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Resurrection of ‘Comstock Laws’ Would Threaten Access to Abortifacients — But Even That Fear Misses Bigger Picture

By Gillian Frank

…e Supreme Court decided Griswold v Connecticut in 1965, Clarence Thomas was 16 years old and Samuel Alito was 15. Both men were in their twenties when the court issued Roe v Wade, Doe v Bolton, Eisenstadt v Baird, and Miller v California. Which is to say, Justices Thomas and Alito came of age as the Supreme Court, through decisions on contraception, abortion, and obscenity, liberalized a restrictive sexual order by mooting federal and state “Comst…

Mormons React to Prop. 8 Ruling

By Joanna Brooks

…in this country, and we urge people on all sides of this issue to act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility toward those with a different opinion.” As we’ve reported here at RD, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, responding to a letter from the Church’s First Presidency read over the pulpits during Sunday meeting in June 2008 and other organizing efforts headed by high-ranking and local Church leaders, contributed the…

The Transfiguration of the Fanboy: How I Lost One Leper Messiah, and Gained Another, The Conclusion

By Mark Dery

…n Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them) (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), passim. [8] Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them) (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), p. 151. [9] Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), p. 10. [10] Quoted in “Jazzin’ For Blue Jean” entry, Wikipedia…

UPDATE: An Abrupt End to Quebec Separatist Plan to Ban “Ostentatious Signs” of Religion

By Jeremy Stolow

…aracterized the initiative as a consummation of the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, when Quebec society first began to reject the dominant political role enjoyed by the Catholic Church, and thus a necessary step to protect the public sphere from “religious influence,” modeled in part on the legal initiatives adopted in France, and framed as a repudiation of “Canadian” multiculturalism policy as a weak and dangerously indiscriminate mechanism for re…

Thanksgiving Reveals More About Us Than About 17th Century Events

By Ed Simon

…Pilgrim and Indian story, the basis of so many Thanksgiving pageants in the 1900s. The holiday came first, and the mythic 1621 event became a focus only later. *** America The Mythical: ‘Mother of Exiles’ or Denier of Safe Haven? Returning to the mythic conventions behind Thanksgiving—including the narrative which casts the pilgrims’ journey to America as an Exodus story that enacts the promises of religious freedom—I ask what role the holiday cou…

Heroes: Sex and the Single Superhero

By Nick Street

…ero. In monasteries and convents and among the ranks of shamans, sages and spiritual warriors, gay men and women are disproportionately represented not only because those social locations have traditionally existed outside of hetero-normative institutions but also because undertaking the hero’s quest is their metabiological function. To put the matter differently: The birthing of new forms of culture at key junctures in human history is an express…

Christian Charity Meets Its Match: If You Missed “The Overnighters,” Here’s Why You Should See It Now

By Beatrice Marovich

…l economy, driving social crises, and driving something along the order of spiritual crisis as well. To be fair, this church-as-lens perspective seems mostly to have emerged as a matter of convenience. Jay Reinke had opened up his church to itinerants moving through the town of Williston, looking for work and drawn by the lure of oil. Jesse Moss, the filmmaker, was himself one of those itinerants in a sense: he was an outsider who’d been drawn tow…

When Is a “Religious War” Not Really a Religious War?

By Sarah Posner

…hing would be rosy if all “religious people” were sufficiently generous of spirit to pay their respects to mourners of their enemies in a so-called “religious” war. As Goldberg acknowledges, religious incitement, particularly around the Temple Mount, is fueling some of the violence. But more than by religious feuds, Goldberg writes, the violence is driven by power, powerlessness, and frustration: [T]here can be no such thing as coexistence when di…

An Evangelical (Millennial) on the Canterbury Trail

By John Schmalzbauer

…oing further than many younger evangelicals, Evans actively celebrates the spiritual journeys of LGBT Christians. A strong supporter of the Gay Christian Network, Evans no longer feels at home in conservative evangelical congregations. Such discomfort has contributed to religious disaffiliation among millennials (31 percent say that negative treatment of gays and lesbians may have led them to leave a childhood faith). In After the Baby Boomers, so…

Pop-Eye: Meat The Wrestler

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…nt to get to some core non-physical identity, some materially transcendent spirit, some individuality that is more about the myth of modern individualism than about anything religious. Therein they miss the (religious) point. And this is where I will go on record to suggest that Darren Aronofsky is one of the greatest living religious filmmakers. I confess, I’ve been a fan since his first feature length film, π (alternatively titled: Pi: Faith in…