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Hold Your Applause: Potential Changes to Roles of Catholic Women and LGBTQ+ People May Just Be Vatican Breadcrumbing

By Mary E. Hunt

…erstandably praised the move. There’s also a provision to change the usual number of 10 men from religious congregations who can vote in synods to five women religious and five men religious. Why they’re somehow in a different category than other lay people remains unclear, but this counts as progress. Nathalie Becquart, a French woman and a member of the Congregation of Xavières, was named an undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops making her the…

Transgender and Christian: Finding Identity

By Jori Lewis

…exuals represent approximately .25 to 1 percent of the US population. That number does not include the transgender people who haven’t undergone sex reassignment surgery (a process many people call “the transition”), so the number of transgender-identified people is likely much higher. The term “transgender” encompasses anyone with a gender identity that is different from his or her birth sex. A transgender person could be someone who just cross-dr…

Along Came a Spider: What the Pope Doesn’t See

By Anthea Butler

…y, as many of the dioceses in the United States become uninsurable and the number of Catholic churches dwindles. As membership shrinks, the number of ordinations decreases, and the coffers dry up, perhaps the Vatican and its leadership will be forced to look at its decrepit, hierarchical structure, and fix it. I doubt it, however. Like the spider who crawled across Pope Benedict’s robes this weekend in Prague, everyone except the Pope can see the…

RD10Q: The Fight Against Feminism

By Kathryn Joyce

…ing their children to do the same, they could win the culture wars through numbers alone. What’s the most important take-home message for readers? My main concern about these convictions is not so much the plans for Christian dominion that Quiverfull authors and homeschooling ministries discuss, but rather that in the service of these ideas, many women are subjecting themselves to an often punishing lifestyle. Quiverfull is not just about the…

The Religious Case Against Religious Discrimination in Cakeshop Case

By Patrick Hornbeck

…like Phillips’s. But, as survey after survey has demonstrated, substantial numbers of Catholics, and to a lesser extent evangelicals as well, are not following their denominations’ leaders down this particular road, and there is a growing number of religious institutions that have embraced marriage equality and advocated for LGBTQ+ rights in the public square. Cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop make it clear that the boundaries of a national settleme…

Debunking the Myth That Democracy Is “Incompatible” With Islam

By Asma Afsaruddin

…ic world. This premise is then seized upon by religious reactionaries in a number of Muslim-majority countries in order to undermine democracy as a godless concept, the importation of which would destroy the very fabric of Muslim-majority societies. It would appear that neither position is in tune with the actual aspirations and lived realities of ordinary people throughout the world. Making the Case for Democracy in Islamic Terms Democracy stripp…

Black Churches are Burning: Is It the 1990s All Over Again?

By Katie Day

…what had been part of the African American experience for generations. (A number of the sites, in fact, had been victims of arson in the past.) Perhaps going forward after Charleston, we no longer will be able to plead ignorance of the unacceptable targeting of faith communities by those filled with racial hatred. There are certainly preventative measures that churches can take. But the deeper work of prevention is the responsibility of all of us…

A Secret History of Satan

By W. Scott Poole

…ed and challenged by the book. For example, I am fascinated by the growing number of pop culture addicts who want to examine how their interest in fantasy, science fiction, horror, and the fantastic in general connects to theology, popular religion, and the sacred more generally. There is a real and growing audience out there for this approach as evidenced by Gary Laderman’s book Sacred Matters, Joseph Laycock’s very interesting study Vampires Tod…

Mexico moves toward national marriage equality; Greek govt announces civil partnership legislation; Pope warns against ‘secularism and relativism’; Global LGBT recap

By Peter Montgomery

…be learned through experiences in life. In every society, there is a small number of people with homosexuality tendencies. “The practice needs regulation like any other human behaviour especially to protect the vulnerable. There is need for further studies to address sexuality in the African context.” It was later found that the study claimed no such thing, and the politicians had been deliberately highlighting phrases which already suited their v…

The Quixotic Task of Debunking David Barton

By Paul Harvey

…he same tack with the likes of Barton? It’s not clear. In recent months, a number of voices have demanded that historians rise to the task of debunking Barton’s claims, insisting that they cannot remain in their ivory towers. Even some historians who consistently have done so, such as John Fea, were criticized; evidently for not doing it enough. In a more popular and polemical vein, Chris Rodda has also exposed Barton’s distortions. Not surprisin…