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Vatican Reverses Anti-Liberation Policies in Mexico

By Ruth Chojnacki and Jennifer Scheper Hughes

…ate, an ancient institution revived by Vatican II. In 2000, 341 of Mexico’s 800 deacons served the Diocese of San Cristobal, the largest number of deacons in any Catholic diocese in the world. Vatican suspicion of Bishop Ruiz’s liberationist pastoral strategy resulted in a failed attempt to remove him in 1993. The deacon program came under particular scrutiny after the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, with reports that Maya catechists defied th…

Heterosexual Martyrs and Gay Saints: Did AIDS Coverage Clear the Way for LGBT Equality?

By Diane Winston

…fied as AIDS, did not receive ongoing or thorough coverage. By 1982, nearly 800 AIDS cases had been diagnosed. According to one study, infants and children were increasingly infected. Although a threat to the general population was quickly dismissed, the implication was clear: anyone could be infected. The epidemic had exposed social and cultural fault lines that made coverage more than just a medical story. Its initial outbreak in the homosexual…

Kirk Cameron Joins the Anti-Mormon Chorus
(Sort Of)

By Julie Ingersoll

While a number of conservative Christian leaders raise questions about Glenn Beck’s Mormonism, Worldview Matters’ host Brannon Howse continued his attack in a conversation with Kirk Cameron about why Cameron did not participate in Glenn Beck’s Divine Destiny. Howse marveled at the “thick irony” wherein Cameron (the actor who played Buck, the converted journalist warning about the “demonic spirituality of a one world religion” in the Left Behind m…

Unprecedented Anti-LGBTQ Statement By Orthodox Church in America Should Be Christian Nationalist Warning Sign to US Orthodoxy

By Katherine Kelaidis

…active in their efforts: the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdioceses of North America (AOA) and (you guessed it) the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). Both are, unsurprisingly, characterized by a large number of American converts in their ranks. Nearly 70% of those in the AOA are converts, while the OCA is about evenly split, 50-50. Similarly, the GOA, arguably the most progressive Orthodox body in America—“progressive” being a relative term—re…

I Volunteer to Root Out Christian Extremism

By Peter Laarman

…rtheless put the number at roughly 338,000. I am willing to work with this number until a better one comes along. Of this number, roughly 8,000 congregations claim upwards of 1,000 members; most are smaller, indeed most are much smaller. My concept is this: I think we can create a Christian Honor Corps (CHC) of perhaps 10,000 persons. Persons like myself who take our responsibility to monitor Christian extremist thought seriously and who are willi…

‘Late Night With The Devil’ Reflects the Role of Talk Shows in Sensationalizing the Satanic Panic of the 1980s

By Joseph Laycock

…dio learned of the story, reported in The National Jesuit News, a producer phoned Patzelt to ask if they could film his next exorcism. Patzelt refused, but he did appear on NBC’s The Tomorrow Show as part of a panel of priests discussing The Exorcist, which Patzelt dismissed The Exorcist as “a junky movie.” But he was able to parlay his appearance on network television into a speaking tour, traveling to Fordham and other universities around the co…

The End of My Line: It’s Okay to Embrace The ‘Covid Baby Bust’

By Monica Byrne

…r, I was pounding the wall of my gynecologist’s office with the heel of my palm under fluorescent lights as she held me open and slid an IUD up through my cervix. She’d showed it to me before she put it in: a tiny copper cross. My salvation. After the appointment, I drove home crying, but couldn’t say why. This was exactly what I’d wanted. I felt the IUD smoldering inside me like a live coal, neither good nor bad, just hot. It seemed to say, What…

Lessons in Rhetorical Strategy from a DC Bishop

By Mary E. Hunt

…. Knestout, of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, distributed at masses on Palm (now called Passion) Sunday. He writes, “A petition drive and referendum campaign is being lead [sic] by the Maryland Marriage Alliance, a statewide coalition of faith-based organizations and others, including the Catholic Church in Maryland.” Nowhere does he mention same-sex marriage, lesbian and gay people, same-sex couples, our children, or anything about us. We hav…

Allen West’s Communist Conspiracy Rooted in Christian Anti-Communism?

By Sarah Posner

…rs of Congress who are communists. His remarks were first published in the Palm Beach Post. In a video released to the Daily Caller (via TPM), West is shown responding to a constituent question by saying there are roughly 78-81 members of the “Democrat Party” who are communists. “It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus,” he adds helpfully. Where might he get such a notion? I have an idea of at least one source. In his 2010 re-issue of the…

Reparative Therapy is Quackery, Rabbis Agree—But that Doesn’t Mean it’s Okay to Be Gay

By Jay Michaelson

…recedented, weird, and baseless speculation more befitting astrologers and palm-readers than legitimate Torah sages. Everything holds water until JONAH’s finger in the dike is removed. Once it’s clear that reparative therapy is neither reparative nor therapy, the flood is let loose and catastrophe ensues. This is why the JONAH lawsuit, and the RCA action, are so important. It’s not that poor, Orthodox people are so desperate to change their sexual…