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Something So Broken: What’s Frightening About Beasts of the Southern Wild

By Michael Pasquier

I spend a lot of time outside the levees of coastal Louisiana—my wife and kids would say I spend too much time out there. It is a slow-motion, shape-shifting deltaic masterpiece where water and land have clashed for millennia to form wetlands, marshes, ridges, barrier islands, and bayous able to adapt to the creative and destructive hand of God. Also for centuries, people of Native American, European, and African descent have lived on land and wi…

Catholic Church Ordained Women Before, Can Do it Again

By Phyllis Zagano

…tion of Women to the Diaconate in the Eastern Churches Essays by Cipriano Vagaggini Edited by Phyllis Zagano Liturgical Press, 2013 What inspired you to produce Ordination of Women to the Diaconate in the Eastern Churches? For many years, my academic research has centered on the restoration of women to the ordained diaconate in the Catholic Churches. One of the best-known scholarly essays regarding the historical reality of women ordained as dea…

The Burning Houses of Worship We Missed

By Gordon Haber

…, a brief fire frightened the faithful at the al-Aqsa Mosque; and in Louisiana, the son of a deputy sheriff was arrested for allegedly torching three Black churches. Each fire was upsetting in its own way. Al-Aqsa and Notre Dame are world-historical buildings, and, although the former turned out to be no big deal, I for one feel a twinge of concern whenever anything happens in Jerusalem. Notre Dame will take years and millions of euros to rebuild….

Prosperity Gospel Is Not the Only Problem with Joel Osteen’s Harvey Response

By Brie Loskota and Peter Gudaitis

…moral framework and sense of compassion. At the same time, the emergency management system faces challenges working with faith communities. As partners, government and faith-based organizations must identify assets, make sure people know what they are doing, and coordinate a response under a well-conceived plan. All of this has to be done long before three days into a disaster. As disaster response professionals say, a disaster site is a terrible…

Racist Remarks by popular BYU Religion Professor Spark Controversy

By Joanna Brooks

…e missionaries, to as many as 3,000 students a year. This semester, more than 800 students are registered in Professor Bott’s classes. (Eleven are registered for BYU’s African-American history course this semester.) Professors at BYU routinely find themselves having to address racist and sexist content taught in Bott’s classes, and many are outraged and embarrassed by his rogue remarks to the Washington Post, say sources at the university. “Dr. Bo…

Norway Massacre Suspect Anders Behring Breivik, Hitler, & the Jerusalem Post Editorial

By Sarah Posner

Anders Behring Breivik’s extensive document “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” has a subsection entitled, “The great Satan, his cult and the Jews,” contained within a broader section headlined, “The Conservative Revolution – the only Solution for free Europeans.” Breivik’s manifesto is described by Chip Berlet, an expert on right-wing extremism, as stating “that ‘Political Correctness’ should be called ‘Cultural Marxism’ and is the r…

A Resurgence of “Ex-Gay Therapy” Under Trump/Pence? ABC News Report Offers a Platform to Hate Group Rep. Peter Sprigg

By Sunnivie Brydum

…ed to include any comment from anyone in the well-publicized network of reparative therapy survivors. Instead, ABC provided a largely uncritical platform to a member of a certified anti-LGBT hate group. Veteran journalists Brian Ross and Brian Epstein report on the celebratory mood among advocates of “gay conversion therapy,” who are “heartened” by the new administration’s deference to “religious freedom” claims. They begin by explaining that conv…

Normalization is Control: Telling Stories to Survive

By Mariam Durrani

…pological Association. In an interview with the Guardian, Homa Hoodfar, a Canadian-Iranian anthropologist, said she survived her time in an Iranian prison by studying her captors. She would lie on the floor and use the end of her toothbrush to scratch observations on the walls. Through participant observation at a prison, Hoodfar wrote fieldnotes about the interrogations she endured and conversations with other prisoners. When the interrogators sc…

New Poll: Repeal DOMA

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…2 percent to 34 percent margin. Additionally, when read statements for and against defending DOMA in court, 54 percent of voters oppose the House Republicans’ intervention, while only 32 percent support it. Opponents may try to dismiss the poll, since it was commissioned by the largest organization fighting for LGBT rights, but the numbers [pdf] show that the sample actually skewed right. Of the 800 registered voters polled 38 percent were strong,…

Are School Districts Getting the Message on Government-Sponsored Prayer?

By Lauri Lebo

…t violating the Constitution comes with a hefty price tag. In northern Indiana, a school district voted to end an elementary school Bible class after their lawyer told them they were bound to lose a lawsuit over its constitutionality. In Tennessee, after the Freedom From Religion Foundation filed suit on behalf of students, a school district agreed to stop broadcasting prayer over loudspeakers before home football games because the superintendent…