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Rebuilding the Wall of Separation: A Progressive Discussion on Church & State

By Bruce Ledewitz

…ontroversy, America did not practice separation in the sense usually meant today. Since America’s public square always contained references to God and other religious images, it can be said with confidence that at least most leading figures did not see the Establishment Clause as forbidding something like the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance or prayers at government-sponsored events. That kind of high wall has never enjoyed majority s…

Racial Justice and Queer Masculinity: The Gospel of Frank Ocean

By Josiah Daniels

…e “God is mighty,” or “God is in control.” J. Kameron Carter knows this is code language that allows religious people—but especially Christians—to remain aloof from the darkness that consumes the marginalized. This aloofness goes directly against God’s hope that her cry of protest will cause others to cry out as well. The Spirit of God cries with the same moans and groans the black mothers Yolanda Pierce, Kelly Brown Douglas and Beyoncé write abou…

A Real-Life Truman Show?

By Lauri Lebo

…hrough the gate leading to the water, one must punch in a combination pass code. The town’s elegantly manicured gardens belie its state’s housing market collapse. But just outside of town, realtors advertise “Free Foreclosure Lists!” Sitting along a commons of lush grass, an attractive young couple casually dressed in designer sunglasses, khakis, and expensive sandals led a group of fair-haired children in prayer. The young blond woman urged the c…

Talmud v. Torture: The Jewish Case Against “Enhanced Interrogation”

By Benjamin Weiner

…dictates of the prophetic voice through a regimented system of behavior: a code of conduct thoroughly imbued with an ethos and a morality. The most articulate condemnations of torture that Judaism has to offer are therefore presented most effectively as deeply spiritual legal analyses. The best of these, in recent years, was composed by Rabbi Melissa Weintraub for Rabbis for Human Rights, an international organization focusing on a number of progr…

Final (Probably) Thoughts On The Aqua Buddha Ad

By Sarah Posner

…views on everyone else, but make sure they’re free to mock that very moral code. Democrats fear that argument. That’s why their approach has been, especially since about 2006 or so, to try to make themselves out to be the “authentic” Christians who truly care about their neighbors and all that. The Aqua Buddha ad may have been a bad strategic move in Kentucky; we’ll never really know. But Conway — without, as far as I can tell, invoking treacly re…

Dispatches from the Beltway: Beyond the Graying and Greening Religious Right

By Robert P. Jones

…ke just one example, James Dobson’s sprawling conglomerate has its own zip code in Colorado Springs and a larger monthly print circulation than the New York Times) and argue that it will not so easily wither on the vine. The most jaded on the left simply assert that the religious right is the truest expression of the heart of the evangelical community and is thus here to stay. If the argument that “the era of the religious right is over” depended…

Marriage Debate in Australia Shifts To Push For Religious Exemptions; and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…on and control of eunuchs” and marital rape exceptions in the Indian Penal Code. … Depictions of gender-fluid identity are common in ancient texts found in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. In Hinduism, gods transform into goddesses, or they cross-dress. Men become pregnant. But when the British colonized India, they imported “a great discomfort with all things pleasurable and sensual,” said Devdutt Pattanaik, the author of several books on mytholog…

Is Christianity Simply About God Entering the Uterus of a Jewish Virgin?

By Eric Reitan

Just the other day, a friend forwarded me a mass-mailed promotion for Free Inquiry magazine (a publication in which, incidentally, I had an article published a couple of years ago). The brochure was emblazoned with the following warning: “If you wish to avoid spending eternity roasting in HELL, do not open and read this brochure.” Having no fear of hell, I opened it and fished for what my friend said would be inside: a note from Richard Dawkins e…

New Mormon Anti-Gay Policy Sparks Mass Exodus From Church; Christian AID Workers in Africa Refuse to Help Gay Refugees; Ukraine Rejects, Then Accepts EU-Required Gay Rights Law; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ical Fellowship of Honduras asked the Congress to reject any initiative to promote marriage between same-sex couples… The Evangelical Fellowship rejects the proposal that emerges from the Lesbian and Gay Community… Pastors declared that they were not acting according to a whim or with fundamentalist mentality, but based on the Scriptures. The Bible lays down the principles of how to manage sexuality, which is a responsibility that human beings hav…

Excerpt: The Christian Roots of Zionism

By Shalom Goldman

…conveyed this view in a very concise and pithy manner. The idea was first promoted by Christians. In 1853 Lord Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley-Cooper) wrote that Palestine was ‘‘a country without a nation’’ in search of ‘‘a nation without a country.’’ He made this observation during the Crimean War, when the continued viability of the Ottoman Empire came into question. With the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, continued Turkish rule in Palestine came…