Religion Dispatches
…side of Temple Square, cheerfully singing hymns from the screens of their iPhones or from green-backed hymnals, while a clutch of protestors—evangelical Christians, mostly, the same familiar, ragged gang materializing every conference—takes its place behind barricades on a small patch of grass. A stranger, upon learning that I don’t have one of the highly-coveted tickets to the Sunday Conference sessions, spontaneously offers me his last extra. Mi…
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…self-interrogation boiled, my hand extended to the right. I reached for my phone, but I found nothing. At first I laughed at my instinct, my muscle memory. The phone, with its glowing screen, gave me solace and control. But I was tied to my cushion for another hour, and in this ashram for another day, so email would have to wait. I panicked. My heart raced. Would my editor be asking for me? Would a reply from that politician’s secretary sit unansw…
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…y from Victorian sentimentalism. Such angels are on sale at reduced price; cheap wares for cheap faith. It would be an error, however, to fully dismiss pop culture angels. Despite the fact that representations of angels in film and television, comics and music, paperback novels and posters, are filtered through market concerns, such pop culture can still speak to human meaning—and because of that they merit our attention. Besides, the bulk of art…
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…people like me. Although he has since found an affirming faith community, Charles stressed that his journey back to religion, and to a solid sense of self-worth, was long and made more difficult by his time in conversion therapy. The one positive impact of the treatment, Charles said, was that it made him “relentlessly committed to trans people, LGBQ people and their lives—both the joys and sorrows.” Conversion therapy “softened my heart to the s…
Read More…9, founder Liz LeCompte and company made their ownpilgrimage to Sabbathday Lake and other East Coast Shaker sites; it was longtime company member Kate Valk’s first trip. The Wooster Group has a unique way of working with source material, beginning with a meticulous recreation of that source. The performers wear visible earpieces and microphones over their plain cotton dresses so as to stay in sync with the recording. The Shakers too, we find out,…
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…n example, in the summer of 2012, Mormons marched in Pride parades in Salt Lake City, Boise, and other cities for the first time in large numbers, carrying banners that read “Mormons Building Bridges” (MBB). Donning Sunday attire and holding signs with messages of love, MBB forbade signs that criticized Church teachings—namely the notion that same-sex intimacy is a sin. Erika Munson, the founder of MBB, has assured me that the marches were a grass…
Read More…anned by a loose coalition of grassroots Mormon groups nationwide. In Salt Lake City, Mormons Building Bridges stressed a very simple message of love and understanding, an important step, organizers felt, towards addressing feelings of pain, division, and estrangement over LGBT issues in Utah families, congregations, and communities. Members of the LDS Church will march with a more activist message and behind a different banner in Washington, D.C….
Read More…tacks on LGBT people reported in the last two weeks, faith leaders in Salt Lake City convened a candlelight vigil last Friday in the city’s historic Liberty Park. Hundreds attended the vigil and subsequent march through Salt Lake City; including representatives from American Baptist, Roman Catholic, United Church of Christ, Buddhist, Humanist, and Pagan traditions. But the “big news” of the event, according to vigil organizer Marian Edwards (pasto…
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…cost of true discipleship. The price it was called upon to pay was all too cheap…We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale; we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition…Was there ever a more terrible and disastrous instance of Christianizing the world than this? It’s regrettable, I think, that “cheap grace” has turned into a kind of meme that Rod Dreher can toss into his debate with Andrew Sullivan without…
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…a random sample size and therefore isn’t statistically representative. The number of individuals reporting victimization in Episcopal spaces is alarming nonetheless. However, I would argue the data is more likely to under- than to overestimate the scope of the abuse that occurs. To see why, the survey results must be interpreted in light of the Episcopal Church’s larger culture of inaction around sexual violence. See no evil, hear no evil… LGBTQ+…
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