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If the Family Research Council is a ‘Church’ I’m a #TaxTheChurches Supporter

By Chrissy Stroop

…iteria used to classify an organization as a charity, a church, or a social welfare organization are clear and reasonable, and the rules are strictly and fairly enforced—even on powerful Christian organizations like FRC and local hotbeds of extremist activism such as “The Altar,” a church in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho where far right-wingers organize. Until such time as that possibility is actually on the table, I’m with the #TaxTheChurches crowd….

Why We Should Keep the Devil in Halloween

By Ed Simon

…intact after being crushed underneath a mill-wheel. She claimed to have visited both hell and purgatory, and that she viscerally remembered the sensory feeling of eternal torture. There are accounts of her eating food given to her by the sinful, and then feeling the mental torments of the penitent, and the physical pain of purgatorial suffering. She was literally a sin-eater, and in this way took part in a soteriological tradition going back to t…

Speaker Mike Johnson to Allow Privately Run National Prayer Breakfast into the Heart of the Capitol

By Jonathan Larsen

…ongress. Nothing has happened with the bill, but Statuary Hall is the next best thing, and rich with its own history and symbolic implications for any events taking place there. Statuary Hall was used early in its history for presidential inaugurations and more recently for distinguished political leaders to lie in state. The Family historically has sought to cloak the event in the trappings of government, using images of the Capitol dome and even…

Conservatives Have Officially Become the Catholic Church’s Tea Party

By Patricia Miller

…the national level, with bishops’ conferences responsible for formulating local solutions, is now anathema, as signaled by Pell: You cannot have two people in the same situation with the same dispositions [where] one goes to Communion, and it [is] a sacrilege, and in the country next door, it is a cause of grace…“‘Catholic’ means ‘universal,’ not ‘continental.’ Kurtz warned pointedly that allowing different communion practices would “fracture” th…

In the Age of Megachurches, Sometimes Less Is More

By Richard Flory

…of churchgoing outsiders. What we’re finding is a renewed emphasis on the local community that is attracting mostly younger, college educated congregants—not the blue-haired members suggested by the tiny small-town churches usually cited in these reports. These new, smaller churches are capitalizing on the appeal of urban areas to younger people. They offer both the urban vibe and the opportunities for creating smaller Christian communities and t…

Christian Nationalist Judge Strikes Down FDA-Approved Abortion Pill for Brazenly Ideological Reasons

By Andrew L. Seidel

…member of Leo’s Federalist Society for more than a decade, co-founding his local chapter. When he was first nominated to the federal bench Kacsmaryk was a crusader at First Liberty Institute, the Christian Nationalist legal outfit behind the case the Supreme Court decided last term involving the football coach who imposed sectarian prayer on students at public school football games. In that case, federal appellate judges (not affiliated with the L…

Secede, For The Kingdom of Bernie Has Come Near

By Daniel Schultz

…e religious models for sort of thing, actually: Orthodox Jews dominating a local school system, for example, or Islamberg, New York, a hamlet founded in the Catskill mountains by Muslim migrants. True, they’re not really secessionist: the first is more a takeover of existing institutions, and the second is founding those institutions for yourself. Still, if you want to go the separatist route, there are some clues as to how it could be done. Or ma…

Of Birds and Buddhists: Wildlife Rehab, NYC Style

By Jay Wexler

…m to be euthanized), started organizing them after learning that scores of local Buddhists had been releasing large numbers of turtles into the park’s waters, where they are ill-suited to live. Buddhists believe that releasing injured or threatened animals can bring good karma to animal and releaser alike, but practiced without care and in large numbers, these releases can cause great damage. Things are even worse overseas, in places like Taiwan,…

#SorryNotSorry: What U.S. Christian Denominations Teach About Homosexuality

By Stephanie Russell-Kraft

…xual practice, or sexual orientation.” However, according to its 2012 Full Book of Discipline, “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” “Self-avowed practicing homosexual” ministers are not allowed to be ordained by the church. At their 2016 quadrennial conference, Methodists gathered in Portland to consider whether gay and lesbian pastors should be ordained and whether same-sex couples should be able to marry in th…

Both the Joy and the Uproar Over the Pope’s Blessings for LGBTQ Catholics are Small Potatoes Compared to this Age-Old Church Problem

By Mary E. Hunt

…dedicated to rehearsing the nature and scope of blessings. This content is bookended by sections on marriage blessings (for the good kids) and blessings for couples in “irregular situations and of couples of the same sex” (the bad kids). The long excursus into the finer points of blessings themselves seems aimed at distracting from the heart of the matter: only people in heterosexual couples (theoretically in monogamous, committed relationships) c…