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Teaching Love: Soulforce Takes it to the Quad

By Nick Street

…ans-man who came out of the closet a week before he graduated from another Southern Baptist college in Missouri, and a 22-year-old aspiring minister from Philadelphia who quotes Proverbs, declares his love for God—and laments the recent breakup of his relationship with a boyfriend. They are all members or supporters of Soulforce, an organization that aims to change the hearts of those who use religion to justify discrimination against sexual minor…

Church=State in Putin’s Orthodox Empire?; Evangelical-Orthodox Anti-Gay Alliance; Malaysian Court Protects Transwomen; Catholicism (Still) Declining in Latin America; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…untries. Australia: Third State Recognizes Same Sex Couples This week, New South Wales became the third Australian state, after Queensland and Tanmania, to recognize same-sex couples who have been legally married in other countries. Aaron Day at Pink News reports that a marriage equality bill in New South Wales failed last year on a 19-21 vote. Anthony Fisher, recently installed as Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, said he has a “consciousness” of “t…

Forgiveness

By Amina Wadud

…ve on the truth and reconciliation committee after the end of apartheid in South Africa. Eventually, she was asked to act as personal psychologist for a man known as “the butcher of apartheid.” In her book, she examined how the phenomenon of forgiveness worked. Now I have to confess, before I heard her speak and then subsequently read the book, I had a long discussion with a Jewish participant. We were not comfortable with our perception that the…

Two Former Nuns Get Civil Union in Italy; Kenyan Govt Partners with World Congress of Families; Mexican Activists Debate Outing of Priests; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…of the north that have led on progressive social issues, with the Catholic south dragging behind. This time, though, it is Germany, the leading country in Protestant Europe, that lags the rest. Without a major realignment in German politics, that is unlikely to change for a long time to come. Italy: Former nuns join in civil union “Two former nuns who met in a convent have been joined in a civil union in a ceremony in a small town in northern Ital…

More Mixed Signals from Pope Francis; Church of England Wrestles with Rifts; Faith Groups Lobby Pro & Con on Irish Referendum; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…d to consider the global Anglican Communion – which includes some anti-gay African Churches. The document notes: “Balancing the Church of England’s responsibilities to the people of the parishes and local communities it serves, and its historical position within the global Anglican Communion, introduces complex and morally challenging tensions – and the issue of sexuality has become a focal point on which future relationships across the whole Comm…

Holey Holey Holey: The Problem with a New Study Valuing Religion at $1.2 Trillion Per Year

By Michael Schulson

…f the total revenue of American religious congregations. To get that final number, the Grims took one estimate of the total number of congregations in America (344,894) and multiplied it by another estimate of the average revenue of each ($242,910). Depending on how you look at it, $378 billion is a lot of money, or it’s not very much money at all. It’s more than the net worth of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffet, combined…

Does Record Number of Religious “Nones” Mean Decline of Religiosity?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…an religiosity—about religion as it is lived in the United States today? A number of what I would see as problems in the Pew report suggest to me that our growing fixation with religion-by-the-numbers may be distracting us from richer, more nuanced understandings of American religious practice. Wanted: A Community that Doesn’t Share My Beliefs and Values Take the demographic category of “Nones” itself. The Pew report notes the difficulty with sur…

LGBT Editor In Bangladesh Murdered by Islamists—and More, In this Week’s Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…d home, but that a three-day counseling session at Tergo changed her life. South Korea: Human rights activists call for government to recognize LGBT group Human Rights Watch has echoed calls from the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association for the government of Korea to stop stalling the Beyond the Rainbow Foundation’s efforts to register as a nongovernmental organization. LGBT activists i…

I Met God, She’s Black: An Exhibit Makes the Black Female Body a Temple

By Anita Little

…the reception found a place for themselves where they were appreciated. A number of the women who showed up were from the black church and a number were deans or presidents of colleges, so it was this really wide range of experiences in this space. I think this is a very historic moment. Where else would you get to see more than 100 pieces of artwork from black women? You don’t. If you went to the de Young museum or to MoMA, you would see one or…

Single, But Married To Jesus

By Anthea Butler

…Having a husband meant that they could not give their ultimate all for the number one man on most African-American womens’ lips, and it’s not Denzel. It’s Jesus. For many women in churches like COGIC, being in love with Jesus means that most other men, whether desirable as a husband or not, stood in the way of the number one relationship. One person I interviewed even had a name for it: “being loosed” from your husband to do the Lord’s work. “Bein…