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Updated with Response: The Black Church is Dead—Long Live the Black Church

By Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

…y little to what most Americans should know about Christianity among black Americans. Most Americans are largely unaware of the diverse Christian congregations and denominational structures that comprise what is called the Black Church. For many Americans, the oratory, quasi-liberal politics, and charismatic swagger of Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Jesse L. Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Tavis Smiley are the primary windows into Christianity in black…

Gay, Christian, Pagan, Artist: How Matt Morris Defies the Borders of Spiritual Identity

By Jesse James DeConto

…f the church in our spiritual-but-not-religious age. Do you think that the American church can recover from it? I think it depends on whether the American church decides to live into an identity that affirms the love of God for all people. It’s not like it’s a wound from the past. It’s a wound in the present. Everyone wants live into Easter, but no one wants to be on Good Friday. Everyone wants to live in Resurrection, but no one wants to recogniz…

Global LGBT Recap: Nigeria Jails Gays, Russian Orthodox Spox Calls for Criminalization Referendum

By Peter Montgomery

…the Olympics in Sochi, the U.S. State Department issued a travel alert for Americans heading to the Olympics that touched on a number of issues including crime, potential terrorism, and access to medical care. It included a specific warning about Russia’s anti-gay “propaganda” law: LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER (LGBT) ISSUES: In June 2013, Russia’s State Duma passed a law banning the “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” to mi…

When Rabbis Seized Control of the Synagogue: The Role of Authority in American Judaism

By Zev Eleff

…communities—save for the Reconstructionists—identified Jewishness through one’s mother and not the father. I will focus on the substantial political and religious literature during this decade that stresses the “fracturing” and “polarization” of American life. The patrilineal decision decentered American Judaism, causing rifts within the various movements and shifting the center of concern from the United States to Israel. So far, I have delivere…

Transforming America’s Israel Lobby

By Dan Fleshler

…lled for. It is up to us to give politicians, policymakers, and non-Jewish Americans the confidence that American Jews expect new approaches to the Arab-Israeli conflict and new ways of talking about it. Ending the Silence about Israel and Human Rights “It blows my mind that my Jewish brothers and sisters, who are with me on Darfur, who were with me on South Africa, can’t bend themselves to deal with injustice to the Palestinians,” said Reverend D…

Don’t Ignore the Role of “Christian Values” in Conservative Conspiracy

By Carmen Celestini

…n voters to stand up to the Illuminati with their votes in support of God, American values and their understanding of the American traditional family. Writing about the culture wars of the late 1960s and of today religion scholar Stephen Prothero observed that: In the contemporary culture wars, the maw of cultural politics opened wide and nearly swallowed civil society whole. Culture warriors continued to fight over religion, family, sexuality, ra…

Catholic ‘Soul-Searching’ as Ireland Votes on Marriage; Churches, American Activists Join Kenyan Anti-Gay Group’s ‘Family’ Confab; Indian Mom Seeks Spouse For Gay Son; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…or the LGBT community in Jamaica: some claim that homosexuality is a North American import, and thus not part of Jamaican tradition and culture. However, American evangelical churches play a strong role in importing and exacerbating homophobia in Jamaica. Lewis explained that since the 1970s, American evangelical churches have become entrenched in Jamaican society and are no longer viewed as outsiders. In contrast, advocacy on behalf of the human…

Let’s Get Lost: Mapping Religion in the 21st Century

By Spencer Dew

…ch as Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis’s Digital Atlas of American Religion—to the narrow—the Hindu American Foundation’s map of Hindus worldwide (with accompanying demographic information comparing “Hindus/Asian/Indian” favorably on various socioeconomic rankings to other racial and nationality categories). Unlike other kinds of maps, maps of American religion must negotiate the difficulty of that term—what counts, what doesn’t,…

American Civil Religion is Dead, Long Live American Civil Religion

By Peter Laarman

…cultures while they are also expected to understand and respect the common American culture; 4. We acknowledge the nobility of the American experiment even as we acknowledge certain “flaws” that God needs to “mend” (in the prayer-hymn wording of Katherine Lee Bates). Now suppose we update this problematic creed for the sake of telling the truth, junking the impossible notion that God has somehow chosen the United States for a special destiny or is…

Mormon Women Knock at the Door, Are Turned Away

By Holly Welker

…e Tabernacle on Temple Square to wait in the stand-by line for last-minute tickets. Instead they were met by church spokesperson Ruth Todd, who said, “This is no surprise to you, that we won’t be able to offer you a ticket or a place.” Then, as men and boys strode past them into the Tabernacle where they awaited the opportunity to move to the Conference Center where the session would take place, members of Ordain Women lined up individually or in…