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Google’s Benevolent Interfaith Big Tent

By Lucia Hulsether

…aring the story, she returns home, opens Google India, and tracks down the phone number for the sweet shop her grandfather mentioned. Within seconds, she has called the store on her smart phone, and Yusuf’s grandson—who answers—has likewise opened Google to research visas for a reunion too long denied. We can understand the implications of this storyline by putting it into conversation with its longer historical context. The logic of the plot—that…

The Battle for the Bible Against Christian Nationalism Seeks to Continue Historic Campaign

By Frederick Clarkson

…non-violent civil disobedience against the British Empire. We all live on reservations Toward the end of the evening, the panelists sought to transcend the ways that race has been used to divide people against one another, and to recognize and grapple with our often multiple racial identities. Rev. Barber noted that he’s White, Tuscarora (a Native American tribe) and African American, and has had to “recover from some deep hatred” from the time t…

The Pope, The Chef & Krampus: Merry Yikesmas!

By Peter Manseau

…hat he’d hoped to air is a bit of mischief that would have elevated the No Reservations holiday special from simply very good to subversive classic. In homage to the stop-action ghost of Christmas specials past, Bourdain made his own Krampus Carol, complete with a horned demon licking the faces of children before he beats them with a stick: It really is a hoot, especially if you grew up, as I did, on the Island of Misfit Toys. But more than that,…

Pope Francis Dithering About Women, Skittish About Cops

By Mary E. Hunt

…ost other Christian denominations have done with good results. My own deep reservations about the women’s diaconate come from its very nature as a recipe for a woman’s job in a patriarchal culture. Surely it shores up the current system to have women handling all of the everyday work—visiting the sick, caring for children, helping the abused, teaching religious education, which they do already—so that the men can get on with the preaching, teachin…

‘A Slice of Heaven’: Lakota Look to Buy Back Stolen Sacred Lands

By Johnny P. Flynn

…nd signed by at least three-fourths of all the adult male Indians” (Article 12), the Act of 1877 was not a treaty but simply an Act of Congress illegally abrogating the promises made nine years earlier. The various bands of the Lakota have fought the theft of the Black Hills since they were run out by miners and soldiers of the US Army. Finally in the 1920s, a case was filed with the Indian Court of Claims, but it wasn’t until 1980 that the Supre…

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

…artners in Israel,” notes the Times. “Civil marriage does not exist in the country, where the solemnization of marriage is entirely controlled by the state rabbinate, and homosexual unions are not in themselves recognized.” Vietnam: Couple marries on airplane flight A Vietnamese lesbian couple celebrated a Valentine’s Day wedding on a Vietjet flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Bangkok. Pink News notes, “Same-sex marriage is not legally recognized in…

World Congress of Families Draws Anti-LGBT Activists to Budapest; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…n, other parents objected and police ordered the parents to leave. Romania: 1,000 people attend pride parade The Associated Press’s Alison Mutler reported that about 1,000 people joined a gay pride march in Bucharest, which came after lawmakers approved an initiative to amend the constitution to restrict marriage to a man and a woman. Australia: Tennis stars spar over marriage equality A new development in a long bitter public debate over marriage…

Snake-Handlers, False Messiahs, and a Few Great Souls: 14 Who Died in 2014

By Daniel Silliman

…ples were good for business. He opened his restaurant in Hapeville, Ga., in 1946. By 2013, Chick-fil-A had 1,800 locations across the U.S. and annual sales of $5 million. The company gave away $68 million over the years and was celebrated by the religious right. “The Bible tells a lot about how to run a business if we just read it and apply it,”Cathy said. He died at 94. David Eugene Sorenson An elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Sa…

Distant Churches and the Isolated Poor: Lessons from Katrina, Ten Years Later

By R. Drew Smith

…ized by upward mobility but by severe poverty and social isolation. Between 1970 and 1990, the percentage of persons living in neighborhoods with a poverty rate of 40 percent or higher grew from 7.8 to 15.8 percent for blacks and from 7.0 to 9.5 percent for Hispanics, and by 2010 the proportion of Americans (irrespective of race) living in high-poverty neighborhoods was 15 percent. Further evidence of the growing social isolation of urban poor pop…

Why We Won’t Let Jonestown (Or 9/11 or Sandy Hook) Die

By Kelsey Osgood

…Jonestown is the one emblazoned in our cultural consciousness. On November 18, 1978, the largest number of American civilian lives was lost due to a single non-natural disaster—a sad distinction Jonestown would hold until September 11, 2001. In Stories from Jonestown, the most recent addition to the Jonestown library, Leigh Fondakowski has compiled the numerous interviews that she conducted in order to write her play, The People’s Temple, which…