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The Hollowness of the Southern Baptists’ New Racism and Sexual Abuse Amendments

By Miguel A. De La Torre

…ive, but because of racial and immigration attitudes. Until the Convention deals with the reasons it mainly supports a president who finds the good among white nationalists, any anti-racist pronouncements made, regardless of how sincere and stirring they may be, remain duplicitous. But the Convention isn’t really interested in a true transformation. The Faustian bargain made for the sake of Supreme Court appointments trumps any assertions about ev…

Vandalism as Conversation-Starter

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ted song, “King Park,” by the post-hardcore punk band La Dispute. The song deals with the shooting death of a teen caught in a drive-by shooting in the King Park neighborhood of Grand Rapids, Michigan and the subsequent suicide of one of the suspected shooters as police closed in on him where he was holed up in a local hotel. A postmodern dream vision, the song imagines the initial murder, the response by the community and police, and the theologi…

Soccer and the Sublime in the Shadow of Apartheid

By Preston Davis

…e platform to see a world less so. It is a human event that allows for any number of sins from the calendar of human frailty. You can bask in the craft of Leonel Messi, who manipulates the ball like a marionette to puppet; but you cannot be free of the ego of coach, villain, and Saint, Diego Maradona, pacing the sideline, looking for an opportunity to abscond with the limelight. The glaring example for this year’s tournament comes in the form of a…

Australian Church Nixes Straight Couple’s Wedding Over Their Marriage Equality Support; and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…orks throughout the region, told the Blade earlier this month during a telephone interview from Buenos Aires there have been “setbacks in regards to human rights” in Argentina and other countries in “which the LGBT community has gained very strong visibility and (trans-friendly) laws.” Romero added the Roman Catholic Church, gangs, conservative lawmakers and governments and other groups continue to influence people’s transphobic attitudes that she…

What’s Wrong with Taming the Tongue? ‘Gossip’ and the Limits of Evangelical Abuse Prevention Efforts

By Chrissy Stroop

…e to Abuse,” Shellnutt’s article—which, incidentally, never defines gossip—deals primarily with the broad issue of abuse of power in the Christian workplace. It focuses mainly on the case study of Ramsey Solutions, a popular evangelical financial planning company that is largely indistinguishable from the “ministry” and person of its founder, Dave Ramsey, whose hardline approach to debt is appealing to many conservative evangelicals. Ramsey Soluti…

The Folly of Arab-West (Elite-Elite) Dialogue

By H.A. Hellyer

…without actually relating to local interpreters, or else the outside actor deals with the ‘usual suspects.’ Those usual suspects are often drawn from an elite who are local but inevitably drawn from the same cloth as the Westerner in education, outlook, or both. The Westerner then comes to Cairo, or Damascus, or Doha, or Casablanca, meets with ‘exotic Arabs’ (who are almost as exotic to the local population as the Westerners), is given a rather sk…

Dining with Dawkins in the Humanist Bosom

By Edward J. Larson

…ut how thrilled they were to hear him. Some said they came to conference—a number of them from quite far away—primarily because Dawkins was going to speak. It was something akin to the excitement that I once noted among participants at an evangelical conclave before a sermon by Billy Graham. An appearance by the Pope must arouse similar feelings among Catholics. Too bad secular humanists don’t do healings or alter calls because it was the type of…

Vatican Equates Women’s Ordination with Priest Pedophilia?

By Mary E. Hunt

…n $1 billion in compensation to victims and for lawyers’ fees. The Vatican deals with a global church, so its legalese tends to be more generic and open to interpretation. It will be interesting to see just how these norms are spelled out but no one expects unambiguous prose and zero tolerance. So what about the ordination of women? How did that sneak in here? A Desperate Vatican? The 2001 norms focused on “most grave crimes” against the sacrament…

Satanic Temple Protests Pseudoscientific Therapies for Satanic Abuse and Witchcraft

By Joseph Laycock

…e Satanic Temple is trying to draw attention to a serious issue. The ISSTD deals with highly controversial and discredited theories such as dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder), repressed memories, and hypnosis. These theories were key to a panic in the 1980s over “Satanic Ritual Abuse” in which numerous people underwent therapy and became convinced that they had suffered abuse at the hands of Satanic cu…

What if Courts Considered Sincerity of “Religious Freedom” Litigants?

By Kara Loewentheil

…it should trouble us—at least those of us with an interest in how the law deals with these questions—regardless of whether or not the Hitching Post gets its exemption or not. And that’s because the doctrine as it currently exists doesn’t have a good way of taking account of these kinds of facts. There was a similar pattern in Hobby Lobby, where it became apparent that (1) Hobby Lobby had covered contraception in its health plan until the ACA was…