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American Christianity Is Changing Fast: Five Stories to Watch in 2016

…ken a much more adversarial stance to LGBT acceptance. However, increasing numbers of evangelical churches are accepting LGBT individuals as members. This development is not without its opponents, however. Many evangelical organizations—most significantly colleges, universities and seminaries—are mobilizing to retain their “religious right” to discriminate against LGBT individuals. More than 30 evangelical higher education institutions have petiti…

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55% of Utah Mormons Believe LGBT People can “Change”

…studied and understood. Any doctrine that would be used to exclude a good number of the earth’s people from full equality before the law and God should be very carefully examined. When it comes to gay issues, most Mormons have only the muddiest understanding of what life is like for gay people or about the doctrinal reasons their LDS leaders say and do the things they do. In fact, most Mormons have only the muddiest understanding about what their…

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Protesters in Washington DC, the day before the January 6 insurrection, wrapped in American flags blow shofars.

Netanyahu’s Genocidal Religious Rhetoric isn’t Just an Appeal to the Israeli Right — He Has Another Constituency in Mind

…w, while 55% of Americans as a whole have a favorable view of Israel, that number jumps to 80% among White evangelicals. And further, among evangelicals who support Israel, up to 50% have suggested End Times prophecies are part of their motivation. There are surely some whose uncritical support of Israel is motivated by End Times prophecies, though there’s significant disagreement on that point. What I would argue instead is that Christian Zionist…

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“One of Us”: Rick Santorum and the Politics of (Very Big) Family

…claimed, “We win if we just keep having children, ’cause we’re going to outnumber them!”—a staple argument of the Quiverfull movement. Weeks earlier, Santorum had transformed this rhetoric into policy proposal at a South Carolina Fuddruckers appearance with the Duggars, where he argued that low birth rates and a declining American population (also longstanding concerns among the Quiverfull movement) should be fought by tripling the child tax deduc…

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New Poll Reveals That Anti-Trans Rhetoric isn’t Just Affecting Republicans and White Evangelicals

…mple, 86% of White evangelicals said there are only two genders, with that number rising to 92% in 2023. The report also states, “Among White Christian groups, White evangelical Protestants (82%) and Latter-day Saints (72%) are much more likely than White Catholics (51%) and White mainline/non-evangelical Protestants (50%) to strongly feel there are only two genders.” None of this is particularly surprising, but what I do find both surprising and…

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Picasso’s Sacred Monster Eats Chicago: A Mystery Solved?

…known for engaging mythic imagery, and were particularly intrigued by composite beasts such as the sphinx. Argentine painter Leonor Fini created numerous variations on the Greek sphinx, while Salvador Dalí concocted a veritable menagerie of Egyptian and Greek sphinxes, including one scarlet-furred feline creature bearing the face of Shirley Temple and surrounded by the well-cleaned bones of her victims. Whether in religious myth or art, and whethe

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“Pregnancy is Not a Disease”: Birth of an Anti-Contraception Rallying Cry

…ould try to trick us into believing that pregnancy is dangerous and yucky, best avoided. But no! We will not be ashamed. Pregnancy (a condition that only biologically-female people undergo) is not a disease (and diseases are bad). Wow. That so nearly cancels out to “Women are good.” Hooray! In this respect, the phrase “Pregnancy is not a disease” also fits well with a certain spirit of the times. Now, let me say here that I know plenty of women wh…

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The New Age Fantasy of a Celtic Church that Revered Nature and the Divine Feminine Never Existed — So What?

…e internet produces an abundance of links to Celtic spirituality seminars, sites detailing the ‘history’ of the Celtic Church and Celtic Christian denominations.” Among many in the general public, there’s an enthusiasm for a supposed Celtic Church, and a belief that at some point in the distant past—perhaps when Patrick evangelized the tribes of Erin—there was the possibility of a radically different form of the faith than the one which many have…

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New Study Touts Success of “Praying Away the Gay”

…anything to avoid that fate—even if it means marrying someone from the opposite gender as proof positive of their “change.” That being said, I am a firm believer in the Kinsey scale. I do believe that sexuality runs a continuum and that there are people who are genuinely bisexual. If someone is near the center of that scale, they may find it easier to put aside same-sex feelings and choose to follow their opposite-sex feelings. Perhaps the 14 perc…

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Neuroscience Says Evil is “Over”: Not So Fast…

…ion or function of the brain, it must not be real. The article points to a number of ways neuropsychology has been overinterpreted and oversold. Rosenbaum addresses the fetishizing of fMRI images, the ideology that conflates causation and correlation, and the shifting semantics — evil recast as “non-empathy” by one esteemed psychologist (echoing, interestingly, the traditional Christian understanding of evil as a privation). But it’s the image of…

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