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What Coverage of a Fatal Orthodox Baptism Reveals About Western Media

By Katherine Kelaidis

…des, “…it’s clear that the baptismal practice depicted isn’t all that uncommon.” And that’s true. Millions of infants have been baptised this way over centuries (including me, by the way). What’s uncommon is for an infant to die, as was the case last week. So what happened? Well, the Romanian, Greek, and Russian press all make note of the fact that the priest baptized the infant face up while holding his hand over the infant’s face and mouth (some…

Colorado’s Personhood Initiative Fails—For Now

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…does what I think she should do. Make sure it’s not her decision.” I doubt most supporters of personhood measures would actually say that. I’d like to think most of them don’t think that. But that just shows how important it is to remember, when the subject of fetal “personhood” comes up, that women are still fighting to be recognized as actual people who should be taken into account. A woman pregnant by rape is an actual person (with a heartbeat!…

The Burning Houses of Worship We Missed

By Gordon Haber

…g District of Western China, where officials have reportedly bulldozed over 800 mosques. Authorities have also detained hundreds of thousands of Uighurs in re-education camps. The scale of the suffering is difficult to imagine. In fairness, there’s been a lot of good reporting about the plight of the Uighurs. And yet I believe the outpouring of emotion for more recognizable places—especially Notre Dame—is instructive. Samuel Johnson defined sympat…

Prosperity Gospel Is Not the Only Problem with Joel Osteen’s Harvey Response

By Brie Loskota and Peter Gudaitis

…und for rescue operations. Perhaps most significantly, people of faith are moved to action by their moral framework and sense of compassion. At the same time, the emergency management system faces challenges working with faith communities. As partners, government and faith-based organizations must identify assets, make sure people know what they are doing, and coordinate a response under a well-conceived plan. All of this has to be done long befor…

Racist Remarks by popular BYU Religion Professor Spark Controversy

By Joanna Brooks

…y member told me. But Professor Bott is no outlier. Especially among older Mormons, racist rationale for the priesthood ban—linking it to Old Testament pretexts, or to moral infirmity in a pre-earthly life by the souls of Africans and African-Americans, and other racist apologetic mental gymnastics exemplified in Bott’s statement to the Post—persist and circulate, generally unquestioned and unchallenged. For its part, the LDS Church has never auth…

Gambian Leaders Portray Anti-Gay Law as Defense of Islam, Ugandan Politicians as ‘Christmas Gift’; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…just days after declaring at the United Nations in New York, “Those who promote homosexuality want to put an end to human existence. It is becoming an epidemic and we Muslims and Africans will fight to end this behavior…. Homosexuality in all its forms and manifestations which, though very evil, antihuman as well as anti-Allah, is being promoted as a human right by some powers.” Fatou Camara, who briefly served as Jammeh’s communications director…

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

By Andrew L. Seidel

…the non-Christians, the Christians who agree with Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount, “when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.” They’re upset because Christianity wasn’t being promoted in the manner to which they are accustomed. But any prayer, even the prayer that strives, with the best of intentions, for inclusion, is going to be exclusi…

Norway Massacre Suspect Anders Behring Breivik, Hitler, & the Jerusalem Post Editorial

By Sarah Posner

…e is rightwing extremism and that criticism of multiculturalism is nothing more than so much Islamophobia. While it is still too early to determine definitively Breivik’s precise motives, it could very well be that the attack was more pernicious – and more widespread – than the isolated act of a lunatic. Perhaps Brievik’s inexcusable act of vicious terror should serve not only as a warning that there may be more elements on the extreme Right willi…

New Report on (White) Christian Nationalism and the J6 Insurrection Shows Just ‘How Dire the Threat is’

By Chrissy Stroop

…ies as “distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy.” Among the 8 principles, signers are asked to affirm their belief that: Government should not prefer one religion over another or religion over nonreligion; Conflating religious authority with political authority is idolatrous and often leads to oppression of minority and other marginalized groups as well as the spiritual impoverishment of religion; and We must sta…

World Congress of Families Blessed By Georgian Orthodox Patriarch and George W. Bush; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…sed on a belief that it subverts the natural order, a belief also deemed immoral by most interpretations of major religious texts. World Congress of Families The World Congress of Families’ annual global summit of anti-LGBT social conservatives is being held in Tbilisi, the capital of the Republic of Georgia, this week. The event is likely to have a pro-Putin and anti-European feel, given that many WCF groups have praised the anti-gay policies of…