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Are the Girls Scouts Evil? And What About Thin Mints?

By Patricia Miller

…reasingly incompatible with Catholic values.” And what could members of the 100-year-old girls service organization be doing that has so alarmed Carlson? Are Brownies dissing Jesus by making Christmas trees out of old Reader’s Digests? Is someone taking that Campfire badge a little too seriously (I swear it was an accident—and my sister’s eyebrows did grow back)? No, what has Carlson concerned isn’t anything specific Girl Scouts or Girl Scout troo…

Adventists Cancel ‘Holy Sexuality’ Confab; Egyptian Court OKs Deportation of Gays; Mongolian Trans Activist Gives TV Interview; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…approve. Another 23 percent indicated varying levels of disapproval. Nearly 15 percent chose numbers five or six, suggesting that they didn’t have strong feelings either way. Roughly 12 percent of the participants indicated varying levels of approval for a homosexual’s right to run for office. Of that figure, 5.2 percent strongly approve. The results are a part of the Americas Barometer survey, which is the only scientifically rigorous comparative…

The Invention of a Corporate Christian America

By Andrew Aghapour

…ime in Moscow, but to the New Deal administration in Washington, DC. In the 1930s and 1940s, they popularized a new language of “freedom under God” (as opposed to what they saw as “slavery under the welfare state”), which finally took hold nationally in the 1950s. You track the emergence in the 1940s and 1950s of “Christian libertarianism,” a blend of conservative religion, economics, and politics. How did this Christian libertarianism reconceive…

White People Dying Younger Because of…Moral Turpitude? Give Us a Break

By Peter Laarman

…that the earning prospects for many jobs are so pitiful that unprecedented numbers of workers have simply stopped looking; it’s not that inflation-adjusted income for households headed by someone with only a high-school education have fallen by almost 20% since 2008; it’s not that low-income people are still often shut out of needed preventive health care services, even under Obamacare; and it’s not that people within America’s lumpenproletariat a…

Philly Gives Doctors Wide Leeway with Religious Exemption

By Patricia Miller

…iders with religious objections to “redirect” patients who ask for a given service to appropriate sources in a “nonjudgmental fashion.” While the policy ensures that patients who ask about contraception will receive some type of referral, formal or not, it still falls far short of the current standard of care for adolescent patients. Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend that…

Not Ready to Forgive: Hillary Clinton & the Ugly Truth of the Reagan Years

By Peter Laarman

…ut Hillary? Hillary also violated the second rule of funerals and memorial services. The first rule, of course, is never to speak ill of the dead. But the second and equally important rule is that you don’t make shit up, either. You don’t invent an alternative fantasy life for the person whose remains lie in that coffin. If the deceased is actually a disreputable character, you are allowed to mumble nice generalities, but that’s the extent of it….

Millennials Put Off By Rigid, Judgmental Religion Offered … More Orthodoxy

By Daniel Schultz

…y helping anyone in need. You’ll notice that Shrum never says a word about service or ministry. It’s all holiness all the time. Unfortunately for churches like Shrum’s, holiness just isn’t very popular in our culture these days. What people want in spirituality is egalitarianism, an emphasis on the ways in which God welcomes, rather than rejects. It’s okay that Shrum or other conservative pastors might say “Sorry, we can’t offer that in our church…

Protesting the Pope’s (Not Yet Released) Environmental Encyclical? Check Your Doctrine

By Kevin M. Lowe

…culture wars—taught that the environment was indeed a religious issue. In a 1990 address at the World Day of Peace in the Vatican, he called the state of the environment “a moral problem,” and charged “the entire human community—individuals, states and international bodies—[to] take seriously the responsibility that is theirs,” and work to address the intertwined challenges of climate change, pollution, poverty, war, and consumerism. Although it w…

U.S. Christianity is Dead, Long Live U.S. Christianity

By Richard Flory

…r, more locally oriented church communities, and by larger churches that attract the masses for a spiritual or musical performance, and a sense of belonging to something much larger than themselves. Young people are looking for intimacy and personal connections, deep spiritual experiences, service to others and the opportunity to create their own community, whether religious or not. Religion is not going anywhere anytime soon, regardless how peopl…

Competitive Religious Philanthropy in the Wake of the Nepali Earthquake

By Nalika Gajaweera

…s, the group claimed, are motivated by a Hindu sense of seva, or “selfless service for the benefit of all.” Other faith-based groups, in contrast, are “not always selfless,” having “ulterior motives, including evangelizing and church-planting,” the email argued. Faith-based giving is widely accepted today as important aspect of the international community’s response to emergencies. Less understood, however, is the role that intra- and inter-religi…