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Louis CK Asks on SNL: “How Could We Not Have a [Divine] Mother?”

By Holly Welker

…. Some Mormons think we aren’t even supposed to talk about her, but her existence in Mormon theology is at least acknowledged in the recent essay about whether we’ll get to have our own planets in the next life. One source Mormons rely on to establish God the Mother’s doctrinal relevance is a hymn by Eliza R. Snow (who married to both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young) currently entitled “O My Father.” Snow’s logic is similar to CK’s: if we have a fa…

Rolling the Stone Away: LGBTQI Elders Meet the Next Generation of Christian Activists at a Watershed Conference

By Mary E. Hunt

…nerations of Love and Justice” conference, October 30-November 2, 2017, in St. Louis gathered 250 people who reviewed the struggles to make Christian churches inclusive of persons, genders and sexual orientations. Key to the discussion was what the next generation of folks plan to do to continue the work on their terms in these complicated times. Longtime Methodist activist Mark Bowman combined his visionary leadership with wise funders’ generous…

Prayer vigil for Las Vegas shooting victim Sonny Melton (WBBJ TV)

No Way Out But The Ballot Box: Why Partisanship Trumps Morality In Gun Control Debate

By Daniel Schultz

…as long supported and pushed for the very same solutions Kimmel called for last night. The GOP has blocked them. As I said a few massacres back, guns aren’t a spiritual problem, they’re a partisan problem. Oh, American tolerance for gun violence reflects a screwed-up value system, to be sure. It’s just not the one you think. It’s not an issue of forming consensus around the need to regulate the availability of high-powered weaponry. As I pointed o…

A Meditation on Shopping and Desire

By Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado

…and families spiraling into debt is now being celebrated once again. While last year was the year of reserve and frugality, we are now back where we belong: in the season of spending. While not reviving the post-September 11 rhetoric of shopping as an act of nationalism, we are once again being encouraged to spend—and told that spending is good for us. While disagreeing with this particular logic, I do agree that shopping is an ethical act. Today…

Are Evangelical Films Destined to Leave Secular Audiences Behind?

By Daniel Silliman

…ts, faith films haven’t all been complete commercial misses either. The first installment of The Chronicles of Narnia brought a big profit for Walt Disney and Walden Media—around $750 million globally. After a few films, the franchise stalled, though. Rising production costs, declining ticket sales and increasingly mixed reviews led to conflict between the various production companies. There’s currently a legal moratorium preventing a fourth insta…

The Faith that Faith Produced

By Haroon Moghul

…eeds to be seen as such. American Muslims have gone through a lot over the last few decades. We were never the caricature Islamophobes made us out to be (our earliest heroes include Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Malcolm X), but we’ve had real problems with narrow-mindedness, institutional immaturity, misogyny, and religious illiteracy—these persist in places, but I think not like they did before. And that’s because American Muslims were…

Corporations Have Consciences and Contraceptives Are Cheap: Hobby Lobby at the Supreme Court

By Sarah Posner

…is post about Georgetown Law professor Marty Lederman, who first raised it last year.) In short, contrary to Hobby Lobby’s claims that not offering the coverage would subject it to ruinous fines, the regulation merely imposes a tax. Should a company choose to offer no group health plan at all, it would pay the tax, which, Kagan argued, is less than a cost of a group health plan. What’s more, she argued, even if the company offered higher wages to…

The Sacred and the Dead: How an Iranian-Jewish Angeleno Discovered Her Tribe

By Saba Soomekh

…ildren. (And yes: we all went together to the Santa Clara shows—the Dead’s last in California a week before their last concerts ever in Chicago over the July 4 weekend.) The author (in front, left, wearing the hat) and some of her Deadhead friends from high school days at the Dead’s show in Santa Clara, Calif., last weekend. Photo courtesy of the author. When it was time for me to choose a college, it wasn’t a difficult decision. I chose the Unive…

The Contested Religious Powers of Baseball on Display in Cuba

By Sean O'Neil

…c terrain, where the stakes can prove much more complicated than zero-sum games, and the vexed emotional legacies much longer-lasting than nine innings….

Mormon Women Knock at the Door, Are Turned Away

By Holly Welker

…walked to the 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 indivi…