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Exclusive: Columnist Jonathan Merritt on his Sudden Departure From Religion News Service

By Kaya Oakes

…nformed Socolovsky about it. When Merritt finally reached Gallagher on the phone in April of this year, he says Gallagher was “placing the blame [for the delay] on Jerome” for not reading Merritt’s emails, which “was all very weird and unprofessional, and it made me uncomfortable.” According to Merritt, that was the last time he corresponded with Gallagher. Merritt continued emailing Gallagher throughout April trying to get a contract. At this poi…

LGBT Editor In Bangladesh Murdered by Islamists—and More, In this Week’s Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…The Constitutional Court gave final approval to legal marriage equality on Thursday, April 28, after waiting for nearly five years for Congress to act on a 2011 ruling that said couples had the right to ask judges and notaries to solemnize their relationships. From Human Rights Watch: The Colombian Congress shirked his obligation to pass legislation to give effect to the judgment of the Constitutional Court of Colombia and ended with the arbitrary…

Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate

By Anthea Butler

…church, they’re marinating, so to speak, in the the various teachings of a number of people. I’ve covered many an event where I’ve been waiting in line to get in, and the inevitable conversation with the people around you goes something like this: they ask first where you go to church, and second which teachers you admire, and then you get into a long conversation about the relative virtues of all of them. A really good example of how all these te…

Episcopal Church Assault Data Reveals the Dark Side of Inclusive Christianity

By Charlotte Dalwood

…es. And the truth is horrifying. Of the more than 2400 responses collected, 475 (20%) are from cisgender LGB Episcopalians. Nearly 40% of these—189 individuals—reported being the targets of inappropriate jokes and comments; 29.9%—82 individuals—of inappropriate touching; and a further 14.9%—71 individuals—of attempted fondling or kissing. The survey also uncovered alarming rates of attempted assault, including attempted rape. Among cisgender LGB r…

Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired

By Rachel Wagner

…ability of cell phones to be used for impure activities, some Jewish cell-phone users have requested so-called “kosher” phones. The idea is to offer conservative Jews a phone that is free of “corrupting influences” of the sort that are already avoided by ultra-orthodox Jews through a ban on television and some radio. Reuters reported in February 2008 that Bezeq Israel Telecom launched a new “kosher” landline phone service, which will block calls…

Power Up: Turn Off the Cell Phone

By Daniel Schultz

…plugged-in lifestyle doesn’t really get at the heart of the issue. I think the Amish, of all people, have it right. It’s not so much about what you as an individual are doing or not doing, as the effect technology has on the community: Why not make life easier and just put [a phone] in the house? “What would that lead to?” another Amish man asked me. “We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a tel…

Why The Book of Mormon (the Musical) is Awesomely Lame

By Jared Farmer

…Heavenly Father sent him to Uganda instead of his favorite place on Earth—Orlando! The recurring musical outbursts about Orlando, Florida, were for me the funniest parts of the show. There are indeed striking similarities between Temple Square and Disney World: the fantasy-castle architecture; the immaculate, artificial neatness; the perky helpfulness of “cast members”/missionaries; the imagineering and the edutainment in service of a well-groome…

Teaching Love: Soulforce Takes it to the Quad

By Nick Street

…the country has trended purple and blue in recent elections. John Kerry won 40 percent of the vote in Faulkner County in 2004, but Barack Obama drew just 35 percent in this year’s presidential contest. On November 4, a statewide measure aimed at preventing same-sex couples from becoming foster or adoptive parents passed by a comfortable margin, just as a ban on gay marriage did four years ago. Conway should be Democratic territory. It’s a well-edu…

‘Culting’: From Waco to Fundamentalist Mormons

By Catherine Wessinger

…papers are producing the nuanced and objective reports about the removal of 463 FLDS children from the YFZ community in early April 2008 and the continuing investigation. But as with the Branch Davidians, “cult experts” with no academic training in the study of religions are contributing to the construction of the view of the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints as “brainwashed cultists.” I do not argue here that there were not problems within both co…

To Get Through This Time We’ll Have to Shred the ‘Racial Contract’ and Choose Solidarity Over Sacrifice

By Christophe D Ringer

…, Newark in 1967, Miami in 1980, Los Angeles in 1992, Ferguson in 2015 and Minneapolis in 2020 were in response to police violence against Blacks.” These forms of unrest reveal the persistence of the racial contract as well as challenges to its legitimacy—even in the midst of a pandemic. Black feminist and abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s definition of racism as the “state-sanctioned or extra-legal production and exploitation of group-differenti…