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Global LGBT Recap: Culture War Claims More Victims

By Peter Montgomery

…i responded defiantly: Excellent Minister: You have never called me on the phone before. And you threatened me for a letter I addressed to Pope Francis. After today’s call I warn you that Christian-phobia is a type of religious persecution contrary to the liberty enshrined in our Constitution, which I swore to defend and obey. I reject your threats, even if I am sacrificed like John the Baptist for simply because as an Ambassador [to the Vatican]…

Escape From Manhattan: Tech, Tragedy and Storytelling in Sandy’s Wake

By Rachel Wagner

…and red caps in homage to Mario, the beloved video game character from the 1980s and 1990s. Star Wars characters waited in line to meet Carrie Fisher, the actress who played Princess Leah. In the large autograph arena at Comic Con, a long line stretched across the conference floor for autographs from Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films. The fans I spoke to didn’t care that Draco was a “bad guy,” since as an actor he serv…

Confessions of a Hater

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…a, Kansas, hospice after being excommunicated from the church he founded in 1955. But I remain a hater. The student who asked me this question had revealed a lot about himself the first day he wheeled into class. He was what we community college types call a “non-traditional student,” an older, grizzled, white-bearded Vietnam veteran in a wheelchair (I later learned his amputations came after a round of neglected diabetes, not enemy bombs). On tha…

Bad News for LGBT Anglicans, Mormons, Adventists, Norwegians, Russians, Georgians, Egyptians, Kuwaitis, Saudis…

By Peter Montgomery

…e, it will lead to the killing of Christians in Africa. Speaking on an LBC phone in, Justin Welby said he had stood by a mass grave in Nigeria of 330 Christians who had been massacred by neighbours who had justified the atrocity by saying: “If we leave a Christian community here we will all be made to become homosexual and so we will kill all the Christians.” “I have stood by gravesides in Africa of a group of Christians who had been attacked beca…

The Real Mormon Moment

By Joanna Brooks

…courts for more than a decade. We used the internet to regroup and grow in numbers. The Church even developed its own web-based resources to acknowledge and address its own controversies—historic and contemporary. This, we thought, was a good sign. A sign that might not need to fear losing our membership, our place, in a cherished tradition, just for having and voicing questions, doubts, and differences. We told ourselves to not to be afraid. And…

Black Masses Continue to Titillate Conservative Catholics

By Joseph Laycock

…der the guise of multi-cultural education. The black mass was cancelled and 1500 Catholics marched on Harvard Square. Conservatives have constructed a narrative of the event as a righteous defeat of the forces of evil. This narrative has inspired others to mobilize against self-declared Satanists 35-year-old Adam Daniels of Oklahoma City has been a leader for a string of short-lived Satanic groups including The Church of the IV Majesties and most…

James Foley Prayed, But He Was Not a Martyr

By Alana Massey

…ect of both personal and corporate prayer. When he speaks to his mother by phone from Libya, she asks if he has felt the prayers coming from his home as well. He tells her that he has felt them and reports, “Maybe it was others’ prayers strengthening me, keeping me afloat.” This is precisely the kind of hope that prayer can inspire that should become central to the understanding of it for those of us who do not engage in prayer. Though the old aph…

Satanic FOIA Reveals Deep Confusion About 1st Amendment

By Joseph Laycock

…etuated a narrative that Christianity in America is under attack. September 17 is Constitution Day, the perfect opportunity to recognize that the First Amendment has two clauses about religion; we’re not only a nation that values religious freedom, we are also a nation that recognizes the government shouldn’t tell us what to believe. Go to top *Greaves expressed his suspicion that some files had been omitted from the FOIA request. Documents sent f…

Religion or Insanity? Two Upcoming Murder Trials Will Ask the (Burning) Question

By Joseph Laycock

…re attempting to kill herself. Christensen claimed she was responding to a phone call from her husband, a pastor, who announced that the world was ending and to get the family ready. Cases such as this raise questions that have long gone unanswered about how the state should define “religion.” By what criteria should we decide whether deviant beliefs and actions are an expression of religion or evidence of a medical problem? Dr. Kolchak points out…

The Environmental Politics of Vodou, New Orleans Style

By Joseph Laycock

…wish heritage but were not religious. She became interested in Vodou in the 1970s and received initiation in Haiti in 1995. Glassman is a vegetarian and does not allow animal sacrifice in her temple (common in some other Afro-Caribbean religions). She also designed and painted her own “New Orleans Voodoo Tarot Deck.” (Ina Johanna Fandrich uses the word “Voodoo” rather than “Vodou” to describe the uniquely New Orleanean fusion of traditional Africa…