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8: The Mormon Proposition Gets It Right

By Joanna Brooks

…have dismissed the film as blatantly false. But what I’m hearing from a number of Mormons deeply familiar with the Proposition 8 campaign is that the film gets it mostly right. [See also Holly Welker’s review here. – Eds] Some take exception to editing choices that sequence events out of context for dramatic effect; others wish that the filmmakers had not been so cartoonish in their depictions of anti-gay-marriage standpoints, using only notori…

Special Hell: Progressive Catholics Reckon With the Rise of Trump

By Patricia Miller

…itically. One source of dismay for some Catholics is that so many of their number broke decisively toward Trump and were critical to his victory in the Rust Belt swing states. “The Catholic vote went for Trump and many Catholics joined the non-voting defectors. That’s a scandal that calls into question the moral standing and integrity of most—not all—Catholics today,” Marquette University moral theologian Dan Maguire told RD. To many, Catholic sup…

More Than Big Hair and Money: Jim, Tammy Faye and the Media “Holy Wars” of the 80s

By John Wigger

…some of Jim and Tammy’s appeal. PTL was all about images so there were any number of options. Too bad books can’t come with a dozen different covers to choose from. Is there a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? I love the writing style of Lawrence Wright and Hampton Sides. They are both masters at weaving nonfiction into a page-turner. Anything half as good would be fine with me. What’s your next book? I’m not sure yet. Hopef…

Glenn Beck’s Salvation Army

By Peter Montgomery

…faith through a prism of American nationalism? Not to mention the growing number of Americans without any religious commitment? Beck tells us, “you must fall to your knees and you must reconnect with God. He is not asking you. He is commanding us as a people to get behind Him. He will right the wrongs. We will have to pay a price because we lived outside of His laws. We will have to pay a price, but every day we don’t get behind Him, the price ge…

Kirk Cameron Joins the Anti-Mormon Chorus
(Sort Of)

By Julie Ingersoll

…actor who played Buck, the converted journalist warning about the “demonic spirituality of a one world religion” in the Left Behind movies) was stepping up to critique the pluralistic spirituality promoted by Beck. In Howse’s view, the not-so-fictional Left Behind novels are being played out before our eyes. Pastors and evangelical leaders literally locked arms with all faiths, including Imams, in a spiritual endeavor despite the clear biblical wa…

Orthodox Jews Begin to Reckon with Sexual Abuse

By Paul Berger

…ss prevalent in the Orthodox community than anywhere else; but there are a number of peculiarities to Orthodox Jewish life that have made the reporting of abuse less common than in society at large. “I think the subject of abuse is probably the same in any religious community,” says Michael Salomon, a Long Island psychiatrist, who has just finished working on an as-yet-unpublished book about sexual abuse in the Orthodox world. “Different religions…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…a community everyone can enjoy and which also enables people to express different opinions,” said a YouTube spokesperson at the time. “This can be a challenge because what’s okay in one country can be offensive elsewhere.” International human rights treaties guarantee all citizens freedom of thought and freedom of expression. But these treaties are binding on states, not on the media corporations that enable the exercise of such freedoms. It rema…

Dear White Evangelicals: A Black Square Ain’t Gonna Cut It

By Jhas Williams

…to explain and tiring to unpack. After all, we don’t exactly have a racism-free America to compare it to since, sadly, such a nation has never existed. Besides, how does one person teach another to treat human beings like human beings? But I can tell you without a doubt that a start would have been not being able to count on one hand the number of Black children in my entire Christian school student-body. Do Black educators only exist in public sc…

Debate Heats Up Over “Francis Effect”

By Patricia Miller

…one to measure the pontiff’s influence” than, say, actual metrics like the number of people going to mass or returning to the church. According to Burke, you just have to “ask around” Boston to find folks who know someone who’s thinking about returning to the church or who feels less horrible about the church than in the darkest days of the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal, which had Boston at its epicenter. That’s a pretty low bar, but of course n…

The Best the Largest Progressive Jewish Org Could Come Up With?

By Jay Michaelson

…d Jewish Funds for Justice, the latter of which had already swallowed up a number of smaller Jewish social justice organizations. I know several people who work at BtA, and I commend them on their ability to keep a secret. I and friends of mine plied several of these folks with drinks, but their lips stayed sealed. (I did find out that the org would have an action-verb in it, as is the fashion these days, but that’s all.) That being said, I’m not…