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Google’s Benevolent Interfaith Big Tent

By Lucia Hulsether

…aring the story, she returns home, opens Google India, and tracks down the phone number for the sweet shop her grandfather mentioned. Within seconds, she has called the store on her smart phone, and Yusuf’s grandson—who answers—has likewise opened Google to research visas for a reunion too long denied. We can understand the implications of this storyline by putting it into conversation with its longer historical context. The logic of the plot—that…

Is Religious Freedom a Casualty at Ground Zero?

By Kambiz GhaneaBassiri

…se of the establishment of religious institutions through which they could participate in and adapt to their local American communities. A major impetus for the rise of Catholic schools in this country was anti-Catholicism. Catholic schools and organizations such as the Knights of Columbus, like Jewish organizations and Community Centers, became safe havens through which distinctly American Catholic and American Jewish communities and identities w…

Should We Expect to See a Rise in Christian Nationalist Violence in the US?

By Nilay Saiya

…pportive of this thesis in countries as diverse as Brazil, Central African Republic, Pakistan, India, and Myanmar, where vigilantes from dominant religious communities routinely attack the homes, businesses, and houses of worship of religious minorities with impunity. As I show in my recent book The Global Politics of Jesus: A Christian Case for Church-State Separation, similar dynamics appear to be unfolding in the United States today, where a co…

What Color is Vatican Smoke?

By Marian Ronan

…liation Commission, seven thousand black South Africans were killed under apartheid, and the number imprisoned was far higher. The Catholic Church neither kills nor imprisons ordained women and their supporters; excommunication, while painful, is not at all the same, even when financial losses accompany it. In 2007 I published an article in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion explaining in some detail why highly educated white women simply…

On Pi Day, Puzzling Over the Most Famous Transcendental Number

By Ilana E. Strauss

…he equation is elegant—and also entirely mysterious. PhysicsWorld.com poll participants called it “uncanny and sublime” and “filled with cosmic beauty.” “Five different numbers, with different origins, built on very different mental conceptions, invented to address very different issues. And yet all come together in one glorious, intricate equation, each playing with perfect pitch to blend and bind together to form a single whole that is far great…

How To Talk To “Nones” and Influence People: Rob Bell’s Transrational Experience

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…causes to supernatural entities—my rain dance made it rain; God found me a parking space. Then came the rational, the enlightened, the scientific, the mindset that knows that rain comes not from dances but from water molecules. This mindset, Bell was repeatedly careful to point out, has given us a lot: schools and iPads and cars and cures for diseases. But as he explained, it has its drawbacks, which is why we need the transrational—or the rationa…

Vatican Considers ‘Disordered’ Language; HBO Doc on LGBT Persecution in Russia; Nigerian Bishop Shifts on Anti-Gay Law; Arson at ‘Open Mosque’ in South Africa; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…n same – sex relationships find that they can practice their faith in full participation in local parishes – until knowledge that they have formalized those relationships in marriage leads to exclusion from ministry, dismissal from employment, or other forms of discrimination. Also at the Wednesday press conference, in the words of the Commonweal blog, Kaigama “complained about Western attempts to influence African values—especially the flooding o…

Competing Visions of Family & Freedom at UN; Methodists Try to Avoid Schism on Sexuality; Catholic Cardinal Denounces LGBT ‘Demonic Ideology’; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…“most of which work explicitly with gay and transgender communities,” from participating in an upcoming High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS. The United States, European Union, and Canada have protested the exclusion, which is apparently allowed under UN rules. Michelle Nichols reported for Reuters on Tuesday: Samantha Power, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, wrote to General Assembly President Mogens Lykketoft and said the groups appeared to ha…

The March for Life: Grassroots Movement or Agitprop?

By Patricia Miller

…urnpike. The March for Life has always been somewhat of a publicity stunt: part political theater, part rallying point for the committed faithful of the pro-life movement, part exercise in media grievance building for the Christian Right. And now that it’s clear that this year’s march won’t come close to the numbers of the Women’s March, despite guest stars like VP Mike Pence. With only about 100 buses permitted for the city, compared to 1,800 for…

From Shofars to Hammers: The Spiritual Warriors of MAGA are ‘ReAwakening’ to Political Violence

By Mark Clatterbuck

…anging between $250 and $500. It is arguably the dominant brand of today’s Republican Party. For good reason, a growing number of expert observers have begun sounding the alarm. I suggest it’s time we hit the panic button. The rally featured plenty of repugnant elements—from the relentless attacks on transgender youth consistent with fascist scapegoating, to the steady drumbeat of election fraud claims, to accusations that Dr. Fauci engineered Cov…