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Commies, Blacks, Jews, the UCC and Other Threats to America

By Daniel Schultz

…aw. Good that they think we’re a bunch of wild-eyed radicals. If I and the members of my denomination scare Glenn Beck, that’s a good thing. It means they’re off-balance. Same goes for the ever-execrable Mark Tooley, writing the same hack piece for the 40,000th time at the Weekly Standard. He strains at gnats because ultimately he has nothing else to fall back on, no compelling ideology, no good news for anyone who hasn’t been following his worn-o…

Halloween, Evangelicals, and the Macabre

By John W. Morehead

…season itself, most evangelical churches will offer alternatives to church members, usually called “fall festivals,” since even using the term “Halloween” is frowned upon. At fall festivals kids will more or less do what other kids do on Halloween, though they’ll be costumed as Bible characters in an effort to present it as a distinct alternative. The rationale here, of course, is that Halloween is evil. Its roots are correctly understood as pagan…

We Were Here Before September 11th

By Amina Wadud

…was African-Americans. Ours is the story still not well known, despite our numbers. For one thing, after September 11th we were given a small reprieve. American prejudice and intolerance floated from us as African Americans, who happen to be Muslim, and focused on Muslims who happen to be Americans. Therefore the hatred built up against foreign Muslims immigrant and their offspring. More than a few African-American Muslims were content to sit back…

The American Media’s Longterm Ambivalence About the Papacy

By Peter Manseau

…mage forecasts that Life’s Catholic coverage would differ from Time’s in a number of ways. First and most obviously, it depicts a woman; second and perhaps less so, it depicts work. The lives of Catholics, the picture says, do not require the stillness or the clerical luxury depicted in many of Time’s cover images of prelates and popes. Life’s cover images of lived-religion would continue with the then-famous Dionne sisters (the first known quintu…

This Year in Satanism

By Joseph Laycock

…grounds in 2012. That story has continued to develop all year. Meanwhile, members of The Satanic Temple, led by spokesperson Lucien Greaves, have been working like fiends with campaigns from Tallahassee to Detroit to Cambridge. Several other Satanic groups have also shown increased activity—apparently jealous of Greaves and the media attention he’s received. For most, the year of Satanism has been either a sign of the apocalypse or a source of hi…

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

By John Wigger

…some of Jim and Tammy’s appeal. PTL was all about images so there were any number of options. Too bad books can’t come with a dozen different covers to choose from. Is there a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? I love the writing style of Lawrence Wright and Hampton Sides. They are both masters at weaving nonfiction into a page-turner. Anything half as good would be fine with me. What’s your next book? I’m not sure yet. Hopef…

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

…o Orthodox Christianity. The Pope’s decision to carry out the consecration service dates to a series of appearances of the Virgin Mary reported by three shepherd children in the small village of Fatima, Portugal between the spring 1916 and the autumn of 1917. During the appearance, the children received a series of prophecies and requests, among them that Russia (then in the midst of the Bolshevik Revolution) would be consecrated to the Immaculate…

Orthodox Jews Begin to Reckon with Sexual Abuse

By Paul Berger

…a chilul hashem. A friend of Kolko’s, Shaul Luban, sent a text message to members of the community urging them to pressure the father not to testify. Luban has since been charged with witness tampering and faces up to five years in prison. Meanwhile, nine leading Lakewood rabbis issued a proclamation telling followers that if they suspect a case of abuse they must go to a religious court, known as a beth din, before alerting the secular authoriti…

The Year of the Abusive Priest

By Anthea Butler

…stitutions for youth will be stripped bare because of lawsuit payouts, and number of vocations, already low, will become even lower because of the stigma attached to being a priest. The test of Moral Credibility has been found wanting, and the handwriting is on the wall. Even the National Catholic Reporter’s editorial page has called for the Pope to provide answers. No doubt about it, this is perhaps the second biggest crisis in “Christendom,” out…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…o “blasphemous content.” The IHEU reports being contacted by an increasing number of secularist groups organizing on Facebook, including groups in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, and Sudan. In all of this, the United States is an anomaly since it rejects even laws against religious hate speech, which were found in 36 of 45 European states in 2011. It’s the best place in the wo…