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LGBT Christians Respond to Southern Baptists’ Call For Kindness, Understanding

By Mike Greer

…Moore and other conference leaders appeared to be caught off guard by the number of LGBT Christians and supportive Christian advocates, some Baptists, who not only attended the entire conference, but also respectfully and publicly responded to Moore’s call to kindness and understanding and offered to meet with conference leaders at the venue. Although there were evidently no face-to-face meetings with Moore, about a dozen LGBT Christians and LGBT…

Religious Leaders Need ‘Empty the Pews’ Which Chronicles the Darker Side of the ‘Nones’ Phenomenon

By Kaya Oakes

…stical data on Nones, compiled by the sociologist Ryan Burge—and a growing number of books exploring the narrative stories of Nones have appeared in recent years, including a book of my own. Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church Chrissy Stroop and Lauren O’Neal Epiphany Publishing November 29, 2019 What many of these articles and books share in common is a sense of confusion or despair. The primary question they ask is often framed in the…

Bonnaroo Dispatches: Stages

By E. David Morgen

…oday. No one is going to judge you.” Recent studies suggest that while the number of young Americans who consider themselves religious or spiritual remains roughly constant, their spiritual practices are changing. They are more likely than their parents to consider themselves unaffiliated with any particular practice, or the version of the religion they practice boils down to injunctions to a vague sense of morality, fairness, and happiness, what…

A Match Made in Hell: Demons Have Become a Serious Force in US Politics — But We’ve Seen This Show Before

By Michael E. Heyes

…lculations, one-third of evangelicals don’t vote, and when you factor this number against the number of votes needed to tip battleground states like Pennsylvania, there’s not much convincing that needs to be done to turn the election for Trump. It might seem like a small affair, until you realize that JD Vance was one of the speakers at the Courage Tour event in Pennsylvania. Predictably, demonic rhetoric underlies a lot of the Tour. From what I’v…

The Messiah is Not Coming

By Peter Laarman

…umbers given out by the Census Bureau earlier this month: big jumps in the number of Americans losing compensated work for working poverty or worse, and concomitant big jumps in the number of people losing health care coverage. The thing is—and labor market specialists all concur—these blows are no longer cyclical phenomena that will be reversed once “the economy” really starts humming. “The economy,” in the way that mainstream economists gauge it…

The Fourth of July Is Not America’s Birthday

By Peter Laarman

Over the past few days I’ve seen a number of references to “America’s Birthday” coming up on Friday. If a commercial advertiser wants to say this, fine (I guess). But I have spotted a couple of otherwise sober-minded writers using the “birthday” tag as well, and their ignorance is more disturbing. July 4, 1776, was in no way the birthday of anything. It was the start of a long and savage struggle against the world’s most powerful empire at the ti…

The People’s Temple, the Black Church, and the Tragic Legacy of Jonestown

By Anita Little

…is a “free love” church, that it was a new age-y kind of confab, when it’s really coming from the heart of Pentecostal, charismatic spirituality. Black women were then and still are one of the most religious segments of the population. How is the white Jesus paternal figure they’re presented with in mainstream Christianity different from how Jim Jones presented himself? The picture was different because Jones was very conscious about articulating…

Conservative Bishops Get “Different Translation” Dialing Back Language on LGBT Acceptance

By Patricia Miller

…ists attempting to push their values on women in the developing world, who really, really wanted big families despite a widespread unmet need for contraception. Regardless, Francis apparently heard the criticism—although Kasper has since denied giving the interview (Pentin is standing by his reporting)—and added South African Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, who has been an outspoken critic of the mid-term report, to the committee charged with drafting th…

What If Animals Believe in God?

By Andrew Aghapour

…—but I would not want to be a dog or cat in many places in the world. Huge numbers, as we all know, are confined in shelters for long periods of time where they likely have rather poor qualities of life. Millions are killed. Humanity was [evolutionarily] shaped by dogs, and we find ourselves treating these animals in a disposable kind of way. When we start to think about it in this register, it’s not just about cruelty anymore. I think it challeng…

The Morning After

By Amina Wadud

…est brother to it just last year). When I got the news, during the fast, a number of my friends told me just go ahead and stop fasting to address it. But, I thought if I do not get on top of it, this may be my last Ramadan; and I just wanted to finish what I had started. I’m glad I did, but here’s the thing. To stabilize the blood sugar, pre-diabetics and diabetics have to eat smaller meals dispersed through out the day. I started it yesterday but…