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Anti-LGBT Culture Warriors On The March; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Minister Tony Abbott spoke to the US-based Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian right legal group with a global reach, where he slammed members of the Australian government cabinet for not campaigning against marriage equality in the survey-by-mail currently taking place. The deadline for voting is Tuesday. From the Guardian: Abbott suggested that despite the weight of public opinion polling suggesting the yes campaign is on track for victory,…

How Do We Break the Cycle of Religious Violence in South Asia?

By Sunita Viswanath

…s in Bangladesh inflicted serious violence against the country’s Hindu minority during its most important festival, Durga Puja. The trigger? A Facebook post showing the Qur’an being placed on an image of a Hindu deity. To some Muslims, this offensive post justified attacks on Hindu shops, temples, and homes across Bangladesh. The violence didn’t stop here, though. In the neighboring Indian state of Tripura, Hindu extremist groups protesting the Ba…

Why Notre Dame’s Contraception Flip-Flop Undercuts Bishops’ Religious Freedom Claims

By Patricia Miller

…elievers. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty got involved and made the brilliant strategic move of recruiting the self-sacrificing Little Sisters of the Poor as the poster children of opposition to the mandate. Forcing nuns to provide “abortion inducing drugs” because the mandate would cover emergency contraceptives became the rallying cry of everyone from Dolan to Donald Trump, who immediately realized the culture war potency of the issue and…

Evangelicalism “Wasn’t Created for Someone Like Me”: Following a Queer Evangelical of Color in the Age of Trump

By Deborah Jian Lee

…eceive spiritual and pastoral care from other places. Where do you find spiritual nourishment these days? Recently I realized, wow, I’m not being pastored. I’m not being cared for here. Women in general in my denomination do not receive pastoral care, especially if they’re single. Because of our aversion to female leadership, we don’t have women in places to offer pastoral care. So I have been investing deeply in my friendships with people of colo…

The Forgotten Nones: The High Cost of Fleeing Fundamentalist Religion

By Andreea Nica

…friend network was from my church and when I stopped going to church, my Christian friendships stopped. I just stopped hearing from them, and it was as if I did not exist at all. I lost most of my friends, and that was extremely painful. I realized that the friendships, based on deep spiritual experiences together, had no foundation like a normal friendship did…I was able to come out to friends who had also left their faith, and we were able to cr…

But ‘Natural’ is Better, No? ‘How Faith in Nature’s Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science’

By Andrew Aghapour

…really that coherent in the first place. Did any of your case studies surprise you? One of my favorite examples when I was doing research was the history of contraception [and] the idea that there are “natural” and “unnatural” forms of sexuality, which are then linked to natural and unnatural forms of contraception. Catholicism most famously talks about this, but I was surprised to discover that it wasn’t just religions—even people who are anti-r…

Culture Wars Masquerading as Social Science: New Survey Illustrates Evangelicals’ Election Year Anxieties

By Chrissy Stroop

…tics,” gestures toward what will be more of interest to observers of the Christian Right in an election year. In order to understand the significance of something like the State of Theology Survey, however, it’s crucial to understand that for the vast majority of white evangelicals—America’s most loyal pro-Trump demographic—there is no clear line between doctrine and politics. Indeed, many evangelicals maintain, as ardently as any stereotypical Ma…

Thomas Jefferson’s Bible Rejected the Supernatural Jesus in Response to the ‘Stupidity’ of Those Who Deified Him

By Gordon Haber

…National Museum of American History as well as a prolific writer who has written a number of pieces for RD. Gordon Haber spoke to Manseau by phone. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Tell us about the Jefferson Bible. What is it? Why did he do it? Jefferson wanted to distill the Gospels down to core teachings of Jesus as a moral teacher. So he went through copies of the Bible and cut out with a penknife everything that had to…

For Clergy Who Ministered Through the AIDS Crisis Covid is Both Eerily Familiar and Puzzlingly Different

By Lynne Gerber

…elping me to understand that the original lie of America is this white superiority and all the kinds of supremacy that allows some people to think that other people don’t matter. All of that has become so visible.” There are big differences in the physical and social trajectories of the respective diseases. In its early years AIDS was a very visible disease and, as Rev. Jim Mitulski recalled, an ugly one. Mitulski ministered with Nixon at the MCC…

Sean Feucht’s New Year’s Rockin’ Superspreader Revival is a ‘Tepid and Meager’ Effort at Racial Reconciliation

By Isaiah Murtaugh

…nd the Black Lives Matter organization and drawn criticism for his quick-strike “Riots to Revival” worship events at this summer’s racial justice protests. Erica Ramirez, a sociologist at Auburn Seminary who studies Latinx religion and Pentecostalism, said the Azusa Street revival was revolutionary precisely because it exploded traditional racial hierarchies. “[Azusa Street came at] a time where Jim Crow laws were still in place, where lynchings w…