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Hajj Journal: Door Number 89: The Door with No Name

By Amina Wadud

…y eke out a space behind some men. But the rudeness of the removal is so disturbing, I just do not want that encounter. But I do want to pray where I can see the Ka’abah. That is only possible from the first floor, and if you are right by the railing on the upper floors. So, I have missed this opportunity after that first day, when we did our tawaf, followed by two rakaat at the maqam Ibrahim. As I circled around inside the mosque one day, I came…

How Does an Atheist Come to Believe in God?: An Interview with Jacob Needleman

By Lisa Webster

…y with you, but I don’t deny your humanity. The art of listening is the first step of every ethics. That’s been misunderstood: as if to become good is to become ethical. But it’s not a question of acting and doing the right thing—that’s hard. But we can listen to the other, give our attention, which is our precious human substance, to the other person. When I give my attention to you it’s a little bit of love, whatever you might call it: and that’…

Religious Hostility to Gay Nigerians; The Pope’s Visit To Africa; Ireland’s Religious Schools Can’t Discriminate Against Gays; Orthodox Church in Georgia Leads Anti-Gay Forces; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ber of reasons: It may well be that Pope Francis decided that a six-day whistle-stop tour of Africa was not the place to raise an issue of such delicacy. Debate on the place of gays in the church would require time for a more softer, gradualist approach. But the issue is a double impediment for Francis — and one which he should have begun publicly to address. It is a massive human rights injustice because homophobia is endemic in Africa; most coun…

Is There Hope for a Truly Progressive Evangelicalism? An Interview with Deborah Jian Lee

By Eric C. Miller

…d people for this book, so as you might imagine, I used a range of journalistic strategies to find the people I featured. I immersed myself in the progressive evangelical scene by attending meetings and conferences. I interviewed leaders, friends, strangers and everyone in between. I read thousands of articles. I cold-called and tweeted at a lot of people whose stories intrigued me. The people I chose to feature had stories that I found emblematic…

My Lowest Point

By Amina Wadud

…ace. We’d made plans to meet up in case we got separated and had exchanged phone numbers. In the middle of the tawaf, the call to prayer came. The guards stopped the tawaf. Some people complied and started to form lines. I found a spot between two women, each with their husbands, and sat down on the line. This seemed an ideal spot until a woman in black niqab squeezed in on my left just as we started the prayer. Okay then. Before we had completed…

The Real Story Behind Rick Perry’s Secret Meetings with Pastors

By Sarah Posner

…’s meetings reflect this agenda. They include Jim Garlow, the California pastor instrumental in the California Proposition 8 fight who now runs Newt Gingrich’s Renewing American Leadership, and Harry Jackson, who relentlessly opposed D.C.’s gay marriage law; religious right historian David Barton; Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council; Rod Parsley, who, like John Hagee, is apparently making…

Sex, Violence, Art, and Religion

By Kent L. Brintnall

…f-portraits—how they treated their own bodies and subjectivities using the stylistic gestures I discuss. I wish the book had more illustrations and that the illustrations in the book were in color. I wish I had the patience to write a chapter that explicitly and carefully addressed feminist theologies of the cross—or one that reviewed various interpretations of the resurrection. (Although the book is very interested in Christian theology, it serve…

Conservative Rep Grills Oklahoma Personhood Sponsors

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ng, while still being bothered by the potential consequences of turning blastocyst-Americans into legal rights-bearing persons. But meanwhile, those who are most invested in getting a personhood bill passed won’t be pleased with any exception or compromise. They’re hoping personhood legislation will get them a court challenge that results in Roe v. Wade being overturned. So conservative legislators are caught in the middle, and the voters themselv…

Mormons Prepare to March in LGBT Pride Parades Nationwide

By Joanna Brooks

…specially. There is almost one LDS gay suicide a week in Utah. It’s got to stop. If just one young man who is gritting his teeth and going to church with his family sees us, perhaps he will know that there is someone in his ward, someone in his family he can talk to. Tell me more about “looking like Mormons” when you walk in Salt Lake City on June 3. I want everyone to wear what they wear to Church. I want us to look like the people streaming in a…

Rage or Courage?: YouTube Terrorism Take Two

By Bruce B. Lawrence

…simplistic: the West—what used to be known as Christendom—is now in the last stages of a centuries-old struggle for dominance and prestige with Islamic civilization. Since the end of World War II, but even more since the end of the Cold War (1989), the defeated Islamic forces seek revenge from the margins, whether through terrorist activities or public demonstrations. While the Arab Spring may seem to have boded change, it was just a temporary bl…