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

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ust believe in order to be Christian. “Galileo rendered God homeless and Isaac Newton rendered God unemployed so wherever we thought God was and whatever we thought God did, we can no longer think that way.” Which would rule out both Paul and Mark, who had never heard of the virgin birth, and John, who clearly had heard of it but omits it. That’s just biblical knowledge most people don’t have. I wrote a book once about reclaiming the Bible for a n…

Introducing the Dr. Who Media Club

By James F. McGrath

…pond, Doctor Who has always been a bit of a cult thing. Outside of its appearances on PBS in the late ’70s and early ’80s, the BBC’s longest-running science fiction show in history has rarely been seen in the U.S. It always carried more than a bit of mystique, serving as a sort of secret handshake among the most discerning and dedicated geeks. When BBC Wales resurrected the show after a 16-year hiatus in 2005, word began to spread that the new Who…

Becoming Forever Lonesome: How Violence Changes Us

By Amanda Robb

…know is how someone learned that life as she or he knew it was over. I got a phone call. It was about midnight on October 23, 1998. I thought it was my husband calling to say he would be late. It was my stepfather saying, “I have some bad news.” I thought, “My mother or my sister?” He said, “Your uncle Bart has been shot and killed.” For a brief, bright moment, all I was, was relieved. A mother of an 18-year-old girl who died in the massacre at Co…

Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t: The Problem of the Rape Exception

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…who get pregnant should have to carry the pregnancy to term, according to data from the University of Chicago NORC General Social Survey. From the nineties to the ‘aughties that number rose from 16% to 21%—more than one in five Americans. Meanwhile the GOP has, since January, been busy trying to shrink the very definition of rape to only deem those who suffered “forcible rape” eligible to receive federal funding for an abortion. Forcible. Not st…

‘Pro-Life’ Theater, Open White Nationalism, and Virility Fear — Day 3 of NatCon

By Annika Brockschmidt and Ben Lorber

…sident Donald J. Trump is waiting in the wings. And when he assumes office again, let me tell you, the globalists and their entire regime will be smashed to pieces and scattered to the winds. Keep in mind that he derided “globalists” at a conference with a distinctly global focus. It’s a bit more legible, of course, when you recall that the term “globalists” has a distinctly antisemitic history. The election, he claimed, was the only chance to “ev…

How to Choose a Tour Company for Your Hajj

By Amina Wadud

…ater at the supermarket are required by the Saudi government before the visa application. It was one of the most exciting moments since I connected with the particular tour company to organize my trip for hajj! Why was I so excited? Maybe having a needle or two stuck in the arm made the proposal for this once-in-a-lifetime trip more of a reality. Surely, it could not be anything more sadistic. Actually, I became excited after I got a phone call fr…

Who Is “Sam Bacile?”

By Sarah Posner

…$5 million from Jewish donors to make his obviously lowest-of-low budget, amateurish anti-Islam film. But before the July 2012 upload of the film trailer to YouTube, under the user name Sam Bacile, you’d be hard pressed to find evidence of the existence a California real estate developer online. What’s more, if whoever made the film actually spent $5 million on it, the expenditure hardly shows in the content, acting, or production values. Amateur…

Conservative Bishops Unhappy At Synod, But Ignore Walkout Call; Australian Religious Leaders Step Up Marriage Equality Opposition; Italy Debates Civil Unions; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

Novelist Marlon James became the first Jamaican author to be awarded the Man Booker Prize. “However,” writes Joe Williams at Pink News, “a number of Jamaican commentators have highlighted that while being celebrated as a Jamaican author, James in fact fled the country due to his sexuality.” Terrified and tired of living as a closeted gay man in Jamaica, James described the moment he realised he had to get out of the country – alive or dead. Speak…

Orthodox Jews Begin to Reckon with Sexual Abuse

By Paul Berger

…d most influential Orthodox organizations, the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union, co-sponsored America’s first National Jewish Child Abuse Prevention Week. There’s nothing to suggest that sexual abuse is any more or less prevalent in the Orthodox community than anywhere else; but there are a number of peculiarities to Orthodox Jewish life that have made the reporting of abuse less common than in society at large. “I think the su…

Gay Men Detained and Killed in Chechnya, and More in the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…onference last week on bolstering LGBT political engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean The gathering, covered by the Washington Blade’s Michael Lavers, was held in Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic, where a number of religious leaders had been engaged in vocal rhetorical warfare against the openly gay former US ambassador to the country. The New York Times profiled a number of everyday people, Muslims and Christians, who are…