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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…

What a Turn-of-the-Century Anti-Abortion and Contraception Crusader Reveals About GOP Efforts to Ban Abortion Pills by Mail

By Steven K. Green

…items within their borders (as is already the case federally with lottery tickets). A Republican-controlled Congress could then impose a nationwide ban on the mailing of abortion pills or certain contraceptives. (Republican-controlled state legislatures have already demonstrated a willingness to enact questionable legislation for nothing more than its intimidation factor.) Which brings us back to Anthony Comstock. In 1878, the Supreme Court uphel…

Invited by Allah

By Amina Wadud

…ccurred to me it would be a very easy to make hajj from there. I bought an airline ticket and was in contact with the family of one of my graduate school friends. They would pick me up from the airport and host me during my stay and the days of ritual. Nice plan. So I went to the embassy to get the visa and was denied because (as an American) I needed proof that I was Muslim. How do I prove I have been a practicing Muslim for a decade? I went to t…

An Open Letter to CEO Jeff Smisek On United Airlines’ Blasphemous Safety Video

By Austin Dacey

…ual recompense. In the video message that was played before my last United Airlines flight, you expressed your desire to greet each and every passenger; you invited us to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. If I could greet you now, I would want to know: were you unaware of the monstrosity that was about to follow? There, rising above the hiss of the pressurized air, as the video monitors snapped to the image of an engorged sun bursting from be…

Refusing the Monsters on Maple Street: A First-Person Commentary from the Mass Hysteria at JFK

By Marion Grau

…others in crouching between the benches. I waited there until an official-looking man in plain clothes told us to empty the terminal. People began running in panic, dropping their belongings as they ran. We went down a staircase and waited outside for a while, before we got herded to the other side of the terminal where many were already gathered. Clueless as to the situation, with no clear instructions, we stood there, left to ourselves. In the…

Gingrich Downplays Adelson Money, Stokes Fear of “Second Holocaust” at Florida Church

By Sarah Posner

…istian view of the role of women, motherhood, and reproduction, supporters look at Santorum and say, “hey, he’s like us, he’s a man of character, he’s a humble guy, he’s on our level, he’s somebody we can relate to. He’s somebody who can make a difference for America. And that’s what we want to do, we want a voice that can speak for us.” Still, despite the pro-Santorum sentiment, Gingrich brought the crowd to its feet with some of his responses to…

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

By Daniel Silliman

…llah,”he wrote, using an Arabic phrase meaning “God willing,”“I will never look back.”He began publicly identifying with militant groups in 2010 and travelled to Syria to join ISIS in June 2014. He was killed by Syrian rebels two months later, carrying $800 and an American passport. Charles Robert Moore Methodist minister Charles Robert Moore self-immolated in his hometown of Grand Saline, Texas, calling the city and the country to repent. In a no…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…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 warned that those who do would face “consequences.” From a March 1 story: In spite of the church rulin…

An American Muslim Abroad, Or, Things I Saw in Dubai

By Haroon Moghul

…h buildings, starting right around the same time. Talk about luxury on the cheap; it’s hard to deny a feeling of similarity. (The tower is to the Burj as a certain toupee is to hair: might the Trump Tower inadvertently mimic an Islamic motif?) The regal twin palm trees in the foreground are the world’s tallest, at some 3,500 feet each. Recently a falling coconut crushed an entire apartment complex, punching a massive hole that has filled up with…

Waiting for Lightning to Strike: A Wobbly Agnostic among the Atheists

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…r to cover.” My hand stays up and again, I’m not alone. Swarms of hands. I look at the atheists who have read the Bible and I wonder. Have any of you ever kissed the Bible? Have you ever cried as you read it? Did your insides light up like a pinball machine? Did you annotate and highlight and earmark and bookmark and run to the phone to call your girlfriend because you found a Scripture that was God speaking to you? “That’s why we know more than t…