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Why The Book of Mormon (the Musical) is Awesomely Lame

By Jared Farmer

…n” from the first season of South Park. Starvin’ Marvin worked as a paper cutout. A child actor performing the same role on stage would be appalling. I cringed in my seat at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre as I watched talented African American actors hamming up “African-ness” for cheap laughs. It brought to mind the long, shameful history of Americans—black and white—performing blackness (often in blackface) on stage for white audiences. The Book of M…

Presidential Pep Talks and the Religion of Fear: How did an Uncontroversial Speech Become a National Controversy?

By Eric Reitan

…ust gives these incomprehensible speeches about stuff that no kid cares about. But on this day, the president of the United States had taken time out of his schedule to talk to kids. My wife, who’d been worried that our son wouldn’t get to watch the president’s speech because of the public furor surrounding it, smiled delightedly and asked what else the president had said to him. He didn’t respond with something like the following: “The president…

Thoreau’s Ferocious Critique of Philanthropy Does Not Make Him “Selfish”

By Alda Balthrop-Lewis

…joining the Witness Protection Program after her piece was posted online. But the truth is, it’s so easy to get the man wrong. I am sympathetic to the instinct that animates Schulz, the suspicion that Americans love Thoreau mostly because selfish individualism is our national religion and he is one of its loudest—or at least most famous—defenders. But Schulz’s reading of the man’s writing is facile. Where Thoreau writes—responding to the townsmen’…

Behind the Inclusive-Sounding Ads of this $100 Million PR-Blitz-for-Jesus it’s the Same Old Conservative Christian Fantasy

By Chrissy Stroop

…Judged’ video says Jesus and the disciples ‘roamed the hood,’ ‘challenged authority,’ and ‘law enforcement called them outlaws.’ All paired with images of minorities. So, roaming hoods and disobeying the police are now being glorified?” In an attempt to clarify, the staffer insisted, “That lifestyle is absolutely not being glorified by this campaign.” He then explained, “Rather, it would be our heart to see those people who are living that lifesty…

Why #FreeBritney is an #Exvangelical Cause

By R.L. Stollar

…ed to conservators. “Evangelicals are so convinced that they have the absolute truth,” Bethany Grace argues, “that denying a child’s agency (even a grown child’s) or violating their bodily autonomy becomes easy for them to justify.” Spears has never identified as an #exvangelical and #FreeBritney is not about religion. But she is a former evangelical who has pushed against her controlling family, who has suffered immensely at the hands of evangeli…

Pastor of Kentucky Church Severed From Baptists Over LGBT Inclusion: Not Activism, Just Honesty

By Mike Greer

…fact that so many people are reaching out to us and want to learn more about this matter and about how we got to the place where we are. There also is gladness for the opportunity to forge new relationships and to do new ministry that articulates the love of God. Listening to you it seems fair to say that Crescent Hill does not see itself as an activist church on this issue. I think Crescent Hill sees itself as Crescent Hill and this is wholly co…

A Resurgence of “Ex-Gay Therapy” Under Trump/Pence? ABC News Report Offers a Platform to Hate Group Rep. Peter Sprigg

By Sunnivie Brydum

…ex-gay therapy. (In reality, six states and the District of Columbia have outlawed the practice, but only for use on minors by licensed therapists. Faith-based counselors and clergypeople remain free to use various “therapeutic” measures to attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, despite broad scientific consensus that such changes are impossible.) Testimony from survivors could have provided critical balance in the pie…

New Poll: Repeal DOMA

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…commissioned by the largest organization fighting for LGBT rights, but the numbers [pdf] show that the sample actually skewed right. Of the 800 registered voters polled 38 percent were strong, weak, or independent-leaning Democrats with 41 percent identifying as strong, weak, or independent leaning Republicans. Conservatives outweighed liberals by 38 to 18 percent, and a full 74 percent of those polled identified as religious. Some 40 percent clai…

What To Do When Fred Phelps Arrives in Your Neighborhood

By Susan Henking

…e in overt ways. Cohocton is a small town, with a population in 2009 of about 800 people. It is in upstate New York. It is not my small town, nor is it likely yours; and yet each of these places is someone’s neighborhood. This time, it is only an hour away for me. Picketing as “The Workingman’s Means of Communication” On March 2, 2011, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in response to a series of prior decisions around Westboro Baptist Church’s…

Catholic Church Ordained Women Before, Can Do it Again

By Phyllis Zagano

…estly, the trajectory of deacon-priest-bishop is relatively recent—only about 700 or 800 years in the long history of the Church. In fact, the earlier understanding is that the deacon would become a bishop! I sometimes wonder if the naysayers are more afraid of women bishops than of women priests. But, in modern times, we have reestablished the tradition of a diaconate lived permanently. All priests are also ordained deacons, and in the most forma…