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Mormon Missionary Service: Now with More Service

By Holly Welker

…proposed that missionaries provide two hours of nonproselytizing community service every day, five days a week—up from the normal four or so hours a week. Missionaries are expected to find their own service opportunities. A website called Justserve, listing organizations in need of volunteers, was created to help them do so. The approach started in San Jose three years ago and was adopted about a year ago in Dallas and Denver. This change ha…

Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

By Patricia Miller

…umber of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two import…

Heterosexual Martyrs and Gay Saints: Did AIDS Coverage Clear the Way for LGBT Equality?

By Diane Winston

…fied as AIDS, did not receive ongoing or thorough coverage. By 1982, nearly 800 AIDS cases had been diagnosed. According to one study, infants and children were increasingly infected. Although a threat to the general population was quickly dismissed, the implication was clear: anyone could be infected. The epidemic had exposed social and cultural fault lines that made coverage more than just a medical story. Its initial outbreak in the homosexual…

In Hamline Case, the ‘Free Expression vs. Religious Sensibilities’ Frame Obscures a Stark Reality About Higher Education

By Junaid Jahangir

…nd allied fields, both the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and even the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have issued statements of support. They’re rightfully concerned about the stifling of academic freedom in universities. But we should also be concerned because the university shouldn’t be a corporation, the student should not be treated as a customer, and faculty should not be treated as an input cost….

With the Pope at Ground Zero

By Anthea Butler

…ester NY, who lost his daughter Jean, a flight attendant on board American Airlines Flight 11. Mr. Roger said he hoped the pope would say prayers for the place, for the people, and for his daughter Jean. Praying at a unlighted candle next to the prie-dieu Pope Benedict XVI used on his visit, the Pope offered those prayers silently while looking at the south pool of the memorial. The 9/11 site has become not just a memorial or a museum—it is a pilg…

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

By Daniel Silliman

…ican religious history, including There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America and Martin Luther King: An Inconvenient Hero, Harding taught at Illiff School of Theology in Denver, Colo. for more than 20 years. Nelson Bunker Hunt A Texas billionaire remembered mostly for his business exploits, Nelson Bunker Hunt bankrolled the religious right. He underwrote many Campus Crusade’s projects, including the 1967 “Berkley Blitz,”the $6 mil…

‘Anti-Romeo’ Vigilante Squads Target Men Suspected Of Being Gay; More in the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…he Washington Post reports. “Because, you know, it’s been banned.” Finland: 800+ same-sex couples married in first month; Lutheran priests barred from officiating More than 800 same-sex couples were married in March after marriage equality went into effect on the first of the month; 770 had already been in civil partnerships. The Lutheran Evangelical Church has decreed that priests are not permitted to marry same-sex couples and some bishops warne…

Reading Beinart and Lerner as Gaza Burns

By Ira Chernus

…he [imagined] danger through aggression and power.” As Beinart argues, the number of American Jews who act out of fantasied oppression is declining. But their political strength remains much greater than their numbers. Yet curiously Lerner, the professional psychologist, downplays this and the other psychological wellsprings of support for militant Zionism. Instead he focuses time and again on compassion for the very real historical sufferings of…

Violent, Genocidal Anti-Palestinian Rhetoric Moving to US?

By David Sheen

…regardless of the Palestinian death toll. But they have at least paid lip-service to the sanctity of human life and expressed regret for the souls lost on both sides. As Israel’s latest assault on Gaza enters its fourth week, however, we are witnessing a significant rhetorical departure. Yet as reprehensible as remarks from American Jewish leaders have been, the dehumanizing discourse among political and religious leaders in Israel—where I live a…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…’s home town, where they said they could more easily have a small, private service. Meanwhile, the group primarily responsible for organizing opposition to marriage equality, Preserve Marriage, lost its status as a charity after a commission rules that its purposes caused “more detriment than benefit.” Cambodia: challenges for LGBT people in spite of royal support At The Diplomat, Luke Hung and Molyny Pann review the status of LGBT people in Cambo…