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How Mega-Macho-Pastor Mark Driscoll Helps Explain Trump’s Evangelical Support

By Jessica Johnson

…entant liars. Re-enter Mark Driscoll, former pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle and, according to his blog, future pastor of The Trinity Church in Phoenix. Last week, Driscoll had a civil racketeering lawsuit filed against him by four former Mars Hill members, which includes the misappropriation of church tithes to pay the book marketing firm ResultSource $210,000 to artificially elevate sales of his book Real Marriage in order to achieve bests…

“Under God…It’s a Great Thing”: Trump Delivers for His Christian Base

By Diane Winston

…2009 bestseller, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. I don’t know if Donald Trump is part of this group. But I do know that his speech to the prayer breakfast was unlike any other and that, in its own peculiarly bombastic way, it was one step closer to Vereide’s vision of a Christian nation. That’s because the heart of Trump’s speech was a defense of “religious liberty” that sounded a lot like protecting Christia…

How Protesting Black Bodies are Imagined as a Threat to National Pride

By Joseph Winters

…justice for all) is not questioned. In addition, the close link between America and freedom—not to mention America’s capacity to strive and fight for “everyone”—is left unchallenged. The problem, Kaepernick suggests, is that the country is not “holding its end of the bargain,” not living up to its professed ideals—especially when it comes to black people and military veterans. One can imagine another kind of interpretation that would question the…

You Fix This Mess: Post-Election, Evangelicals of Color Disappointed in White Evangelicals

By Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans

…spoken up when Trump was making derogatory comments about immigrants and African Americans: “It was great when evangelical women started speaking out. It’s just unfortunate that it took them so long and that it took that [the ‘pussy-grabbing’] comment.” Calling Trump’s behavior on the campaign trail both “disturbing” and “frightening,” Khang adds: “My reaction was one of disappointment and honestly deep concern for myself and my family and my frie…

Global LGBT Recap: Nigeria Jails Gays, Russian Orthodox Spox Calls for Criminalization Referendum

By Peter Montgomery

…Olympics in Sochi, the U.S. State Department issued a travel alert for Americans heading to the Olympics that touched on a number of issues including crime, potential terrorism, and access to medical care. It included a specific warning about Russia’s anti-gay “propaganda” law: LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER (LGBT) ISSUES: In June 2013, Russia’s State Duma passed a law banning the “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” to minor…

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…

Hater Pastor Loses His Wife of 42 Years, Uses the Occasion to Trash Gays

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…dy and that is morally wrong.” But, using your wife’s death to score a few cheap political points against a group of people you hate isn’t “morally wrong”? But wait, there’s more! Garlow also uses his dead wife to point out just how fake the relationships between living, loving gay and lesbian partners really are. He talks about the delight he experienced being married to his wife, something gay and lesbian people certainly couldn’t have, right?…

An Open Letter to Black Clergy on the Disdain for Protest

By Rev. Osagyefo Sekou

…stance are teeming with young folks who “fit the description” of Jesus. America, like Rome, is an Empire. Ferguson has become America’s Nazareth—communities struggling to make a dollar out of fifteen cents, mustering up enough courage to resist the Empire. When the church defends state agents against the oppressed, we betray the essential truth of the gospel, in which a poor and over-policed person defeated the Empire. Perhaps, there’s an even gre…

The Same Toxic Christian Right Theology Supports Both the Online Bullying I Experienced and the Cruel Anti-Trans Policy in TX — And it’s Not Remotely Fringe

By Chrissy Stroop

…ons that target loving parents of trans children, thereby raising a metaphorical middle finger to both fundamental human decency and the medical consensus. Both the rhetorical and legal attacks on trans people are, after all, of a piece. Dehumanization of the members of a vulnerable group scapegoated by grievance-driven authoritarians is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for genocide. And what’s happening in Texas now, with some state…

House GOP Hires Lawyer to Prevent Federal Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…gths, and the great expense of a high-power law firm, to try to score some cheap political points on the backs of same-sex couples.” I suppose Boehner can pander to the religious right and continue to defend “traditional” marriage, but I think it’s fair to ask why—when jobless rates continue to hover near 10 percent—which issue may be most important to God: how people arrange their intimate relationships, or how we feed and care for those families…