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A Queer Atheist In the Heart of Mormon Country

By Chris Stedman

…t hope that the act of encounter with someone who is unfamiliar will bring new ways of thinking to light. After all, support for marriage equality more than doubles among people who know a gay person. The Pew Research Center reports that of the 14% of Americans who went from opposing to supporting gay marriage in the last decade, 37% (the largest category) did so because of “friends/family/acquaintances who are gay/lesbian.” The second largest cat…

Obstacles for Secularists

By Sarah Posner

…to become better organized as a political force, even as they increase in number. The major impediment to that kind of organization is the fact that it is very difficult for secularists to conceive of themselves in tribal terms. Most tribes, whether of nations or ethnicities or sports fandom, can easily demarcate their membership—it’s the people who look like us, or talk like us, or dress like us. Tribes organized around religious belief have rit…

Sovereign Grace Sexual Abuse Lawsuit Just Got More Complicated

By T.F. Charlton

…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 emotional distress. On May 17, however, Maryland Circuit Court Judge Sharon V. Burrell dismissed most of the suit on the grounds of statute of limitations: unde…

Are Conservative Churches Really Winning by Being More Orthodox?

By Daniel Schultz

…ed less-than-orthodox. And even relatively conservative Catholics like the newly-minted Pope Francis would agree that the “Christian moral code” involves a commitment to peace and social justice, which Eberstadt seems to ignore in favor of questions of sexual morality. (To be fair, Simon didn’t ask her about such issues.) But the heart of Eberstadt’s argument is demographics, and just about every piece of social research released in the few years…

What Do ‘The Christians’ Believe? Easter Reflections from a Non-Christian

By Gary Laderman

…point. Perhaps all agree about the life and teaching of Jesus? Or that the New Testament is God’s revealed word? Any investigation beneath the surface of these possibilities would reveal the impossibility of consensus. Just take a quick glance at conservative responses to Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity to get a feeling for the way this debate takes place in real time. And beyond the sorts of theological, political, and institutional d…

Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue

By Cody J. Sanders

…e of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. I cannot count the number of times I have heard well-meaning, good-hearted people respond to this appeal, saying, “Things are a lot better for gay people today than they were several years (or decades) ago. In time, our society (or churches) will come around on this issue.” To these friends and others, I must say, “It’s time.” For Lucas, Brown, Clementi, Walsh, and Chase the time is up. For t…

Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

By Diane Winston

…l inspiration, and social movements is a separate reality from the growing number of nones. Both need coverage. But the Gallup data raises questions that I’ve rarely seen addressed in recent years. What does faith look and feel like in flyover country? As a cub reporter, I wrote about the greying mainline, their internecine squabbles and financial woes. But thirty years later, they’re still standing. Did we get it wrong or did we just forget to lo…

8: The Mormon Proposition Gets It Right

By Joanna Brooks

…have dismissed the film as blatantly false. But what I’m hearing from a number of Mormons deeply familiar with the Proposition 8 campaign is that the film gets it mostly right. [See also Holly Welker’s review here. – Eds] Some take exception to editing choices that sequence events out of context for dramatic effect; others wish that the filmmakers had not been so cartoonish in their depictions of anti-gay-marriage standpoints, using only notori…

Debate Heats Up Over “Francis Effect”

By Patricia Miller

…one to measure the pontiff’s influence” than, say, actual metrics like the number of people going to mass or returning to the church. According to Burke, you just have to “ask around” Boston to find folks who know someone who’s thinking about returning to the church or who feels less horrible about the church than in the darkest days of the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal, which had Boston at its epicenter. That’s a pretty low bar, but of course n…

Jesus Christ and Super Stars: How The Holy Rolled Mainstream in Pop Music

By Alana Massey

…ls her ‘mission statement, if I have one,’” writes Rachel Syme in a recent New Yorker profile. On the track, Baker declares, “But I think there’s a god and he hears either way when I rejoice and complain/Lift my voice that I was made/And somebody’s listening at night with the ghosts of my friends when I pray.” This God is not an amorphous therapeutic deity of yesteryear nor a mostly ornamental cross in a photo shoot. This is the living Lord who he…