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Why It’s Heresy to Read the Bible Literally: An Interview with John Shelby Spong

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…holiness of gays and lesbians, I ordained the first openly gay man with a partner in 1989. That’s a long time ago in this battle. It was covered by all the major networks and print media. We had picketers outside. I was inundated with hate mail and when I visited churches I was spat on as I entered. It’s never fun but that’s the doorway, [how] you get the non-Christian world, those who have given up on Christ and God and the church—that’s the way…

The Passion of Katniss: How the Hunger Games Confronts the Trauma of Violence

By Michael Schulson

…answer to those questions is, in my opinion, a most definite yes. Over the phone, Deaton explained that Collins captures the helplessness of its hero–and, through that sense of helplessness, the dynamics of trauma. “Trauma really is about the moment of freezing,” said Deaton. “What is traumatic is when there’s nothing that can be done.” Collins, he said, sustains a kind of trapped tension throughout the books—that feeling that you’re “never really…

Bad News for LGBT Anglicans, Mormons, Adventists, Norwegians, Russians, Georgians, Egyptians, Kuwaitis, Saudis…

By Peter Montgomery

…vil marriage certificate in Washington state for his step-daughter and her partner. Norway: Church of Norway Won’t Let Priests Marry Same-Sex Couples This week the Church of Norway, a protestant denomination, rejected a proposal that it allow religious weddings for same-sex couples, reports Agence France Presse, even though most of the country’s bishops supported the proposal. Norway was among the first countries in Europe to grant homosexuals f…

Mormons Prepare for WA Marriage Equality Fight

By Joanna Brooks

…op of their local congregation. He did not allow his daughter to bring her partner home for Thanksgiving. I thought then that this was one of the worst things I’d ever heard. It made a tremendous impression on me. When I grew older, as the LDS Church deepened its involvement in the political fight over same sex marriage, I started to realize that there must be people out there who identified as Mormon and for gay rights. Personally, I felt that su…

A Valentine for the World…and for the Church I Left

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…ept with joy to have landed in such a strange and unexpected place. My new partner often said of my years as a fundamentalist, “Those people stole your youth.” He was bitter at my loss, but that night in the cab, I only felt wonder. Joy. Overwhelmed to still have so much still before me. What will it profit a man if he gains the world, yet loses his soul? You ask me this. I know you do. I haven’t gained the world. It was here all along, a wonderfu…

Angry Voters, Right-Wing Populism, & Racial Violence: People of Faith Can Help Break the Linkages

By Chip Berlet

…e supremacist movements.” I catch up with the Rev. David Ostendorf by cell phone while he is waiting for a plane at an East Coast airport. He is the executive director of the CNC where Ward works. Ostendorf, A United Church of Christ minister, once led PrairieFire Rural Action, a group that tried to save family farms during a major agricultural economic crisis in the 1980s. “Back then we helped build a popular economic political movement among fam…

Introducing the Dr. Who Media Club

By James F. McGrath

…veler. His time machine is the Tardis, which looks like a police box—think phone booth—but it’s bigger on the inside than the outside, can fly, and may actually be a living creature. He adventures through time and space, usually accompanied by one or more human companions who assist him in righting wrongs, liberating the oppressed, fighting alien menaces, and averting unspeakable disasters. His alien origins give him a sharp mind and extraordinary…

For Clergy Who Ministered Through the AIDS Crisis Covid is Both Eerily Familiar and Puzzlingly Different

By Lynne Gerber

…other. Protect yourself. Be responsible not just for yourself but for your partner. . . . It’s really not different.” Another is the skill of ritual innovation, honed in ministry to people whose life passages were not ritually marked in the eyes of the dominant culture. “God didn’t go away” in either epidemic, said Mitulski. “Our ability to craft ritual, our imagination has not dissipated or dried up.” Queer churches have long had to create ritual…

“God Created You”: Bishop Supports Gay Ugandans, Defies Death Threats

By Jocelyn Edwards

…etermined to be at the funeral of David,” said the bishop. Speaking on the phone the day after Kato’s murder, Senyonjo said he was shocked by the death of his friend, who he had known for the past seven years and worked with at the religious LGBT organization Integrity Uganda. “I was very much surprised. I didn’t know that they [people in Uganda who are anti-gay] would be so serious as to kill somebody like that who had been mentioned in Rolling S…

The Forgotten Nones: The High Cost of Fleeing Fundamentalist Religion

By Andreea Nica

…ntacting them and not a single one of them has reached out to me either by phone or Facebook to see how I am. There were a good 5 people in that friend group that I thought I was very close to, but since I stopped attending Church events, none of them have contacted me though I know they are all still involved in the Church. Heather describes her coming out as a nonbeliever to family as “difficult and still a work-in-progress” and further explains…