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Playing Hooky: Will Boycott of Catholic Church Spur Reform?

By Nathan Schneider

…, however, is what some people’s leaving means for those of us who stay. Ex- or lapsed Catholics are everywhere, often well-meaning and progressive. But where does their absence leave those of us who remain in church, and who want to be a force for change? It’s clear that Jennifer Sleeman isn’t proposing to abandon the Church altogether. But a protest should always be in the image of its goal, the means in keeping with the ends. When I heard of he…

Anti-Choice Doc Aims to Link Reproductive Rights to ‘Black Genocide’

By Michelle Goldberg

…of the national call to Sisters to abandon birth control… to picket family-planning centers and abortion-referral groups and to raise revolutionaries,” she wrote. “What plans do you have for the care of me and my child?” Martin Luther King Jr., it’s important to point out, was a champion of family planning. Indeed, in 1966, King won Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger award. His wife, Coretta Scott King, delivered his acceptance speech on his be…

Must We Burn Something to Get Attention?: 50 Years After the Catonsville Nine

By Jason C. Bivins

…ole world is now the land of burning children. So, too, has America’s never-ending war (who are we fighting now, again?) marched on. There is fire in the way we imagine other humans burning for the failure of not being like us. This fire is in our communities, at our borders, in our hashtags. Where, then, is religious protest today? What will we look back on about the religious protest of the new Poor People’s Movement? Of Black Lives Matter? Of a…

Fear of a Catholic Ghetto

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…y. At times Catholics were prevented from holding public office. In the mid-nineteenth century, while the number of Catholic hospitals was growing, the Know Nothing party organized around shared fears that Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany were overwhelming the country and acting against white Protestant interests. So the fear of a Catholic ghetto must be understood in light of a real history of Catholics being marginalized during the…

Changing the Jewish State and the State of Jews: J Street and the Future of Israel

By Mark LeVine

…mas’ rocket fire into Israel, but equally Israel’s “punishing a million-and-a-half already-suffering Gazans for the actions of the extremists among them.” It also refused to support the Congressional resolution condemning the Goldstone Report that sharply criticized Israel’s actions in the Gaza war last winter. More broadly, J Street argues that being pro-Israel requires being pro-Palestinian too. Nothing in this position is terribly new, even ins…

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

…ikely to be more controversy leading up to this coming Saturday’s paragraph-by-paragraph votes by bishops on a final document. Writes John Allen: If the impression is that the document honestly and fairly presents the results of synod discussions – pointing to consensus where it exists, but also candidly acknowledging areas where it simply wasn’t there – then perhaps the “hermeneutic of suspicion” will begin to ebb. If not, the death of the gentle…

South Asian Religious Leaders Challenged to Take on Stigma and Discrimination: Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…person dressed in monk’s robes has been distributing anti-gay leaflets door-to-door this year in Leicester, Cambridge, and Brighton. The flyer, titled “Homosexualism: A few points,” asserts that homosexuality is “not natural” and is a result of temptation by the Devil. “Homosexualism has become a cult, and by the indoctrination of school children and regular propaganda through the media, it seeks converts. “If the practice of homosexuality is acce…

Who Is “Sam Bacile?”

By Sarah Posner

…as not spurred by the film. And in the weirdest twist of the day in the who-is-Sam-Bacile mystery, actors in the film denounce it and say “Bacile” misled them. Cindy Lee Garcia tells Gawker: The script she was given was titled simply Desert Warriors. “It was going to be a film based on how things were 2,000 years ago,” Garcia said. “It wasn’t based on anything to do with religion, it was just on how things were run in Egypt. There wasn’t anything…

How to Choose a Tour Company for Your Hajj

By Amina Wadud

…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 from the agency that I chose. Turns out, this first full business day after Ramadan was also the day that they clarified for me all the upcoming deadlines. In the next week (that is, by or before September 20), all my pre-travel preparation…

Death Penalty, Debated (Dedicated to the Memory of Sarah Horowitz)

By Bill Berkowitz

…n 2008. “Seven of those executed had been convicted in Dallas County.” The number of executions nationwide dropped to 37 in 2008, a 14-year low. According to USA Today, “The Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment and compiles annual statistics, reports that for the most part only Southern states resumed executions. Ohio, which carried out two, was the only state outside the South to impose the death penalty in 2008.” (S…