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Sacred&Profane: On Sexual Diversity, Perversity, and Ecstasy

By Gary Laderman

…rmed at certain times of the year, only fueled the fires of the missionary spirit and convinced them of the desperate need for spiritual redemption through sexual purification. The recurring battles and conflicts over the terms of sexuality have been a well-worn pattern in American religious history, with pagan Indians (Captivity Narrative of Mary Rowlandson), polygamous Mormons (anti-Mormonism from the get-go), perverse Jews (Philip Roth), predat…

Can a Church Split Truly Be Gracious?

By Adam J. Copeland

…ed. Even as I began every meeting with prayer about being open to the Holy Spirit’s movement in our midst, asking for signs as to what new thing God might be up to in Bathgate, I was pretty sure in a matter of months they would choose to stay put. Change is hard, after all, and on the prairie it comes slowly. I don’t remember the 1983 establishment of the Presbyterian Church (USA), but I was there.I was only a few months old when my family travele…

Walk the Walk: Honoring Common Ground on Abortion

By Frances Kissling

…is we, after all, who extended promises of trust-building guidelines and a spirit of inclusion to cautious voices on all sides, asking them to take the risks necessary to talk and to listen. When we don’t live up to that same spirit, all we manage to do is affirm every cynical instinct, every pessimistic expectation that is so pervasive in the politics of abortion and that keeps us from achieving anything together. And our responsibility to uphold…

Packed with Threats of Political Violence, Media Largely Ignore the NAR’s ‘Million Women’ Rally in DC

By Frederick Clarkson

…ement that is Threatening Our Democracy, also says: This was literally the spiritual imagery & rhetoric that instigated Christians to violence on January 6th. Here Ché Ahn is invoking it w/ an even more targeted, just-veiled-enough-to-be-deniable, spiritual assassination order on Kamala Harris. The unreported The event was large and significant by any reasonable measure. Apostle Cindy Jacobs says the National Park Service estimated the crowd to be…

Pittsburgh Paradox: A City Haunted by God and Steel

By Ed Simon

…hat coincidentally matches Paul, Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (also published in 1905) describes how for “Those people in possession of spontaneous, fun-living dispositions” the creed of endless material accumulation coupled with a disdain of pleasure was “absolutely meaningless.” Pittsburgh’s central creed was exactly as Weber described it, a cold city governed by a tough gospel, and so Paul absconds with his fat…

Glenn’s at it Again, and Again

By Joanna Brooks

…pace right there between Washington and Lincoln with the Reflecting Pool—a spiritual space in our nation—the Spirit of the Lord is going to be unleashed like I think you’ve never felt it before. In the world of Mormonism, we call this rhetorical move “bearing one’s testimony.” When one bears testimony, one attests to the truth of a spiritual principle. The phrase “the Spirit is so strong” is a conventional Mormon phrase to describe one’s perceptio…

‘Always Pray to the Father’: Mormon Leader Calls Desire for Knowledge of Heavenly Mother ‘Arrogant and Unproductive’

By Holly Welker

…us Christ of Latter-day Saints. Confused about which church he should join, 14-year-old Joseph Smith read James 1:5: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” Joseph therefore decided to ask God for wisdom. In response, God and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph and told him to join no church, for they were all false. Instead, Joseph would be guided to restore God…

The Pope is Not a Biblical Literalist

By Kate Childs Graham

…phrase: ‘the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.‘ But the liberating Spirit is not simply… the exegete’s own vision. The Spirit is Christ … Who shows us the way. With the word of Spirit and of freedom, a further horizon opens up, but at the same time a clear limit is placed upon arbitrariness and subjectivity, which unequivocally binds both the individual and the community and brings about a new, higher obligation than that of the letter: na…

Pope’s US Visit Provokes Intense Attention; New Vatican Book on Man-Woman Complementarity & New Int’l Report on Christian Role Models for LGBT Equality; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…week, a survey of members of the parliament o the Faroe Islands found that 16 were in favor of marriage equality, 11 were opposed, and 6 did not answer. Recent elections led to a two-seat gain by the Social Democrats in the territory’s 33 member parliament; it was reported that the new government is expected to pass legislation allowing same-sex unions. “While its former colonial master Denmark was the first country in the world to recognize same…

An Immoderate Proposal: Sam Rodriguez, “Centrist” Evangelical, to Give Benediction at RNC

By Sarah Posner

…urches in the United States—so Rodriguez is claiming to represent more than 10% of those, even though he represents a demographic that constitutes just 13% of the Latino population. In a recent interview with the Arizona Star, Rodriguez claimed to represent 40,118 affiliated churches nationwide—nearly 6,000 more churches than his website claims. While it’s true that Latino evangelicals tend to trend Republican more than Latino Catholics do, they s…