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Time’s Up For Politely Anti-LGBTQ Christianity: The Truth About “We Want to Be Known By What We’re For, Not What We’re Against”

By George Mekhail

…tation from local Church leaders to participate in a demonstration against Seattle’s Pride parade that year. In other words, while he was very much against the LGBTQ community, he simply didn’t want to be known for that. In retrospect, this was a profound moment of clarity for me, eventually leaving evangelicalism and co-founding an organization called Church Clarity. 13 years ago, when Mars Hill was in its early years and growing exponentially, i…

Gay Mormons Tie the Knot

By Johnny Townsend

…lso marched with the Mormons for Marriage Equality contingent this year in Seattle’s Gay Pride parade, amazed to see compassionate Mormons with signs proclaiming “Sorry we’re late!” I belong to Affirmation, an organization for LGBTQ Mormons. I still have my triple combination on a bookshelf above my desk, my hymnbook, my Italian missionary discussions. I still pray, and I still fast, for many things, including acceptance, equality, and understandi…

Mormons Declare Same-Sex Marriage Apostasy, Deny Baptism to Children of Same-Sex Couples; Colombian Court OKs Adoption Over Church Objections; Franklin Graham Praises Putin’s Anti-Gay Policies; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Upper Midwest, who writes under the pen name Zaynab Shahar, said black American Muslims are often sidelined, even in groups designed to be welcoming. “Much of the narrative on what it means to be an LGBTQ Muslim in the United States focuses on immigration and the process of identity reconciliation … Just because many of us were born in this country doesn’t mean there aren’t [unique] in-group cultural expectations [to navigate],” she said. Most of…

As Culture War Rages, What’s the Status of LGBT Rights on Catholic Campuses?

By Jamie L. Manson

…ty rescinded a job offer made to Jodi O’Brien, a professor of sociology at Seattle University. O’Brien had been invited to serve as dean of Marquette’s Helen Way Klinger College of Arts and Sciences. Hearing about the appointment, Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki expressed concerns about O’Brien’s writings. “Her areas of concentration in terms of her studies seemed always to be in the areas of gender sexuality, those type of things,” Listecki…

When Religion Becomes a Trap Rather Than a Safety Net

By Holly Welker

…ormon memoir, Ricks self-published Hippie Boy in 2011. Shortly thereafter, Seattle-area teacher Margie Bowker gave the book to her at-risk high school students. They had no problem relating to Ricks’s protagonist, a young girl trapped rather than supported by the safety net religion is supposed to supply, trying desperately to acquire some security despite parents who repeatedly put her in harm’s way. Ricks’s memoir inspired students to begin writ…

It’s Complicated: When “None” Doesn’t Even Begin to Cover It

By Tucker FitzGerald

…hristian.” While probably not the most salient identity marker for most Americans, it immediately told me much about Brenton. I hadn’t played with the term before, but after a pause I reached out to shake his hand, echoing that I was probably post-Christian as well. Both of our partners were still Christian. Jaded, disobedient, exhausted, but capable of passing an evangelical litmus test. Trinity? Check. Atoning death? Check. Bible authority? Chec…

Evangelical Writers Take Homophobic Hipster Pastor to the Mat—Sort Of

By Elizabeth Drescher

…o are touting MMA are doing so in order to inject some masculinity into American Christianity. What they seem to be missing—or maybe just what they refuse to admit—is that they’ve chosen the one sport on the American scene that is highly sexually charged. And the sexuality in MMA is not hetero. Jones has apparently missed the homoeroticism of the quarterback snap in football and the rampant ass-slapping across all sports, gender notwithstanding. I…

An Evangelical Leader’s Lonely Fight to End an “Unholy Alliance” With the NRA

By Sarah Posner

…shortly after speaking in Isla Vista he learned of yesterday’s shooting at Seattle Pacific University, a small evangelical institution. “If you [evangelicals] think this was only happening in strange and alien places,” he said, “welcome to our own living room.” Schenck, a lifelong member of the NRA, admitted that his is a “minority opinion,” but the “unholy alliance” between his brethren and the gun rights behemoth is “a critical theological and m…

Creationism 3.0: Meet Intelligent Design’s Huckster

By Michael Schulson

…illions of years ago. Meyer observes that, today, when we see something intricate and functional—such as a computer or a can opener—we assume that it’s been designed by some intelligence. Consequently, extrapolating from present observations into the past, the design of an intricate and functional thing—say, a trilobite—must also be produced by an intelligence. This logic, he claims, is “tested against the cause-and-effect structure of the world”…

Tennessee Anti-Evolution Update

By Lauri Lebo

…oning.” The bill’s language is based on sample legislation proposed by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes intelligent design. David Fowler, head of the conservative Christian Family Action Council of Tennessee, which is affiliated with Focus on the Family, and is one of the bill’s primary lobbyists. In defending the bill’s language, he has tried to draw on comparisons to the famous Scopes monkey trial that took pl…