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How the Politics of the 1890s Explain the GOP’s Health Care Woes

By Patricia Miller

…oke through and gained control of the presidency and Congress and passed a number of historic bills, including the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which reintroduced silver into the currency supply, and the McKinley Tariff Act, the Republican attempt to modernize the tariff schedule. They also passed a long-awaited pension for Civil War veterans and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The Democrats dubbed the 51st Congress the “Billion Dollar Congress,” char…

The Brutality of Life for Syrian LGBTs; Saving the Anglican Church by Dissolving It; Backlash to Hindu Gay Wedding Ceremony in Indonesia; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…aeda]. That’s not including your own extended family: they are often enemy number one.” McDougall reports that religious police use social media to entrap people, and rely on informants. Knowing who the enemy is has become increasingly difficult for gay people. From the ranks of its own religious police force, Isis is believed to have deployed undercover agents to entrap those who have been accused by others of being gay. Elmo, a doctor now workin…

Sovereign Grace Sexual Abuse Lawsuit Just Got More Complicated

By T.F. Charlton

A number of developments in the lawsuit against Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM) have taken place since I first covered it for RD back in early March. On May 14, a second amendment was filed to the suit: [The suit] adds three new plaintiffs, making a total of 11. Five plaintiffs are now using their real names, and the rest are pseudonyms. It accuses church leaders of conspiracy, negligence, misrepresentation and intentional infliction of emotiona…

Welcome to the Shari’ah Conspiracy Theory Industry

By Sarah Posner

…ated the United States with the aim of instituting shari’ah law. On its website, the Clarion Fund claims, among other things, that “Shari’ah is an intolerant system that threatens the Western ideals of ‘liberty and justice for all,’” “prescribes cruel and unusual punishments,” and “promotes a restrictive business environment that strangles the freedoms of capitalism.” ACT! (American Congress for Truth) launched the website Stop Shariah Now. Its fo…

Size Matters According to New Study

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ns of the brain that remain unactivated in the rest of us. There are any number of weird implications and outright contradictions in these sorts of studies. The first is this: do the authors of these studies believe that religious belief or practice has the power to effect the size of the human brain? If so, that would seem to grant an astonishing power to religion to effect real world, and very nearly miraculous changes. Or perhaps the claim i…

Not a ‘Weenie-A** Lodge’: James Ray Trial Begins

By Johnny P. Flynn

…ss, and fifteen were reported to be suffering ill effects. In spite of the number of people who experienced difficulties during each of the eight fifteen-minute rounds, Ray contends he did not know that there were problems. In fact, Ray is accused of ignoring the pleas of those who wanted out; in one case an individual went out through the side of the sweat lodge to escape the heat. The prosecution played tapes of Ray before the sweat saying, “It’…

Can the Catholic Church Survive Trump?

By Patricia Miller

…administration and the mandate. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of white Catholics who said the Obama administration was “unfriendly to religion” more than doubled from 17 percent to 36 percent between 2009 and 2014. And starting around 2012, white Catholics broke for the GOP by historic margins. It’s also worth noting, as Michael Sean Winters has, that this occurred around the time the administrative staff of the bishops’ confer…

A Debate Rages in India Over Conversion, Secularism, and “Spiritual Violence”

By Murali Balaji

…The systematic destruction of Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, and even Muslim holy sites (and the erection of churches in their ruins) was a central component of the Goan Inquisition, a nearly two-century campaign sanctioned by the Catholic Church to convert non-believers—often violently—into Christianity. But the violence of the Portuguese era did not manage to “win hearts and minds.” British missionaries, schooled in the ways of catering to native popul…

False Saviors: Trump, Cruz, and the Gospel of the Quick Fix

By Marcia Pally

…sons not in the labor force is growing. While some are getting richer, the numbers tell us, middle income earners are hobbled by shrinking purchasing power, disappearing job opportunities, and increasingly out-of-reach education. This is problem enough for the many who work hard and can’t figure out why they’re “losing ground,” as Pew wrote. Add to that fears of terrorism. People want relief. But if no solution presents itself, either lassitude or…

And What of the Non-Jewish Jews?

By Shaul Magid

…ancestry generations ago, a Jewish spouse, Jewish friends etc. In terms of numbers, Jews by religion or no religion make up 2.2% of the U.S. population, but if you add “People with a Jewish affinity” it rises to 2.7%, so that this category of people who are not considered Jews by the Jewish community but identify as Jews is nearly 25% of the Jews by religion or no religion, those we conventionally call “Jews.” The fact that there are so many Ameri…