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U.S. Bishops Reject Pope Francis’ Priorities

By Patricia Miller

…rmal encyclicals and other documents that leave the permanent mark of his papacy on the church. One could argue, therefore, that the lack of alignment between the priorities of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Francis wasn’t a willful rejection of the pope’s agenda, but more of a wait-and-see attitude of exactly what that agenda was and how it could be implemented in concrete detail. But the jig is up. Its been nearly three years. The p…

Mormon Women Knock at the Door, Are Turned Away

By Holly Welker

…er 5, 2013, almost 200 Mormon women gathered in downtown Salt Lake City on a sunny but crisp Saturday afternoon in order to seek admission to the priesthood session of the semi-annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Calling itself Ordain Women, the group had already requested and been denied tickets to Saturday evening’s male-only priesthood session. Nonetheless the women and their allies walked to the Tabern…

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

By Ed Simon

…idences the latter’s piety. Ironically, it was Columba’s grandfather, the pagan king Nial, who was responsible for Patrick’s kidnapping, the event which began the saint’s ministry in Ireland. Now, both Patrick and Columba are among the dozen canonized Disciples of Ireland, though beyond even that honorific, both are remembered as exemplars of “Celtic Christianity,” a version of the faith drawn towards the natural, the mystical, the eternal. Medita…

Can the Catholic Church Survive Trump?

By Patricia Miller

…titution that allies itself too closely with any given political party, a hazard that’s pronounced in the age of Trump, as the raw racial animus at his core becomes impossible to ignore for even those who were determined to avert their gaze. But that danger is especially acute for religious institutions, which face a special moral hazard in becoming too closely identified with a specific party. And, as political scientist Timothy Byrnes writes in…

Newsweek’s Strange Faces of the Christian Right List

By Sarah Posner

…out with a slideshow of 10 faces of the Christian right — a movement the magazine says is evolving. It’s apparently evolving so much that it includes people who aren’t associated with the Christian right. Ten is a pretty small number to best represent a movement Newsweek describes as “changing and growing more diffuse, even as it remains a potent force in American politics.” While some of the picks seem obvious (Marjorie Dannenfelser of the anti-…

Jesus Christ and Super Stars: How The Holy Rolled Mainstream in Pop Music

By Alana Massey

…n which play-by-plays of the Transfiguration of Jesus and the Binding of Isaac are thoroughly detailed and not declare it either pedantic or preachy is a deep dissonance indeed. Sufjan Stevens plays like, seven hundred instruments. He composes for ballets. The dude likes his details. Why couldn’t critics just let Sufjan Stevens bear prophetic witness? Perhaps it’s that the aftertaste of the aforementioned politicized religious right is still too b…

Are You There God? It’s Us, Googling

By Michael Schulson

…Every so often, economist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz crunches Google search data for the New York Times and comes up with some fun statistics about, say, the anxieties of pregnant women (“can pregnant women eat shrimp?” is a popular search query in the US) or the ratio of heart-related to penis-related searches (67:100 for those keeping score). This Sunday, Stephens-Davidowitz turned his attention to God. Some of the patterns he documents are predic…

First U.S. Visit of the Virgin Mary Confirmed in Wisconsin

By Lewis Wallace

…’s success as an attraction is partially due to its pop cultural currency: a 1943 film starring Jennifer Jones, Song of Bernadette, made the saint a star in the English-speaking world. But it also has a particular theological significance: the specific wording of Bernadette’s 1858 conversations with the Virgin conveniently reinforced Pope Pius IX’s 1854 declaration of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Adele Brise’s apparition shares simil…

Not a ‘Weenie-A** Lodge’: James Ray Trial Begins

By Johnny P. Flynn

…inish the sweat. The trial finished its first week on Friday in Arizona’s Yavapai County. Ray is facing three counts of manslaughter and more than thirty years in prison for allegedly causing the deaths of Kirby Brown, James Shore, and Liz Neuman in an October 2009 “Spiritual Warrior Retreat” near Sedona, Arizona. Participants in the retreat paid more than ten thousand dollars each to fast, sweat, listen to lectures and watch films under Ray’s gui…

New Pope Accused of Conspiring in Kidnapping

By Nicole Greenfield

…Wait. Bergoglio, a defender of human rights? The idea that anyone would characterize the new pope as having a solid record on such issues is laughable. One needn’t look further than his staunch opposition to LGBT rights and his flagrant attacks on women to see the contempt. In the days leading up to Argentina’s legalization of same-sex marriage in July, Bergoglio labeled the push for equality “a destructive attack on God’s plan” and deemed adopt…