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Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…e the State Department of Health to draft regulations in consultation with American Indian spiritual leaders. The state legislature of Arizona might be surprised to learn that they already regulate sweat lodges—in the Department of Corrections. American Indian inmates are required to follow rules which include pictures of sweat lodges built in the Lakota style, not Navajo, which is the tribal affiliation of a good number of inmates in the Arizona…

Mormons Fight Marriage Equality in Mexico; Is Catholic Church Italy’s Anti-Gay NRA?; Nigerian Anglicans Cut Ties With UK Diocese; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…reports BuzzFeed’s Lester Feder. Armenia: Folk dancing group kicks out gay American Kyle Khandikyan, a 23-year old American living in Armenia was kicked out of a folk dancing group after the instructor learned that he was gay. Khandikyan, who currently lives in Yerevan and first came to Armenia through Birthright Armenia as a volunteer with PINK Armenian, was told by the instructor that he did not belong to this “nation,” that he was “not Armenian…

Why Did So Many Black Women Die? Jonestown at 35

By Sikivu Hutchinson

…on for its radical views. About 75% of Peoples Temple members were African American, 20% were white and 5% were Asian, Latino and Native American. The majority of its black members were women, while its core leadership was predominantly white. As per the cultural cliché, black women like Thrash were “the backbone” of Peoples Temple, the primary victims of Jonestown, and the population with the deepest investment in the philosophy, ethos and missio…

Omar Ahmad: Muslim, American, Cowboy Boot Aficionado (1965–2011)

By Wajahat Ali

…and from there, to the mayor’s office. In that position, he did what every American mayor does, he fought with the Firemen’s Union. In all his activities, he remained committed to his faith. He helped nurture and train Muslim-American leadership. He was a behind-the-scenes mover, who used his vast entrepreneurial experience to make sure the next generation would be able to build real, lasting community relationships with our neighbors. We admired…

Gingrich’s Anti-Secularism Greatest Hits

By Sarah Posner

…history.” Just today, Gingrich maintained that the Occupy movement is “un-American.” 4. Rediscovering “Americanism.” Obama, Gingrich insists, doesn’t understand the part of the Declaration of Independence, “endowed by our Creator.” What makes us “exceptionalist,” he claims, “is unlike any other country in the world, we say, you are personally sovereign, you loan power to the government, the government is never sovereign and the government doesn’t…

Elizabeth Warren, American Evangelist

By Peter Laarman

…o remember that evangelism and evangelical zeal aren’t always a bad thing. American Evangelical Christians call themselves that because they are committed to spreading the Good News—the Gospel—euangelion in New Testament Greek. American Evangelical Christianity is a religious phenomenon. But small-e evangelism is more of an unconfined quiddity, a way of operating or performing in public that “works” in a cultural way among Americans who aren’t esp…

#VanillaISIS, White Tears and the Adventures of Captain Moroni

By Megan Goodwin

…The Bundys’ movement shares with LDS a vagueness about its relationship to American Indians. The Book of Mormon links indigenous Americans to the dark skinned Lamanites, with whom the Christian Nephites were forbidden to marry. (These implications of racial inferiority have not sat well with native folks.) The Church seems to have no clear position on its tense relationship with American Indians; in this, LDS is not unlike the Bundys. Ammon Bundy…

Kentucky-Fried Christianity: Governor Matt Bevin Wants to Pray Away Violence in Louisville

By Spencer Dew

…of free choice—a conception of the Christian soul that fits with the wider American notion of the citizen as consumer, as Sean McCloud has detailed in his fascinating American Possessions. Bevin’s views are shaped by and shape a particular social position—bluntly, he can believe what he believes more easily because he’s a wealthy white male. If the drama over the prayer proposal reveals major divides within American Christianity, calling attention…

#TakeAKnee: Race and Religious Violence at the Heart of Trump Attacks on Kaepernick/NFL

By Benjamin E. Zeller

…heologian Jon Pahl argued in Empire of Sacrifice: The Religious Origins of American Violence that American history and society is marked by especially high degrees of both religion and violence. He finds “identifiably religious” patterns in this violence, particularly “systematic exclusions, prejudices, or biases—that is, ritualized incantations or performances—that substitute violence against scapegoats or victims for actual solutions to social p…

A History of Prophetic Black Preaching That Doesn’t Start or End With Dr. King

By Kenyatta R. Gilbert

…underplays. She does not adequately attend to the vital roles the African-American preacher and African-American preaching played in shaping the course of the largely leaderless movement of more than 1.5 million southern Black migrants who exited the South between 1916 and 1940, staking it all in search of America’s Promised Land in the industrial North. What’s your next book? I have a book titled Exodus Preaching: Shaping Sermons for the Here-An…