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Boy Scout “Perversion Files” Raise Questions about Abuse in Mormon Contexts

By Joanna Brooks

…ims and accusers. In 1995, the Church established stronger guidelines and new protocols for reporting abuse, including a 1-800 number for local clergy. …

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

By Michael Pasquier

…Orleans to rescue their lost loved ones trapped beneath the sea.” In many ways, Beasts is a thematic and stylistic extension of Glory at Sea, which takes place in a levee-less enclave called the Bathtub, where a girl named Hushpuppy (played by Wallis) lives with her neglectful but loving father Wink, played by New Orleans baker-turned-actor Dwight Henry. Father and daughter, together with other outcasts of the Bathtub, face the possibility of cat…

Colorado’s Personhood Initiative Fails—For Now

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…o? Oh, so it might just completely wreck her life and re-traumatize her in ways I can never really understand since I’m not her? Yeah, that’s fine. I’m okay with that possibility. Make sure she does what I think she should do. Make sure it’s not her decision.” I doubt most supporters of personhood measures would actually say that. I’d like to think most of them don’t think that. But that just shows how important it is to remember, when the subject…

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

By Lauri Lebo

…ration or the school board in the past, because it was so widely accepted. No one exercised the right to protest. “Now that it has happened, we all know what the laws are, so we have to make sure we’re doing what’s right,” he said. As always, it’s important to note that the districts’ decisions don’t take away a student’s right to pray. As Barrie Lynn of American’s United for Separation of Church and State says, “As long as there are algebra tests…

My God, David Brooks

By John Modern

…ding of our natures. Shakespeare helped us see character in more intricate ways. An improvement in mores means we take less pleasure from bear-baiting, hanging and other forms of public cruelty. We have a greater understanding of how nature works . . . These achievements did make it possible to construct a purely humanistic account of the meaningful life. It became possible for people to conceive of meaningful lives in God-free ways — as painters…

US Archbishop and Vatican-Appointed “Overseer” Attends Annual Meeting of Women Religious

By Emily Baxter

…embly, the sisters officially called for gun control legislation and signed 800 postcards demanding Congress members to pass immigration reform. As LCWR past-president, Sr. Pat Farrell said to the Assembly, “Expressing what we really think and feel, with transparency and vulnerability, is for the brave of heart. It is, however, what we are being asked to do in our current conflict. All of a sudden the world is looking to us.” Like this story? You…

Policing Academic Freedom: A Book, a Controversy, and the Ominous Aftermath

By Michael Jerryson

…ndia, and my own reflective readings.” Shukla explains that “while there always have been and now are a growing number of scholars who are committed to presenting emic understandings of Hinduism, we find each year that the ‘in crowd’ created by Doniger at the AAR has yet to shift in terms of power and influence.” In light of this information, she reprimands the AAR for their support of the work and a failure to encourage academic integrity. As a R…

Catholic Church Ordained Women Before, Can Do it Again

By Phyllis Zagano

…e trajectory of deacon-priest-bishop is relatively recent—only about 700 or 800 years in the long history of the Church. In fact, the earlier understanding is that the deacon would become a bishop! I sometimes wonder if the naysayers are more afraid of women bishops than of women priests. But, in modern times, we have reestablished the tradition of a diaconate lived permanently. All priests are also ordained deacons, and in the most formal of litu…

Did the Pope Embrace the Prosperity Gospel?

By Sarah Posner

Late last month, Pope Francis met with charismatic Christian and Pentecostal leaders at the Vatican, including prosperity gospel televangelist Kenneth Copeland, a popular American religious figure whose theology and lifestyle is directly at odds with the Pope’s. The meeting was not the humble Pope’s first encounter with the self-anointed bishops of bling. In February, he recorded a video message for a Copeland conference, in which he called for u…

Are Atheists Taking 1st Amendment Suits Too Far?

By Gordon Haber

…nizations to be opaque about their money. And besides, there are plenty of ways to steal from nonprofits even when they do file 990s. The interesting thing about all three cases is that they reveal the compulsion to sort out the messy business of religion in America once and for all. But the wall of separation between church and state is neither entirely solid nor porous. The better metaphor might be No Exit with a pastor and an atheist damned to…