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Transgender and Christian: Finding Identity

By Jori Lewis

…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-dresses from time to time in private; someone who identifies as gender-queer (that is, neither male nor female); someone who is just taking hormones b…

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…

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…

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…

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…

‘Murder Among the Mormons,’ Latest True Crime Doc From Netflix, Highlights Issues of Faith, Skepticism, and Authenticity

By Benjamin E. Park

…sful forger in American history, having sold dozens of fake documents to a number of institutions for a total of over a million dollars. Hofmann’s is a story that is so enthralling that it would capture the nation’s admiration were it not for the outright fraud and tragic reality that it resulted in lost lives, broken homes, and devastated communities. This Wednesday, March 3, Netflix will release Murder Among the Mormons, a three-part documentary…

My Womb for His Purposes: The Perils of Unassisted Childbirth in the Quiverfull Movement

By Kathryn Joyce

…the babies” themselves, both saving money and demonstrating their faith. A number of Quiverfull families follow a similar arc (as had Garrison) graduating from conventional hospital births—often where mothers felt pushed into a birth plan they didn’t desire—to midwife-assisted births at home, to the final challenge of unattended home births. It’s a logical extreme of the movement whose naturalistic bent actually overlaps with the back-to-the-land,…

Are We Entering the End Times for Mainline Seminaries?

By Elesha Coffman

…nce existed mainly to train full-time pastors faced reductions in both the number of churches that could support such positions and the number of people eager to take the more challenging, but lower paying, church jobs that remained. Some seminaries shifted their missions to serve the academy or society more broadly, while others trained more part-time, second-career and lay pastors. These shifts were less abrupt than decisions to close or merge a…

Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…in the Lakota style, not Navajo, which is the tribal affiliation of a good number of inmates in the Arizona prison system (an amazing fact that is a story for another time). So, even though a non-Indian might be compelled to be put on trial for killing people with his “ceremony,” it is Native American religion which will be the defendant in this case. Consider. James Ray’s defense might be compelled to bring in experts to argue that he did the cer…

How to Make Nones and Lose Money: Study Shows Cost of Catholic Sex Abuse Scandals

By Kaya Oakes

…al, leaving the American church with a massive money problem and shrinking numbers of parishioners on the eve of Pope Francis’ arrival. A recent study by Nicholas Bottan and Ricardo Perez-Trugila in the Journal of Public Economics revealed that, unsurprisingly, “a scandal causes a persistent decline in the local Catholic affiliation and church attendance.” “Some Catholics join other religious denominations during the first three years after a scan…