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Will Texas Really Be Able to Undermine Marriage Equality?

By Sunnivie Brydum

…ghts’ based on relationships that mock marriage,” Carpenter contends: “The Texas Supreme Court’s characterization of same-sex marriages as involving simply ‘sexual relations’ demeans those marriages as much as the opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick (reversed in Lawrence v. Texas) demeaned gay couples’ right to sexual privacy by calling it only a right to ‘homosexual sodomy.’ When certain people see a married gay couple their thoughts drift to sodomy. “…

The Abortion Debate, Texas Style

By Dhawn Martin

…just getting started. While checking out the latest update from Stand With Texas Women on Facebook, I heard Texas Sen. Donna Campbell on the local news declare that “Democracy was traded for mobocracy” during the successful filibuster. Mobocracy, really? Needless to say, the proverbial line was drawn in the sand, yet again. The orange-clad were directed to arrive at the Capitol the following day, July 2, ready to register their stance on HB2 and,…

A Reforming Tradition Struggles With Change

By Brent Hege

…onal ministers, associates in ministry, and deaconesses, and currently the number of women and men preparing for ministry in ELCA seminaries is roughly equal (Susan Candea, “Wisdom Has Blessed Us”). While there are certainly some in the ELCA who continue to oppose women’s ordination, those numbers are small and grow smaller with each passing year. The same, I suspect, will be the case for the issue of gay and lesbian ordination forty years from no…

Atheist Nazis? The Pope’s Cheap Atonement

By Susannah Heschel

Adam Clayton Powell called it “cheap grace,” but we might call it “cheap atonement”: the effort by sinners to select which sins to acknowledge and repent. Pope Benedict XVI ended his heavily protested visit to England with a heartfelt apology for German bombings of England during the Battle of Britain; though he refused to accept Christian responsibility for the Holocaust, blaming it instead on pagans and atheists. Given that Cardinal Walter Kasp…

Texas Board of Education Wants to Change History

By Lauri Lebo

…xtbooks. As the second-largest bulk purchaser of textbooks in the country, Texas determines what students learn not only in Texas, but in many other states, where districts purchase the same versions. The board members have appointed six experts, and, the choices appear carefully crafted to be fair and balanced to differing views: one side representing a commitment to sound education, and the other side representing an agenda of religious far-righ…

Texas Faith Leaders Say Governor’s Use of Pandemic to Ban Abortion is an Attack on Religious Freedom (Updated)

By David R. Brockman

…as echoed that charge in a panel discussion livestreamed last week by Just Texas, a reproductive justice group affiliated with the left-leaning Texas Freedom Network (TFN). They also lodged a perhaps more substantial and often overlooked objection: the ban, like attempts to curtail reproductive choice generally, amounts to an assault on religious freedom. “It’s an extension of the insistence on one particular theological point of view as the offic…

Evolution Challenged in ‘Textbook’ Case: As Goes Texas, So Goes the Nation

By Lauri Lebo

…ed by us in a few years.” With almost $30 million set aside in the budget, Texas is second only to California in the bulk purchase of textbooks. But Texas, unlike California, approves and purchases books for all the state’s school districts. Publishers often edit and revise textbooks in order meet the specific demands of the Texas board members. Other states pay attention too, and what’s adopted in Texas is also adopted in many conservative states…

‘Soul of Yoga’ at Stake in Texas Regulation Push

By Andrea R. Jain

…that require yoga teacher training programs to be licensed by the State of Texas. Until the last few years, Texas approached the regulation of yoga as it approached the regulation of religious institutions and organizations: it didn’t. But in January of 2010, The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) informed the program directors of yoga teacher training programs in Houston and Dallas that they may be running career schools as defined by Chapter 132 o…

Glenn Beck’s Cheap Grace

By Karyn Carlo

…way from the hard work of repentance, who tickle our ears with promises of cheap grace, and offer a vision of the cross of Jesus that has nothing to say to the crosses, and lynching trees, of history. But, if we do, we will be settling for the gospel of Caesar, not the good news of Jesus Christ. Perhaps it is time to put down the chalk, stop drawing pyrotechnical conspiracy theories that play into our worst fears and listen, instead, for the diffi…

New Report: Angels & Aliens in Texas Schools

By Mark A. Chancey

…des of Hanna-Barbera’s The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible. The number of Bible courses in Texas has gone up since 2007, when Texas passed a law encouraging schools to offer them. Texas is not alone in having such a statute; in recent years, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Arizona have passed similar laws, and Bible bills are currently making their way through the Wyoming and Arkansas legislatures. While these laws typically urge teac…