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C Street Scandal, the Media, the Future of the Family: An Interview with Jeff Sharlet

By Bill Berkowitz

…cover up sex scandals this past summer. The reason you may not have heard about the group is that it doesn’t want you to hear about it—“the more invisible you can make your organization,” preaches leader Doug Coe, “the more influence it will have.” They’re not the only group in Washington that keeps a low profile, but it’s the nature of their influence that’s really noteworthy: some congressmen call it simply personal and thus private, but nearly…

Hobby Lobby Case Isn’t Really About Contraception

By Patricia Miller

…ory. The image of devout, habit-wearing nuns being forced against their conscience to provide “abortion drugs” is what makes the Little Sisters of the Poor case so compelling and what may have won the sisters a stay against the mandate from Justice Sonya Sotomayor. But ECPs are not abortifacients. They can’t terminate an existing pregnancy, which the American College of OB/GYNs, the Food and Drug Administration and just about any other legitimate…

Capricology Week 5: Fathers, Funerals, and the Ethics of Gaming

By Henry Jenkins

…y space and not a game. Much of what we’ve seen in the play space has been about transgression and identity play, but not about rule systems. The idea that games are “lawless” is one often espoused by moral reform groups in our own time, but it seems to me misguided. I wrote the introduction to Ethics and Game Design, an recent anthology of essays by game designers and scholars which explore how computer games encourage various forms of self-refle…

Why Bill Maher Gets a “C” in My Introduction to Religion Class…

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…looking for my students to do a little reflection on their own assumptions about what religion is and does, to do a little research, and to think about the variety of ways religion has been described, defined, defended, and derided through the ages. Here begins the downturn of their GPA. On the first day of class I provide my students with a ten-page list of brief definitions of religion assembled by my hardworking colleague Darren Middleton. The…

Wild Goose Festival’s (Mostly) Welcoming Spirit for LGBT Christians

By Kristin Rawls

…ked, “Are we not supposed to sacrifice for each other?” We are not talking about sex. We are talking about families and children. I wish pastors would not say they work on “social justice” when they don’t mean it for everyone. The real challenge of the Bible is the question, “Are you going to love your neighbor as yourself or not?” People will say, “I work on poverty” or “I work on war,” and these are terrible things, but we do not have to leave L…

Mexico’s Religious Conservatives Seek Anti-LGBT Constitutional Amendment, LGBT Activists Defend Secular Government; Cash From Qatar Funds ‘Traditional’ Family Activism Worldwide; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…example, when the international community appears to express more outrage about anti-gay violence than about political violence or election rigging. Reid says “it can sometimes be the case that international voices speak out more vocally around LGBT issues than around other human rights abuses and that does create a very skewed perception … that [Western] countries are only outraged about violations against LGBT people.” Trinidad and Tobago: Advo…

Reza Aslan’s Viral Fox News Interview Reveals More Than Just Christian Privilege

By Jeffrey Scholes

…culture as expressed by Green’s implication that only Christians can talk about Jesus (or Islam or terrorism, or that only Republicans can write about Reagan). So, in addition to contending with the Islamophobia at work in this particular case, Aslan is attempting to establish the authority of the academic outsider in matters of religion over and against the authority of the religious insider who still possesses cultural ascendency in the United…

Tribal Trouble: The Changing Nature of American Jews’ Relationship to Israel and the Question of Jewish Unity

By Shaul Magid

…y talking about assimilation. This notion of “cultural shorthand,” talking about one thing while really talking about something else (and knowing the reader can fill in the blank space in-between) is a common way communities struggle to come to terms with things they have less control over by talking about things that they ostensibly have more control over. The fear of intermarriage for many American Jews may really be a fear of assimilation, but…

From Bad to Worstest: How Liberals Should (And Should Not) Talk About Values

By Daniel Schultz

…tant judgment. It turns out to be super easy to turn people off by talking about ethics and morals. It’s not wrong to talk about your values. I do it all the time! But you have to approach it sideways, with a sense of humor and surprise. Giving someone an unexpected reason to buy into a value works much better than a blunt, confrontational declaration. Start with a story. Drop the labels, the identities, the principles, and tell a story. As it unf…

A Better Form of Atheism: Rescuing the Christian Tradition from Religion

By Emily Manuel

…framework through which we interpret it. So we’re not necessarily talking about God, we’re talking about human beings. My reading is relevant to our concerns in our world, and not primarily about salvation or the Church. I object to the de-mythologizing approach in that it’s fundamentally arbitrarily and that it always has Christianity and theology in retreat. It’s trying to be acceptable to a liberal audience, and it’s doomed to be unpersuasive….