. On one hand, Beck and Barton are placing huge political and historical importance on a belief in individual salvation, as opposed to the collective salvation envisioned by liberation theology. But when it comes to worshipping God, religious right leaders insist that individual prayer and praise is not enough; Americans have what you might call a collective duty, as a nation, to acknowledge our de…

Orthodox Jews Begin to Reckon with Sexual Abuse

By Paul Berger

…or less prevalent in the Orthodox community than anywhere else; but there are a number of peculiarities to Orthodox Jewish life that have made the reporting of abuse less common than in society at large. “I think the subject of abuse is probably the same in any religious community,” says Michael Salomon, a Long Island psychiatrist, who has just finished working on an as-yet-unpublished book about sexual abuse in the Orthodox world. “Different rel…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…few countries around the world criminalize irreligion as such, many impose arbitrary burdens on secular manifestations of conscience that are not experienced by others. These include laws and policies regulating: • apostasy and religious conversion; • blasphemy and religious criticism; • compulsory religious registration, usually with a government proscribed list of permitted religions; • religious requirements or restrictions on government ID car…

Debate Heats Up Over “Francis Effect”

By Patricia Miller

…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 find folks who know someone who’s thinking about returning to the church or who feels less horrible about the church than in the darkest days of the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal, which had Boston at its epicenter. That’s a pretty low bar, but of course n…

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

By Christopher D. Cantwell

…henomenon, the editors conclude, and the troubling features of any particular part of the movement should not distract us from the integrity of the whole. Noll even ends the collection with yet another metaphorical flourish, suggesting that scholars no longer think of evangelicalism as a religious “World Series,” where events in the United States determine a victor, but as a “World Cup,” where an international diversity of teams are on display. Th…