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Snake-Handlers, False Messiahs, and a Few Great Souls: 14 Who Died in 2014

By Daniel Silliman

No other end-of-year list can hope to offer such profound juxtapositions: a groundbreaking female Mennonite pastor alongside an “immortalist”; the transcendent wisdom of a civil rights leader alongside one of the most hate-filled religious figures in contemporary memory. But here it is, a connect-the-dots portrait of a powerfully complicated American religious landscape, circa 2014. Vincent Gordon Harding Historian and theologian Vincent Gordon H…

‘Anti-Romeo’ Vigilante Squads Target Men Suspected Of Being Gay; More in the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…married in first month; Lutheran priests barred from officiating More than 800 same-sex couples were married in March after marriage equality went into effect on the first of the month; 770 had already been in civil partnerships. The Lutheran Evangelical Church has decreed that priests are not permitted to marry same-sex couples and some bishops warned that those who do would face “consequences.” From a March 1 story: In spite of the church rulin…

Pride Month & Prejudice; ‘Worrisome Time’ For LGBT People; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ciety,” he said. CNN traces the start of the backlash to early 2016 when a number of political leaders began making “unprompted attacks on Indonesia’s LGBT community.” It notes that conservative Islam is a growing political force, evident in the arrest and conviction of Jakarta’s Christian governor on blasphemy charges. The report says human rights activists have been disappointed by President Joko Widodo’s “lackluster” defense of LGBT people. Sal…

Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?

By Lee Gilmore

…llar annual budget is funded almost exclusively by ticket sales, and these tickets are not cheap (ranging this year, for example, from $210-$300 depending on time of purchase). This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various parti…

Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong

By Vyckie Garrison

…waste American money to buy their expensive oil when we could have our own cheap oil?” “Why is he trying to make rich people poor?” “How is it right to punish rich people for working hard and realizing the American Dream?” It was late on a Friday night and I was tired, so I half-heartedly responded by explaining that there are other factors to consider in every charged question she’d been armed with. But I wondered, “Why the hell was the Salvation…

“We All We Got”: The Black Church As an Oasis in Baltimore’s Food Deserts

By Kasai Rex

…Hogan to “maintain order.” People of color in cities such as Baltimore or Flint cannot count on governments to improve the lot of their most vulnerable citizens. When our own mayor called people fed up with being ignored and shut out of the ever-lingering promise of a better Baltimore “thugs,” “We all we got” came to be the mantra. After that flashpoint of what was internally dubbed the “Baltimore Uprising,” the city saw an appreciable uptick in…

Science Mike Building a “Christian Science” Liturgy for the Nones

By D. Ashley Campbell

…events. He tied the passage’s description of barrenness and destruction to Flint’s water crisis and to Ferguson. McHargue also challenged the concept of the post-racial during the Gathering, explaining that many white Americans believe we live in a post-racial society because they can forget about their race. He and Gungor released a two-hour episode of The Liturgists dedicated to the experiences of LGBTQ persons in the church, in addition to epis…

The Way of the Brother: How Critics Missed the Boat on Tree of Life

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…rs’ might be a misnomer in regard to a Terence Malick film, nevertheless a number of details of Tree of Life are revealed in the following essay. —eds. Since watching Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life a few days ago, I’ve been trailing my daughters: slowly, deliberately, unsure if I’m a cinematographer or a parent. In spite of my lifelong love of cinema (and teaching and publishing on the topic for the past decade plus), I rarely take video of m…

Vigil Planned in Wake of Suicide by 17-Year-Old
Gay Mormon

By Joanna Brooks

…o prevent suicide. And Mormons are volunteering to speak, including Bonnie Flint, an LDS mother and educator. “It is especially important that member of the LDS faith stand up against discrimination and bigotry,” she writes. “Others are watching us. In the most recent LDS General Conference, President Dieter Uchtdorf [of the LDS Church’s First Presidency] reminded us that we are to love, forgive, and avoid judging others. Like the family of Leh…

Unbuckling the Bible Belt: “Nashville” and the Nones

By Carrie Allen Tipton

…n the Wall Street Journal, “‘Nashville’ is dominated by intimate, acoustic numbers that would fall into the category of ‘Americana.’” No great shock this, since T. Bone Burnett was the program’s music producer in the first season, followed in Season 2 by Buddy Miller, a co-producer from Season 1. Burnett’s and Miller’s tracks draw on the songwriting talents of alt.country luminaries Patty Griffin and Lucinda Williams, among others. But the show’s…