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Are Atheists Taking 1st Amendment Suits Too Far?

By Gordon Haber

While sanctimonious conservatives and godless liberals alike await the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Hobby Lobby case, two more suits with serious church and state implications are quietly making their way through the system. The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) is a group of “atheists, agnostics and skeptics” with a Scientology-esque fondness for litigation. Recently the FFRF has gone after the so-called “parsonage exemption,” which allow…

Did the Pope Embrace the Prosperity Gospel?

By Sarah Posner

Late last month, Pope Francis met with charismatic Christian and Pentecostal leaders at the Vatican, including prosperity gospel televangelist Kenneth Copeland, a popular American religious figure whose theology and lifestyle is directly at odds with the Pope’s. The meeting was not the humble Pope’s first encounter with the self-anointed bishops of bling. In February, he recorded a video message for a Copeland conference, in which he called for u…

Catholic Church Ordained Women Before, Can Do it Again

By Phyllis Zagano

…e trajectory of deacon-priest-bishop is relatively recent—only about 700 or 800 years in the long history of the Church. In fact, the earlier understanding is that the deacon would become a bishop! I sometimes wonder if the naysayers are more afraid of women bishops than of women priests. But, in modern times, we have reestablished the tradition of a diaconate lived permanently. All priests are also ordained deacons, and in the most formal of litu…

Policing Academic Freedom: A Book, a Controversy, and the Ominous Aftermath

By Michael Jerryson

…in books published The Hindus: An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger. The 800-page book includes over 50 pages of references and covers a vast history that spans 50 million years—a magnum opus from a highly acclaimed scholar of Hindu traditions. A few months after The Hindus was published in the United States, it was favorably reviewed in the New York Times. The award-winning Indian essayist Pankaj Mishra praised the work as “staggeringly compre…

US Archbishop and Vatican-Appointed “Overseer” Attends Annual Meeting of Women Religious

By Emily Baxter

…embly, the sisters officially called for gun control legislation and signed 800 postcards demanding Congress members to pass immigration reform. As LCWR past-president, Sr. Pat Farrell said to the Assembly, “Expressing what we really think and feel, with transparency and vulnerability, is for the brave of heart. It is, however, what we are being asked to do in our current conflict. All of a sudden the world is looking to us.” Like this story? You…

My God, David Brooks

By John Modern

…t is almost invisible outside the academic world because the text is nearly 800 pages of dense, jargon-filled prose.” Rest assured, we do not need to read Taylor for ourselves because David Brooks can be trusted. His ongoing effort to distill for us the density of jargon is a choice well-honed. The result: a column that we have chosen to read (again, wisely) and, moreover, a readerly choice that becomes a sign to others and ourselves that we are a…

Boy Scout “Perversion Files” Raise Questions about Abuse in Mormon Contexts

By Joanna Brooks

…ims and accusers. In 1995, the Church established stronger guidelines and new protocols for reporting abuse, including a 1-800 number for local clergy. …

Colorado’s Personhood Initiative Fails—For Now

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

Colorado’s fetal personhood ballot initiative petition failed to get enough valid signatures, and so the measure will not appear on the ballot, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler announced this morning. According to the Denver Post, some of the signatures were deemed invalid, so the petition was found to have only 85,800 valid signatures—305 signatures short of the required 86,105. Jennifer Mason, speaking for Personhood Colorado, said tha…

Something So Broken: What’s Frightening About Beasts of the Southern Wild

By Michael Pasquier

…re Caminada, he discovered that his parents and brother had died along with 800 other residents. Those who survived the flood moved “up the bayou” (as they still say in Lafourche Parish) to towns like Leeville and Golden Meadow. Today, what remains of Cheniere Caminada is a historic marker and a decaying cemetery. Beasts of the Southern Wild is not about saving the Bathtubs of Louisiana. It is about remembering them. “In a million years, when kids…

Rep. Cleaver’s ‘Awoman’ Prayer Enrages Christian Nationalists Who Taste Their Own Medicine and Still Miss the Point

By Andrew L. Seidel

…fetish of their choosing. But they should not do so with a government microphone, and not on the taxpayers’ time and dime. We’ve seen plenty of divisive prayers from the conservative side. Often deliberately so, wielding prayer like a cudgel. The Pennsylvania legislator’s Jesus-laden, jaw-dropping prayer uttered to intimidate the state’s first female Muslim legislator. A preacher echoed this prayer, telling the Virginia House of Delegates that “ev…