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Why is the State Department Opening an Office of “Religious Engagement”?

By Austin Dacey

…n religion. The office of religious engagement arose from the efforts of a number of State Department employees including the former policy staffer Judd Birdsall, who in 2009 started an informal discussion forum that was to become known as the Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group. Last October, the working group submitted a white paper (posted by working group member Chris Seiple) proposing a permanent institution housed at State. “In many pl…

New Challenges to Gay Marriage Bans From Within States & Denominations

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…e-noticed move by much of the media (and even hard to find on their own website), The Disciples of Christ voted at its general assembly in Orlando, Florida this month to affirm LGBT people as members and leaders in the denomination. On the heels of that move, 85 retired United Methodist clergy announced they would defy their denomination’s ban on performing same-sex weddings. “We will refuse to treat people as inferior, second-class citizens of Go…

Mormons Absorb SCOTUS Prop 8 Ruling

By Joanna Brooks

…taking out a defensive position in defense of religious freedom. (Read the official LDS Church reaction here.) In one Washington, D.C., area stake, LDS Church leaders sent an email message to members requesting their attendance at a National Day of Prayer on religious freedom convened by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this Thursday in Arlington, Virginia. “We have been encouraged to have 20 members from our stake attend this event,” the m…

Christian Colleges, Gay Faculty—and the Boy Scouts

By L Marston

…stian Reformed Church synod, with which Calvin College is associated, voted 154-24 not to reconsider its official position which states “that homosexual orientation is a ‘condition of disordered sexuality that reflects the brokenness of our sinful world.’” The synod did vote 135-43 to create a committee to consider certain questions in light of the legalization of same sex marriage in the U.S. and Canada: “[whether] CRC church buildings can host g…

Freedom Through the Eyes of Bishops and Filmmakers

By Peter Montgomery

…he San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival. The festival features a number of religion-themed films not likely to be endorsed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. In fact, there are 22 films tagged by festival organizers as having religious or spiritual themes. Among them: Joy: Portrait of a Nun profiles Sister Missionary P. Delight and other members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the San Francisco-based performance art / po…

Inventing “Jihad”

By Asma Afsaruddin

…tions also contribute to the formation of such views. Militant Islamist websites and print literature reinforce such ideas. More sophisticated and/or sympathetic sources will often refer to the “greater” and “lesser” jihad—or the spiritual versus the physical jihad—and the greater importance of the former. However, the assertion that Muslims as a collectivity must continue to wage a military jihad against non-Muslims in order to expand Muslim real…

Traditional Mormon Sexual Purity Lesson Contributed to Captivity, Elizabeth Smart Tells University Audience

By Joanna Brooks

…these days, we do. Because (we hope) times are changing. We celebrate new official LDS Church curriculum for Mormon young women that eradicates the old chastity object lessons, even as we know that clearing them from Mormon culture will take much, much longer. And Mormon feminists raise their voices (here and here) about ways we’re still not doing young women in Mormonism many favors in the way we teach sexuality and particularly in a hyper-empha…

No Room for Non-Theists at Boston Interfaith Service

By Becky Garrison

…al event, held at Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston on Wednesday, April 18, was attended by President Obama along with representatives from the Protestant, Greek Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim faiths. Epstein notes, “We weren’t asking to speak and would have been more than content with simply an invitation to sit in an official capacity or have the non-theistic community mentioned, as we have been recognized in other instances by Obama…

Francis the Jesuit: a Philosopher-Pope?

By J. Michelle Molina

…life, to remain attuned to the lights and shadows, the fleeting moments of spiritual consolation to be fleshed out through action, attentive to the “what now?” of an ever-changing world. The Jesuit chases glimmers of spiritual consolation wherever it might take him and in the process grasps a “self” that, in the Jesuit mode, will always slip through his fingers. I observe Pope Francis’ mobility in the world in philosophical terms as “Zarathustrian…

LDS Church, US Government Swap Positions on Polygamy

By Holly Welker

…the constitution. Informed otherwise by the United States, they walked over 1,200 miles after the assassination of Joseph Smith in 1844, from Nauvoo, Illinois, to Salt Lake City, Utah, to secure that and other freedoms—only to exchange them for Utah’s statehood 50 years later. The process by which the LDS Church went from affirming polygamy as one of its most important principles to renouncing the practice and excommunicating any Mormon who engage…