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The Cynical Use of “Freedom of Religion”

By Kate Childs Graham

…cial life, and as such, [believe] that it should have a privileged place. What the Vatican is claiming here is that this UN declaration on LGBT rights would violate the religious freedom of those who would like to oppress homosexuals. The Vatican is, in a brilliant stroke of PR, playing the “religious freedom” card by using this idea as part of a strategy. The stance hails back to the time the Catholic Church feared that the right to religious fre…

Gimme That Old Spice Religion

By Frederick Clarkson

…ew’s unsuccessful 2008 campaign for the Alabama Public Service Commission that she thought that while husbands and wives should talk about it, women should submit their vote to their husband, because to vote opposed would cancel each other’s vote out. Joyce informed me that Chancey also “spoke about her opposition to women’s voting in a film by the Gunn Brothers, winners of Vision Forum’s annual Christian film contest, The Monstrous Regiment of Wo…

Gay: The Superior Lifestyle

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…our “religious freedoms” — which is the code phrase for “they want to pass hate crimes laws that make it illegal for us to call them the filthy sinners they are.” As a Christian, who just also happens to be a lesbian, I take offense at this continuing campaign on the religious right to promote this false dichotomy of gays vs. God. No one in the gay and lesbian community wants to curb anyone’s “religious freedom.” What our community is fighting for…

Why I Am Still a Christian

By Diana Butler Bass

…smates that her mother had written a book on church history. He replied, “What’s that about? Killing Muslims and Jews?” That pretty well sums it up—most people think that Christian history is about wars, inquisitions, crusades, and a corrupt church. I don’t deny that—it would be impossible to—but many people have managed to live admirable lives despite Christianity’s institutional failings. And I write about those people. I’m a realist when it com…

Texas Textbook Massacre

By Lauri Lebo

…ent critics, say the impact on the actual writing of textbooks may not be that dire. Still, that doesn’t spell good news for public education. For no matter what the outcome of the standards on textbooks—either in Texas or across the country—the board is clearly rewriting history to fit a conservative agenda and a Christian-dominated worldview. Jay Diskey, executive director of the school division of the Association of American Publishers, called…

Capitalism and the Anti-Modern Pope

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ns when the openly gay Anglican bishop, Gene Robinson, was confirmed). The code word for most of that uproar is “anti-Modern.” So the irony of Catholic anti-Modernism multiplies, morphs, turns back on itself. The logic of Catholic anti-Modernism, as it were, is capitalist to the core. The Vatican looks at the world map and analyzes new growth markets. When one source of material resources dries up, the empire marches determinedly on. From this per…

The Gray Lady’s Regard: Ritual and the Wedding Pages

By Kathryn Lofton

…nce, is yours for the having. Then you read more closely, and you realize that whatever career fair these folks attended had seriously curtailed options. Words like “associate” and “analyst” and “manager” abound, whereas words like “union” and “paramedic” and “zookeeper” are nowhere to be found. Everyone seems to be a lawyer or a professor emeritus. Father is often an investment manager. Or a managing director. Even if many of the New Brides occup…

Rebuilding the Wall of Separation: A Progressive Discussion on Church & State

By Bruce Ledewitz

…es its poor or its neighbors, it will fall just as surely as did Babylon. That is what we should think about today. Now, despite its religious saturation and its old-style preaching rhythm, this prayer would not be unconstitutional no matter how secular the public square must be. But that just shows the emptiness of the secular proposal. For God is often a shorthand expression for sentiments just like these. That is, the prophetic tradition. If th…

Jennifer’s Body and Why I Like Buffy’s Body Better

By W. Scott Poole

…apologized for single-handedly bringing an end to the sexual revolution. What critics have missed is that Eros and Thanatos are pals from way back, and the connection between them is not necessarily a message of moral judgment. Add some powerful religious symbolism, stir, and you have strong drink indeed. Cody, a serious fan of the genre, understands this connection—which rings true in her take on it, in a script that crackles and pops with her s…

A Jew in Church? No Big Deal

By Benjamin Weiner

…back, possible. It is only a mildly insightful book, interesting more for what it means than what it says. In the throes of a prolonged spiritual torpor, Cohen, an Orthodox Jew in his mid-thirties, proposes (to his literary agent, apparently) to spend a year visiting 52 churches, one for every Sunday. The result is a prime example of the mushrooming genre of stunt writing (like A.J. Jacobs’ The Year of Living Biblically) in which a contrivance of…