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With Methodist LGBTQ Vote and GOP Support for Trump, White Protestantism Has Hit Bottom

By Peter Laarman

…oubt that respect for reason played a major role in its conversion to a gay-positive position. Rejecting reason and common sense, only the American Baptists* and the United Methodists still take the view that committed gay relationships are unacceptable. It is surely no coincidence that both of these bodies have a straight white man problem: too much power in the hands of straight men who aren’t especially interested in the rule of reason and whos…

Hater Pastor Loses His Wife of 42 Years, Uses the Occasion to Trash Gays

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…lity is the only way to get to God! I want Jim Garlow to know this about my 12-year marriage: Sex may have been at the center of your “authentic, biblical, natural, historic, God-defined marriage,” but is not at the center of ours. If there ever came a time, God forbid, that my partner had cancer or some other illness that ended, or severely curtailed our sex life, I would stay by her side until the end—that is the vow I took and that is the vow I…

Is the Satanic Temple Just an Elaborate Prank? 10 Questions for the Author of ‘Speak of the Devil’

By Joseph Laycock

…ligion itself. I see TST as testing America on the values we profess. Most Americans claim to value tolerance and religious freedom. But talk is cheap, especially if you have never seriously thought about what these commitments might actually mean in a pluralistic society. I was disturbed to read some of TST’s Christian opponents openly renouncing religious freedom if it meant respecting the freedoms of Satanists. I also think TST is forcing the p…

Why Conservatives Really Oppose Federal Aid for the ‘Undeserving’

By Daniel Schultz

…he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, to the more up-to-date proclamation that the economy should reopen to save the stock market, even if it meant potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths. Some of them really seem to believe that rich people are better than everybody else. I suppose the “to be fair” part of this is to say that Congressional Republicans believe it’s important to fuel industries that employ thousands direc…

‘We’re all in this together’: The Perils of Kumbaya Rhetoric

By Peter Laarman

…out eradicating it? These are questions that have answers, but the thoughts-and-prayers crowd won’t be asking them. Nor will the politically minded liberals who would have us believe that a “return to normal” with Joe Biden at the helm will make everything all hunky-dory again. Trump’s incompetence and malice—and the GOP’s connivance in all of it—have certainly made the pandemic worse than it needed to be. But the underlying structural problems an…

Why the ‘Confession & Redemption’ Path is Unlikely to Help Falwell Recover from Sex Scandal

By Chrissy Stroop

…in his denial of Granda’s narrative. Monday offered plenty of exciting will-he-or-won’t-he drama around Falwell’s resignation, which Liberty’s board claimed had been tendered, only to have Falwell deny the claim and insist on further negotiations, after which Falwell reversed himself late Monday night and announced he was resigning after all. But mostly it offered schadenfreude, resulting in plenty of jokes from those who find catharsis in seeing…

‘People You May Know’ Reveals a War on Democracy Being Waged With Big Data

By Chrissy Stroop

…n the UK. There’s a story that just broke in the past week. We have a track-and-trace system—it’s not working very well, but a track-and-trace system in Britain for COVID. And you go into a pub, and you have to download an app. You put your details in. And that’s fine, but the pub didn’t build the app, a third party built the app. And we’re now hearing people say that pubs and restaurants have been selling this data to data brokers. But I’ll bet y…

I Agree: Critical Race Theory is Indeed Incompatible With Southern Baptist Convention’s ‘Faith and Message’

By Miguel A. De La Torre

…nchised can be dismissed as unbiblical. They could feel good about the anti-racist proclamation they made, and even express righteous indignation if accused of being racist. In all honesty, not knowing the state of their souls, they very well may not be racist. However, by silencing communities of color, they’re not only engaging in racist acts (if it quacks like a duck, etc), but they’re also fortifying the racism of Southern Baptist seminaries s…

Turn on the News: Some Abortion Opponents May Opt For a New Vaccine, But Behind Their Skepticism it’s Often a Different Story — of Disinformation, Conspiratorial Thinking, and White Nationalism

By Daniel Schultz

…d “some” is doing a lot of work here. As Jenkins points out, only about one-in-ten Americans claim religious objections to COVID vaccination. That figure comes from a PRRI poll, which doesn’t break down the objections any further. Meaning, we don’t know how much of that 10% is rooted in concerns over abortion. It could be that people are balking because they see vaccination as unnecessary, or because they see vaccines as contaminants, both of whic…

The Same Toxic Christian Right Theology Supports Both the Online Bullying I Experienced and the Cruel Anti-Trans Policy in TX — And it’s Not Remotely Fringe

By Chrissy Stroop

…hey started with a state CPS employee, referred to as “Jane Doe,” who has a 16-year-old transgender daughter (“Mary Doe”) and says she feels “betrayed by my state and the agency for whom I work.” In light of this development, Texas has unequivocally become ground zero for the nationwide assault on trans people being carried out by the Christian Right and the GOP—an assault that’s advancing to disturbing degrees in a number of Republican-controlled…