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Will Pope’s African Tour Change Attitudes on Divorce and LGBTQ Among African Catholics?

By Kaya Oakes

…a has gone through a startling increase in recent decades. Since 1980, the number of African Catholics has grown by 238%, in contrast to Europe, where it has grown by only 6%. Some of this may be attributable to higher fertility rates in African countries, but it also reflects the church’s success in missionary efforts. And where there are a decreasing number of vocations to the priesthood in Europe, where vocations have declined by 23%, African v…

New Poll Reveals Jews May Be Open to Change in Israel Policy

By Benjamin Weiner

…, has been best described by observers as “enigmatic”? How well will these numbers hold up if Israel’s “most favored nation” status is truly challenged by an American administration? Despite some American Jewish alienation from Israeli policy, backing for a bold new direction in the peace process is not entirely solid, a fact reflected in the same survey. 40% of respondents continue to support West Bank settlements, which, no matter how J Street c…

A Reforming Tradition Struggles With Change

By Brent Hege

…rch body in North America. The ELCA is the only major Lutheran body in the United States to ordain women, and the number of dissenting ELCA Lutherans includes many female clergy who cannot simply leave the ELCA for another existing Lutheran body (such as the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod or the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod), where they would be denied ordination as women. Some female clergy standing on the shoulders of foremothers who pro…

Pious White Reformers and Race, Then and Now

By Peter Laarman

…, by 1810 the term was also being applied to Native Americans. And while a number of enlightened whites believed that the natives of this continent had nobler natures than white people, the problem (again) was that they had been rendered dependent and degraded via their corrupting interactions with lower-class Europeans. Absent an aggressive program of “civilizing” these people, they could not be permitted to remain living cheek-by-jowl with white…

Give Me That Old-Time Ex-Gay Snake Oil

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…top thinking about us in bed! Remind me again, who’s the perv here? If the number of partners one has, the amount of time one spends in clubs, and what kind of sexual abuse one has suffered in their lifetime makes a person gay, then I suppose I ought to turn in my lesbian card. I can count the number of sexual partners I have had in 49 years on two hands and have some fingers left over. Not because there weren’t offers, but because, as a general r…

South Asian Religious Leaders Challenged to Take on Stigma and Discrimination: Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…oring well due to high spending on social programs and women’s rights. The United States falls into fourth place because, although its social spending is the highest in the region, murder rates, particularly femicide, remain high, as well. The report also points out that some of the region’s larger economic powers like Brazil and Mexico could greatly improve their scores by placing more emphasis on women’s rights, access to education and access to…

The Problem with AMC’s Sci-Fi Hit Humans

By Andrew Aghapour

…lakes. Visit Japan’s first robot-staffed hotel, and you’ll interact with a number of theroids, including a robotic dinosaur. If the dinosaur accidentally hurts you, and you’re elderly, you might be taken care of by a bear. This cuddle bot is a patch of interactive fur, in case that’s your thing. Of course animals aren’t always the best shape for tasks, either. Hotels around the world are buying room service robots that happen to resemble floating…

Unprecedented Anti-LGBTQ Statement By Orthodox Church in America Should Be Christian Nationalist Warning Sign to US Orthodoxy

By Katherine Kelaidis

…ican Christian nationalism focus too narrowly (for obvious reasons) on the United States. But American Christian nationalism isn’t just dangerous for America—it’s dangerous for the rest of the world. The rise of extremists in the OCA highlights this reality as few things can: on the one hand extremism in the OCA aids American Christian nationalists by increasing their political influence, but on the other, it aids dangerous factions abroad, like V…

Catholic Church Bans Gay Film: This Week’s Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ality with execution on Twitter. There have also been reports of a growing number of hate crimes targeting people perceived as LGBT in the country. The biggest shift in the politics of the issue, however, was a call last week from the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) movement for the government to crackdown on LGBT rights. The NU claims tens of millions of members and is described as the world’s largest Muslim organization, but was founded in large part to co…

Some Thoughts on Richard Dawkins’ Terrible Tweet

By Haroon Moghul

…Go to any university in America and you’ll come across a disproportionate number of Muslims. Before Dawkins can cry, ‘You succeed in the West but not the non-West!’—and thereby claim the superiority of the West he and I are both happily a part of—note that American Muslims have, on the whole, done much better than Western European Muslims. Whose fault is that? Why are Muslims succeeding culturally, creatively, and scientifically, in America, but…