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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…

Vatican Considers ‘Disordered’ Language; HBO Doc on LGBT Persecution in Russia; Nigerian Bishop Shifts on Anti-Gay Law; Arson at ‘Open Mosque’ in South Africa; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…nesian gay rights activist interviewed by the Jakarta Globe. Another activist insisted the punishment belongs in the Middle Ages. “Gays and lesbians are human beings also,” said a female Indonesian lecturer from Aceh in an interview with GlobalPost. “Who are we to go against God’s creations?” Africa: ‘Conversion Therapy’ as Political Weapon Political Research Associates’ Kapya Kaoma reports on conversion therapy in Africa, and the ways American re…

Cloverfield: Sin & Redemption, with Monsters

By Gabriel Mckee

…’t attack California if greedy capitalists didn’t kidnap his miniature priestesses. The monsters symbolically destroy our human world, and we cheer because we think it’s all our fault. We deserve it, this says—a theology of sin and divine retribution. The kaiju-as-divine-wrath theme is nowhere as clear as in Gamera 3: Awakening of Irys, possibly the genre’s best film since the original Godzilla. Early in this film Gamera, the giant fire-breathing…

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…

The Problem with Pew’s Science & Religion Poll

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…fuel internet hot-takes rather than productive public discourse. This is just one study, of course, but it matters for two reasons. First, Pew’s study manufactures and reinforces a narrow view of religion and science, while claiming to objectively measure public opinion; and second, the study’s extensive and largely uncritical media coverage is emblematic of the dysfunctional relationship between pollsters and reporters. The basics Pew surveyed 2,…

Are You There God? It’s Me, Donald: A President at Prayer

By Peter Laarman

…They love me. My speech was a the biggest success in the history of black people. The media lied about it, of course. They said I didn’t know Douglass. They just can’t stop lying. Oh, gotta go, that’s my man Douglass on the phone right now. #amen #maga…

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…

Is It OK To Use a Cellphone in Church? Pew Surveys the New Etiquette

By Michael Schulson

…phone use in church (cf. Matthew 7:5). But it’s also possible that the question was just confusing. The problem here is that when Pew asks questions about how people use their cellphones, they’re entering vague territory, because there’s no agreed-upon definition of “use.” I’d wager hard cash that if you asked the exact same question about churches after priming people to think of Bible apps, those opinions would be very different. “Oh, that kind…