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LDS General Conference in the “Mormon Moment”

By Joanna Brooks

…ave asserted the Christianity of Mormon belief for national audiences, the number one reaction has come from Christians who seek to correct my understanding of my faith and remind me that Mormons are not, in their eyes, Christians. Some assert that they’ll be praying for my mistaken soul (and the soul of my Jewish husband too). Others seek to engage in a friendlier conversational exchange about whether Mormons profess the Nicene Creed. (We do not…

Neuroscience Says Evil is “Over”: Not So Fast…

By Paul Wallace

…t at least he is certain to be believed.” Thus wrote Anthony Standen in his 1950 book Science is a Sacred Cow. What was true in 1950 is still true in 2011. Surely such public trust has no precedent outside of religion. Science Works, and Creationists Know It A possible objection: public trust? Is this not a golden age for creationism and biblical literalism?Are we not up to our necks in anti-science? Perhaps, but what do creationists say they are…

New Study Touts Success of “Praying Away the Gay”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…It can motivate people to stop smoking, drinking, swearing, wearing their hair long, or cheating on their spouse or income taxes. I get emails from gay and lesbian Christians on almost a daily basis who are deeply worried that living into their natural, God-given sexuality will earn them a one way ticket to Satanland. That fear is real, that fear is palpable, and these people are willing to do anything to avoid that fate—even if it means marrying…

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

By Ed Simon

…nd mystery, and a “poetic rather than rational approach to faith.” In that spirit then, perhaps today we’ve no requirement of doxologies and theologies, of creeds and canons, but rather of feeling, sentiment, and perspective. Of poetry. Think of that apocryphal story about Saint Patrick preaching to the chiefs and druids of Ireland, first recounted by Caleb Threlkeld in 1727, wherein it was said that “by this three leafed grass, he emblematically…

Picasso’s Sacred Monster Eats Chicago: A Mystery Solved?

By Jeremy Biles

…tive interpretation. Multiply ambiguous, it is a strange concoction of any number of animal and human forms, as well as a sphinx; itself a hybrid monster. Moreover, the Chicago Picasso intimates both the Egyptian and Greek sphinxes—an amalgam of cultural styles. An ambiguous, almost inscrutable object, it is an enigmatic icon and the icon of an enigma; its very presence confronts the populace with a riddle. The riddle is not simply what the Chicag…

Ex-Gay Conversion Therapy: Choosing Religion Over Sex

By Lynne Gerber

…terms of gay politics and of human lives. But the politics did not stop in 1973 and the political gains achieved at that time are by no means secure. Since declassification, supporters of reparative and conversion therapy have continually sought recognition by the APA, increasingly on the grounds of tolerance for differing opinions. Reporters aspiring toward fair-mindedness can fall prey to this appeal to tolerance without fully investigating how…

Change v. Change at NPR

By Warren Throckmorton

…nt psychologists telling a client that therapy can change orientation. In fairness, there are small groups of therapists associated with religious groups who question the APA’s findings. However, most of the therapists who argue with the APA are associated with churches and organizations which see homosexual behavior as immoral. There is debate but it is between the mental health establishment and a much smaller number of traditionally minded reli…

Protesters in Washington DC, the day before the January 6 insurrection, wrapped in American flags blow shofars.

Netanyahu’s Genocidal Religious Rhetoric isn’t Just an Appeal to the Israeli Right — He Has Another Constituency in Mind

By Brock Bahler

…ileged rights to Native American land, including the Monroe Doctrine and an 1823 Supreme Court decision in the case of Johnson v. McIntosh, which declared that the “discovery” of America by Christian nations gave them the “sole right of acquiring the soil.” As Steven Newcomb, cofounder of the Indigenous Law Institute, has noted, the 1826 Tennessee Supreme Court decision Cornet v. Winton upheld the Christian colonialist underpinnings of the Johnson…

Top Five (Less Sensational, But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson (1930-2023)

By Mark Hulsether

…Muslims, and others) and absurd claims about global politics. More than the 1988 campaign (or the subsequent partnership of his lieutenant in this campaign, Ralph Reed, in the criminal schemes of Jack Abramoff) this case dramatizes the moral bankruptcy of alliances between the NCR and neoconservative power brokers. 1) The top of my list revealed: What could top such a list? Since we’re on the subject of disasters today, we might have noted how, am…

55% of Utah Mormons Believe LGBT People can “Change”

By Joanna Brooks

…ts about LGBT issues. Many are still thinking like we were taught to in the 1970s, that homosexuality is simply a base perversion, an abomination, and can be changed through repentance and prayer. Not so, say a legion of LDS LGBT people who have knees bruised and calloused from so much praying. Most straight LDS people have not grappled with the reality of LGBT experience. And another thing that has not happened yet in most LDS communities is a fr…