…een gays and the far-right Front National. “Marine Le Pen promises a clear change and everyone wants a clear change—it’s bullshit of course,” Parant says, noting that the FN is currently the only political movement with any momentum. Le Pen has redefined her party as the last defender of republicanism and French nationalism, attractive to those seeking to dodge the charge ofcommunautarisme. Le Pen has also been successful in drawing a connection b…
…ng myself to the almost all white, suburban church I attend. Will anything change—will anything even nod in the direction of change let alone press toward any sort of action (and what would that be?) that might invite change—during “the most segregated hour of the week,” as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously put it? Now, the priest at my church is a fine preacher. I am certain she was up through the night retooling a sermon on the week’s gospel…
…oters will go the polls on Sunday, February 28 to vote on a constitutional change ostensibly meant to eliminate a tax penalty for married couples, but the change will also enshrine a man-woman definition of marriage, and discrimination against same-sex couples, in the Constitution. The initiative is backed by the Swiss Christian Democratic People’s Party. Tunisia: LGBT Advocacy Group Wins Right To Operate Shams, a group that advocates for decrimin…
…ries about gaining weight or getting older. The part that is worried about change. And transgender people embody change; they are people who have been bold enough to change everything about themselves. “All Things Come of Thee” Lynn Walker is a transgender priest in the Orthodox-Catholic Church of America. In photos, she sports her priest’s collar, but in her day-to-day work at a transitional housing program for transgender sex workers, she’s all…
…ast and what happened in the past, and you remember that it is possible to change these things, then I think that you wouldn’t have such despair,” Berry continued. “That’s the bottom line. So there’s no reason for people to throw up both hands every time Trump does something.” Ultimately, what each of the experts I spoke to articulated was a tacit embrace of panic—not only as an organizing tool, but as a reasonable, rational response to the tangib…
…l silos and without much common issue framing. A bold new campaign aims to change that. Believe Out Loud is a sophisticated social marketing effort, anchored by a rich new Web portal and with powerful messaging lines, that was launched nationally on February 14—Valentine’s Day. The campaign will also offer on-the-ground organizing support to existing advocacy groups both inside and outside of denominational lines. Extravagant Welcome While some 40…
By Randall Balmer, Anthea Butler, Evan Derkacz, Jeff Sharlet, and Diane Winston
…ervision (which was granted)—Colson wrote: “That which I found I could not change or affect in a political or managerial way, I found could be changed by the force of a personal relationship that men develop in a common bond to Christ.” That which he could not achieve through politics, he could achieve through the spirituality of The Family. Colson, like Abraham Vereide and Doug Coe, Vereide’s successor as leader of The Family, became an admirer o…
…orld population.” Perhaps, indeed! Perhaps. 3. Clinton’s answer on climate change could not have been more technocratic. Clinton said that climate change is real and dangerous. She offered concrete policy recommendations, too. It’s better to have policy than flair (perhaps), but it was striking that the candidate left out the entire moral dimension of climate change—for example, that a warming world will disproportionately affect the poor, even as…
…On bloggingheads, I spoke last week with climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe about Sandy, climate change, and religion. In this segment, we talked about how climate change denial is, and is not, like creationism. Watch:…
…her siblings also messaged us to say that they were being harassed via telephone, in person, and social media… Why would this be such big news in Nigeria? I believe it is because the press still wants to vilify gay men and women. They want to show that the USA is a place that corrupts the morals of children and is a den of sin and iniquity. The current political election probably isn’t helping change that impression much. The mere thought of two m…
