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Gay Suicide and the Ethic of Love: A Progressive Christian Response

By Eric Reitan

…fight. If someone had pressed into his fingers at that pivotal moment the phone number for The Trevor Project, he might reach out and hear a voice of reassurance, a voice that gave him hope for life by, in part, repudiating the so-called biblical teaching that who he is amounts to an offense against God. If he’d had a sense of belonging to a community that embraced him for who he is, maybe his hope wouldn’t be so fully shattered. But while other…

Racial Justice Will Be Top Priority for New Prez of the United Church of Christ

By Frederick Clarkson

…ic expression of Christianity is a far cry from more conservative and authoritarian forms of church governance. The General Synod delegates knew Dorhauer well, and his election is an expression of where the church is already going. John Dorhauer has been given as profound a democratic mandate for leadership as exists in public life. I talked and emailed with Dorhauer as he prepared to assume his new responsibilities—and move his household from Pho…

Gen X, Gadgets, and God

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ractive spiritual practice that is progressively interpreting and reconfiguring scripture in the context of a multilingual, global community. The practice itself “blesses” the iPhones and their users. Similar collaborative transformations are happening with literally hundreds of apps, Facebook groups, and Twitter feeds for the Bible, the Qur’an, the Torah, the Book of Mormon, the Roman Catholic Missal, the Book of Common Prayer, and so on. No orda…

Lessons Learned this Ramadan

By Amina Wadud

…ay, and yet still keep some things between you and Allah alone. The idea to do this one hundred-day blog came to me on my recent return from Indonesia. While there, my friends said hajj would be a challenge because of gender restrictions. Then a friend described people doing tawaf, or circumambulation around the kaaba, while sending text messages on a mobile phone. I just cannot see totally giving up my one-on-one moments with Allah just for a blo…

Pro- and Anti-Muslim Sentiment in Gainesville

By Julie Ingersoll

…ponses to the planned Qur’an burning in Afghanistan to the responses of American Christians to desecration of their sacred symbols, completely ignoring the distinctly different political contexts. Another identified himself as a Christian of a distinct stripe by advocating burning phone books that advertise abortion and then said he doesn’t have a Qur’an but if he did he would “feed it page by page to (his) goat who would be impervious to its lies…

Playing God in the Wild Kingdom

By Lauri Lebo

…move. Finally, I drifted to within three feet of him, yet he was still staring back at me, and still offering occasional croaks. That’s when I noticed the frog’s back end was missing, having disappeared inside the mouth of a really large black snake. The frog’s head and arms were all that remained unswallowed, a problem that clearly put the frog and snake at cross purposes. My first thought was to kick myself for leaving my cell phone behind. Thi…

This Narrative of Death that is So Powerful Among Us

By Daniel Schultz

…of them is to seek diversity within the church, because that kind of authoritarian system can’t abide diversity within itself. So when you fight for same-sex equality within the church, or women’s ordination within the church, or making a racially diverse church, you’re depriving that authoritarianism of the oxygen that it needs. Walter: Which comes to its pinnacle in the gay presence in the military, because the military cannot tolerate non-conf…

On Harith, and Matters of Inheritance

By Amina Wadud

…lam. It comes up sometimes as simple mathematical affirmations of male superiority. (The other one is the witness, but I’ll have to get to that another time.) When I present ideas about gender equality in Islam, I’ve been asked, “But doesn’t the Qur’an say a woman inherits half of what a man inherits?” The two relevant passages are quite long so I will not quote them in their entirety. Full details are crucial though: “…for the male is equal to th…

Another Book Burner Lusts for Attention

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ear in agreement with what we are doing. I may ask for your church’s name, phone number, and Web site to verify your stand. What I see as the sin at the heart of Grizzard and Jones’ actions—as well as at the heart of anyone who seeks to violently control the free will or belief of others—is lust. These men lust for control; and in their lust they objectify others, people they call “heretics” or “sinners.” Lust, in and of itself, is not a bad thing…

Gay Black Church: An Interview with Bishop Yvette Flunder

By Lisa Webster

…rican-American people, as I said to you earlier, were taught Christianity primarily in the context of oppression, second-class Christianity. And we have a great propensity to need to have a second-class among us. When people are disempowered, they are often empowered at someone else’s expense. Whether it’s women or children or gay people. It’s always the same thing, the same thing played out with different people. And how do we break that? How do…