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‘Rising Global Tide’ Of Anti-Gay Crackdowns; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Tony Abbott, a fierce opponent of marriage equality, is making his second trip to the U.S. at the invitation of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a U.S. based group that resists LGBT equality around the world. Abbott also addressed ADF last year. The Financial Review notes that Abbott is scheduled to talk about his belief that marriage equality threatens religious liberty. ADF is representing a baker who refused to make a cake for a gay couple’s we…

Can You Make a Comedy About UFO Cult Mass Suicide?

By Joseph Laycock

…ts. After the Heaven’s Gate suicide, Family Guy as well as the comedy Road Trip (2000) poked fun at the mass suicide meme. By portraying cult leaders as suicidal maniacs and cult members as helpless losers, these comedies reinforced a distinction between healthy, “normal” religion and deviant “cult” religion. Basically, these jokes relieve our anxiety that our own religious beliefs and practices might be just as strange as than those of the cult….

The Sacred and the Dead: Ten Writers on the End of an American Adventure

By The Editors

…with possibility and joy, began to cool, as cell phone calls dwindled and numbers eventually changed or were disconnected. As our shared realities drifted apart in their likeness, like Pigpen, I also turned to technologies that promised connection to try to tamp down the yearning and temper that sense of loss. #5 : Three Ways to American Beauty by Aaron K. Kerr At the height of secular modernity, when Catholics were opening the windows of Vatican…

Intensive Care: Preachers’ Daughters Episode Five Recap

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ll use the term “mix tape”?) While she’s out and completely unreachable by phone, her dad, Ken, goes into the hospital with breathing difficulties and is admitted to intensive care. Taylor finally gets the message, is stricken with remorse and concern, prays for her dad’s healing, and resolves to be more responsible. My Dinner with Frankie: Mark and Cheryl Perry invited their teenage daughter Olivia’s friend Frankie over for dinner. Since Olivia h…

Why Antisemitism is an Insufficient (and Risky) Explanation for Hamas’s October 7 Attack on Israel

By Shane Burley

…here is no military solution. The only future is peace and safety for all—grounded in freedom, justice, and equality,” the ADL shot back saying their ideas “help give rise to antisemitism” and employ “antisemitic tropes.” “In this moment of confusion and pain, we must be clear about one thing: Every Palestinian life, every Jewish life, and every Israeli life is precious, and the Israeli government has failed all of those lives. Only peace, justice…

Where Polls and Surveys Fall Short: A Conversation with Robert Wuthnow on “Inventing American Religion”

By Andrew Aghapour

…s pretty much it. Evangelical leaders themselves didn’t believe the Gallup numbers were right, and [they thought that] the best way to combat those Gallup numbers was to ask Gallup to do another survey. And so in 1978, Christianity Today, a leading periodical for evangelicals, paid Gallup to do a big survey and in addition to just asking the born-again question, they asked questions about belief in the Bible, belief in Jesus, and intent on convert…

Why Bill Maher Gets a “C” in My Introduction to Religion Class…

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…pages I’ll confine myself to Religulous.) This is the kind of thing a fair number of my students, raised in the Protestant-dominated United States (even Catholics and Jews have assimilated this definition), come to university thinking about religion; the two key components of which are “belief” and “God.” Religion is some cryptic interior, individual thing that exists in one’s own head, and is only understood in relation to a God. I don’t blame my…

Hajj Journal: Door Number 89: The Door with No Name

By Amina Wadud

…d inside the mosque one day, I came across Bab raqm tis’wa thamanin, “door number 89,” literally. The door with no name. Facing the mosque at door number one, bab maalik ’abd-al-’Aziz, this door is off to the left. Looking at the mosque floor plan, this is where the building structure of the mosque is deepest. This is “the women’s section.” I noticed as I was walking through the first floor toward door number one, the kings’ door, on my way out af…

Are You There God? It’s Me, Donald: A President at Prayer

By Peter Laarman

…amous Christian in the world.” He told me that last week in a great, great phone call. Oh, and Fred Douglass. I need to get his input, too. Just this morning I told them, the great African Americans who supported me completely, what an amazing job Fred is doing, being recognized more and more. They loved it. They love me. My speech was a the biggest success in the history of black people. The media lied about it, of course. They said I didn’t know…

The Real Story Behind Rick Perry’s Secret Meetings with Pastors

By Sarah Posner

…who to endorse and, regardless of its differences now, would likely rally around whoever the nominee turns out to be in their quest to defeat Obama. It’s worth remembering, though, that some in the religious right leadership regretted not rallying around a good Christian candidate (Mike Huckabee) earlier in the 2008 process that ultimately produced John McCain as the candidate about which the religious right was decidedly lukewarm. That doesn’t me…