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Why The Book of Mormon (the Musical) is Awesomely Lame

By Jared Farmer

…s I watched talented African American actors hamming up “African-ness” for cheap laughs. It brought to mind the long, shameful history of Americans—black and white—performing blackness (often in blackface) on stage for white audiences. The Book of Mormon wants to have it both ways. It wants to make fun of The Lion King and its African stereotypes by substituting more authentic stereotypes. It wants to be transgressive and conventional, blasphemous…

Presidential Pep Talks and the Religion of Fear: How did an Uncontroversial Speech Become a National Controversy?

By Eric Reitan

…d. And in response to the controversy and the barrage of outraged parental phone calls, many school systems decided it was safest not to air the speech at all. Others required that alternative activities be arranged for children whose parents refused to permit their kids to be subjected to an encouraging presidential pep talk. The evening after the talk, the local news station I was watching aired a report on the event, complete with footage of a…

U.S. Religious Right Groups Support Move Toward ‘Illiberalism’ of Hungary and Poland; and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ize citizens to restrict gay rights have taken place in Georgia, Bulgaria, France and elsewhere across Europe. In many cases, U.S. religious groups have played an active role in their campaigns. Romania’s Coalition received legal assistance from the international chapters of several U.S.-based conservative Christian groups, including the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and Liberty Counsel. In the U.S., both have been designated as anti-LGBTQ hate…

Suicide Leads to Calls for Improved Treatment of LGBT Mormons

By Joanna Brooks

…l, he attended Brigham Young University, served a proselytizing mission in France, and then married in an LDS temple. He became the father of five children. He served in his local LDS congregation. He did everything that was asked of him. And over the course of more than twenty years, Bryan slowly came to terms with the fact that he was attracted to men. Six years ago, Bryan confided his attraction with a friend he’d known since BYU days. Jahn Cur…

More Mixed Signals from Pope Francis; Church of England Wrestles with Rifts; Faith Groups Lobby Pro & Con on Irish Referendum; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…e group did not get a private meeting with Pope Francis, but was given VIP tickets to the pope’s weekly audience in St. Peter’s square. Religion News Service reports that several bishops, including “San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone – point man or the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ battle against gay marriage – had written a letter to the Vatican on their behalf.” A group of LGBT Catholics from London who met up with the New Ways…

Reporting from Paris: A Prayer for Polluters

By Donna Schaper

…e a caucus proposed a stop fracking resolution. We spent hours on national phone calls debating when fracking should be stopped. We finally proposed 2030 as the last fracking date. It was a compromise after many “brackets,” what COP21 calls the matters that are kept in that famous parking lot where we put the things we don’t know how to decide. The Synod amended our so-called radical proposal and unanimously passed 2017 as the final date. We were…

‘Biblical’ Disaster in Haiti: Pat Robertson and the Curse of Unyielding Ignorance

By Matt Recla

…lation of Haiti is somewhere around thirty percent. In Port-au-Prince that number jumps to almost forty percent. The majority of these churches are Pentecostal. These churches are overwhelmingly independent, indigenous Haitian entities, though some are linked to North American denominational Pentecostal churches. Haiti, along with Jamaica and Puerto Rico, is home to one of the fastest growing Pentecostal populations in the Caribbean. As I watch th…

Closed-Door Conference in Poland Shows How US Conservative Christian Networks Export ‘Conversion Therapy’

By Antonia Gross and Rina Nikolaeva

…from conversion therapies. Malta banned conversion practices in 2016, with France following in 2021. Greece and Germany have banned it for minors. Other countries prohibit it in certain regions, while a number of other countries continue to discuss bans or restrictions. This past January an EU-wide initiative called on the European Commission to work on a binding legal ban for all member states. All 11 US speakers were invited to Warsaw by a Briti…

What Coverage of a Fatal Orthodox Baptism Reveals About Western Media

By Katherine Kelaidis

…mportant marker of Eastern Christian identity—particularly as increasingly numbers of Eastern Christians became the simultaneous targets of Western crusaders and Islamic conquerors. In this context, rigid adherence to liturgical customs became a means by which to assert and preserve identity in the face of colonization and oppression. Conversely, adherence to Christian practices abandoned by the Christian West—if not in the Middle Ages then certai…

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

By Sunnivie Brydum

…orts,” is indeed “long-discredited.” But then they offer what amounts to an 800-word platform to the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg. The short piece serves as a teaser for Friday’s episode of 20/20, the result of a year-long investigation into several ex-gay “camps” located in the American South. The 20/20 segment features interviews with at least two young people sent to the camps—as well as self-described pastors and administrators of th…