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When God and Gender Mix: New Book Examines the Southern Holiness Movement

By Colin Chapell

…ge how they understand their own identity. If academic achievement and the number or type of initials after your name is the most important thing in the world to you, then it will change how you view your own masculinity and femininity. Similarly, if having children matters most to you, then you can only be truly “manly” or “feminine” if you have kids. Is there anything you had to leave out? Historians always want to include every interesting anec…

Renovating Marriage, One Gay Couple at a Time

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ose marriage equality on religious grounds. For them, I point to a growing number of religious leaders who also understand that gays and lesbians can do a lot to “redefine” marriage in beneficial ways. Rev. Ed Bacon, who leads the 4,000 member All Saints Church in Pasadena, Calif., told Oprah Winfrey this past weekend that marriage would be “enriched” by same-sex couples. I’ve never had a straight couple come to me and say, ‘My marriage is in trou…

Sacred&Profane: The Living Dead

By Gary Laderman

…oked. There are ghosts and graves in the yards of my neighborhood, and the number of skeletons—reclining on lawn chairs, sprouting up from the ground, beckoning from the shadows—has transformed the suburban landscape into a set for a George Romero film. In addition, and beyond bland suburbia, monsters, ghosts, skeletons, vampires, and other playful dead inhabit stores and sell products, entertain across the television dial, and instill a dreadfull…

Pop Culture Yogi B. K. S. Iyengar Dead at 95

By Andrea R. Jain

…Mahesh Yogi of Transcendental Meditation, Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness—who exploited these trends by widely and transnationally disseminating tantric, meditational, devotional, and postural yoga systems. The most successful attempts at dissemination occurred when gurus conceded to consumerist pop culture trends, responding to a transnational market in which wares could be easily fit into individu…

Will Iowa’s Abortion Ban Respect Religious Freedom?

By Christine Ryan

…xpression of religious commitment, deserving of protection under religious freedom law. Religious exemptions from abortion bans offer relief to only a limited number of individuals and can never be a comprehensive legal solution to the country’s reproductive health crisis. Nor should the right to control one’s body depend on proof of one’s religious commitments; reproductive freedom is a right that depends on one’s humanity, not one’s religious be…

Mormon Rejection of Trump Embarrassing for Evangelicals?

By Neil J. Young

…ctly to a political candidate, issuing a statement that affirmed religious freedom and emphasized Mormon-Muslim partnerships in humanitarian causes. Aside from these political differences, Mormons have recoiled at the personality and style of Trump. Conservative, family-oriented, and devout, Mormons are a sharp contrast to the brash and profane Trump, and they have expressed disapproval for the thrice-married billionaire’s lifestyle and temperamen…

Can Expelled Teach Us a Thing or Two?

By Arri Eisen

…s ostracized by the system. This, according to the movie, is an affront to freedom, a basic right upon which America was built. The movie focuses on five or six folks (all of whom are challenging evolution with the same idea: intelligent design) who claim to have been ruined by the Academy. The movie is very well staged. Stein presents himself as a well-meaning, skeptical, and regular guy who wanders across a collection of disturbing events, which…

American Christianity Is Changing Fast: Five Stories to Watch in 2016

By Richard Flory

…ken a much more adversarial stance to LGBT acceptance. However, increasing numbers of evangelical churches are accepting LGBT individuals as members. This development is not without its opponents, however. Many evangelical organizations—most significantly colleges, universities and seminaries—are mobilizing to retain their “religious right” to discriminate against LGBT individuals. More than 30 evangelical higher education institutions have petiti…

An Unholy Holy Week: Is the All-Male Rule of the Roman Catholic Church Self-Destructing?

By Anne Eggebroten

…and procession to find a few confused and pitifully human old men at microphones still trying to send out impressive puffs of smoke. Within 20-40 years, we will have women priests ordained with the blessing of canon law (not outside canon law as at present). This will happen sooner than previously expected because each act of abuse or cover-up weakens the power of the male hierarchy. Their convoluted reasons for why only men can represent Jesus C…

The Faith Outreach Canard

By Sarah Posner

…Eleison Group, who the RNS article notes worked doing faith outreach on a number of Democratic campaigns in 2006 and 2008 but not in 2010. In both the RNS interview and in an article on Huffington Post, Sapp argues for a causal link between lackluster faith outreach in this election cycle and Democratic losses; his conclusion: “the results were disastrous.” To support this argument, Sapp claims the following: Compared to ’06, Democrats nationally…